 Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Inforum. Welcome back to Inforum 2017. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Mark Scabelli. He is the Chief Creative Officer here at Infor. Thanks so much for returning to theCUBE. Well, thanks for having me again. It's good to see you guys. So, last year, the big announcement was H&L Digital, Hook and Loop Digital. Bring us up to speed. Give us a status update of where you are now. Well, we're a year later. I think what's really important is that we've established our application development framework, which allows us to rapidly deploy our prototypes, rapidly deploy the project we're working on for a lot of customers. We've had a lot of wins over the last year. We're working closely with Brooklyn Sports, both the basketball team and the stadium and the entertainment center. Working with Travis Perkins. We're working with American Express. So, we've got a lot of great client wins in our belt. We've learned a lot over the last year. But most importantly, we've been able to actually fine tune our application development framework to be able to bring that stuff to market very quickly for our customers, which has been a very big deal for us. So, you mentioned a couple of client wins. Brooklyn Sports, let's unpack that a little bit. Tell our viewers specifically what's going on. Yeah, so, Brooklyn Nets, basketball team here in the US, right? So, player performance a little bit down. So, we're working with the performance coaches. We're working with the telemetric data that's coming off of the players. Things as it pertains to the arc of the ball throw or the skeletal models of how they perform or how much sleep they're getting. We're tying into a lot of IoT devices that the players use. We're bringing all of that data into one place for the performance coaches and then allowing them to make better decisions on the field, on the court in real time. So, you'll see actually, behind you guys is our half court. We've actually set up a half court to show some of that data that we're bringing in about player performance. We actually run an NBA player assessment and show your player readiness. I hit like an 8% readiness for it. Hey. There's still time. There's still time. Yeah, five, eight. I think I was really going to get very far on the NBA. High single digits. Yeah, high. Yeah, real high. So, we're working a lot around player performance certainly and then also as well with Brooklyn Sports Entertainment around the Barclay Center here in Brooklyn, how they can start to brand that experience. Nobody really has an affinity for an arena, right? You go and see Beyonce or you go to watch the Nets. You don't really think about going to the Barclay Center. So, how do you start as soon as they walk in the door engaging with a customer, using technology to drive all this value all the way through? How do you find the shortest beverage and bar line? How do you find the cleanest bathroom? How do you find to get beverage and drinks and food delivered to your seat? That's what we're going to be technology that's going to drive that. So, like a lot of our clients, we've installed the digital backbone, the underpinnings of that with our Cloud Suite. And now it's our job to come in and start creating these apps that differentiate them in the marketplace, help Barclays compete against other Nixon stadiums. So, the Nets example, it's similar to Moneyball, but different. He's talking to Ark of the Ball and so the remediation of some of those or the optimization of some of those is just different training patterns or different exercises or drills that they can do. Whereas in Moneyball, it's like this unseen value on base percentage, for example. But are there analogs to some Moneyball? Like I was listening to an interview with an owner the other day and the interviewer was beating him up about one player. And he said, well, if you look at the deeper analytics, they're like, oh, deeper analytics, what does that mean? So, are there deeper analytics that you can explore? Yeah, you know, we've left a lot of the basketball to the basketball professionals. And when we started this thing, the GM said to us, you know, should we really get this started with you guys? What do you know about basketball? And we looked around, it's like an Englishman next to me and myself were like, we don't know a lot about basketball. But we hope that's what you're bringing to the table. We know a lot about how to bring, you know, the data science together, we can bring the AI in, we can bring all that together for your performance coaches and work with them, just like we don't know a lot about farming and agriculture, but we can work with feed companies to help them optimize for their customers. So it's not about like what we know about basketball, but to your point, those performance coaches are definitely finding those little nuggets of data to help those teams perform better. I couldn't tell you one off top of my head because that's how little I know about basketball. My 8% performance rating will show you that, but they are looking inside that data and able to find that. And the trick is bringing it to them in real time, bringing it so that they don't have to go into deep Excel documents, that's what they were doing before. There's all stored in Excel and they had to go through and then maybe somebody would make a pivot table or something and they- We're watching play tapes. We're watching play tapes, absolutely, of course. And by being able to assess all that data too as well and bring that into the feed and be able to actually assess that and report it back into the larger system we're providing, it gives them a lot more visibility so they can find those little nuggets that they know as basketball professionals. And first is part of the solution? Not currently, no, but certainly we will be needing to put burst into that play, yeah. So Thomas Perkins is another example. Travis Perkins, yeah. Travis Perkins, I'm sorry, that you mentioned. What kinds of things are you doing there to make that company able to really use data more wisely? So Travis Perkins is one of the largest building manufacturing supply company in the UK. Over 2,000 distribution locations across England. Very strong in its footprint. It's a really strong brand in terms of sort of the Home Depot of the UK. They put in M3 last year as a big announcement and it was a very large initiative for them. That's a digital backbone we talk about, right? So now it's our job, we're coming in now and we're automating a lot of their systems for their distribution centers so they get a better customer experience. So when I go into a Travis Perkins distribution center, I can get what I need much quicker. So that's kind of the baseline thing that we come in and do. We look at ways to optimize for, for example, if I could fob in with my truck and actually just pull in my truck, fob in and you know it's me, my order is ready, I don't even get out of the truck, they pack my truck and I just drive out the other side. How do we create that? How do we create engagements for visibility models for the distribution managers to be able to see what's selling, what's not selling, who's performing, who's not performing. So those are things that we do with the baseline of the experience. And then additionally to that is we look at new business models with them. So we're actually helping them think about new ways that they can create subscription models or ecosystem models. So for example, working on, they're working on the tool locker rental, setting up a basically locker or a rental facility and then using software to be able to access that locker and then you sort of create a subscription model to that. I'm able to just pull up, punch in a code, that's my tool locker, I can get my tools right out of it and I can drive right off. So, and then doing it in places geographically that make a lot of sense for them. So that's kind of the best side of it. I think we get these signature experiences that optimize on top of the backbone, but then we create these whole new business transformation models for these companies. That's really exciting, really helpful. Retail is an interesting example. Everybody's got an Amazon War Room trying to figure out how to compete, where they can add value. What have you seen specifically in the retail business? Yeah, I just moderated a panel with the CIO of DSW and the COO of Creighton Barrel on either side of me and it was exciting to see that they feel a disruption but they're certainly eager to take it over. So on the Creighton Barrel side, we're seeing them be really beat up by the wayfarers of the world. Three billion dollar valuation. They can get to market much quicker. They're running products in a much different way, where Creighton Barrel has a much longer lead time around the CPQ mile, right? They've got to configure a price that quoted get it out, takes 12 weeks to get a couch. How do you get, on the supply chain side, how do you get that shorter? So they're working with them for to get that supply chain shorter so they can compete on shorter lead times, but what we're coming in to help them do is also look at how can you start to create experiences while you're waiting for that couch to be produced or while you're shopping online. What are the things I can do to know how long it'll take to get that item? And now we just take all that digital backbone of that supply chain and create new experiences for it. On the DSW side, we've been working really closely with them on Point of Sale, as well as deep customer experience apps for them with their employees. They really see their employees as the key tool to driving loyalty to their stores. So we've been working on brand new apps in mobile space that will help their employees be able to serve their customers a lot better, have a much more tied loyalty program to their job performance with the customer's loyalty. So a lot of great things they're working hard on, but certainly it's a massive behemoth of competing against Amazon as a retailer, certainly. So what's your advice then for a company that is, I mean, you're talking about companies that are already being very thoughtful and planful about this transformation and understanding, first of all, that they need to transform, that they need to change or else they'll be left behind. But so what's your advice for companies that are just starting on it? I think we've got to look at this as a holistic approach, right? We cannot take a little nibble bite size out of the problem, right? So when it comes to digital, looking at the entire ecosystem, looking at the operations, looking at the customer, looking at the employee, saying, what are we doing on our core backbone of the operations to make that run efficiently and automate that? Let's do that. Let's get that out of the way of all those people. Let's make that run as quickly and extremely as possible. Our CloudSuite certainly helped companies do that. And then let's look at how we can start to transform the way they function inside their business by creating these functionally integrated models between all three, between the operations, the customer and the employee. And let's create new experiences that live on top of that backbone that drive new value. And until you do that, until you leverage your brand, like creating barrel can leverage their brand if they just shorten that supply chain and start to optimize for how they deliver, DSW can leverage their brand as a shoe warehouse if they provide a larger assortment and a better experience in store they can compete against Amazon. So to do that, we need them to, I would recommend companies to give them, think of the approach holistically and not as small little bites of just, let's create this app and this one app is going to solve our problems. It's not, you've got this much larger holistic approach you need to take, yeah. What percent of the Infor portfolio has Hook and Loop touched, affected? So Hook and Loop Core, certainly the GA products, they've touched everything. You'll see tomorrow on stage, Ninsia Esposito, a new head of Hook and Loop Core, who's running the business that when I first met you, I was running, right there, they're doing very well and they've touched, I would say percentage wise, 80% of the product, if not more. Certainly the products that are driving our business like EAM, HCM, financials, they have reinvented. You'll see tomorrow they've done some incredible work. They just, they'll be releasing tomorrow. Pretty exciting, a new UX for our entire cloud suite. So that's pretty incredible, right? How Coleman will be integrated into our clouds, it's a big deal. So how do you create a UX for that? And then certainly, of course, how much UX and UI do you take away because you introduce Coleman? You can take a lot of UX and UI away. A lot of functionality gets tripped away. So it's changed the methodologies we've used in the Hook and Loop Core team, but Ninsia has done a great job challenging himself to do that. I know Rebecca you were saying when you read the press releases around Infor, like they use the terms like, you know, beautiful you don't ever see it, so it's very Apple-esque. Where do you get your inspiration? I think it's the consumer-grade products we talked about years ago when I first met you. You know, the idea that how I function my daily life at home should echo how I function at work. Certainly now we're getting inspiration for how companies that are born digitally creating these models that drive them, how we can help other companies do that as well. So we're inspired by everything that touches us. You know, to be honest, I still use my Tivo. I might be the only person left. That's not true. They're doing very well. I like the little sound effects of Tivo. I know what you mean. They're doing very well, so I can't say I'm the only person, but I'm probably the first little minute that I love my Tivo, but these are things I've watched them not just change their UX, like we did within four or five years ago, but now they've changed their business model. They've changed what they've become as a hub and as a digital solution. How they use media channels to drive their business. I think that's incredible. It's a similar journey we're going on. So there's a lot to be inspired by. And why should the consumer guys have all the fun? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, certainly. So how do you keep your team? You're the chief creative officer. So how do you, you talked about what inspires you and what inspires the company as a whole, but how do you keep a culture of creativity and innovation going? How do you keep that momentum? You know, we've been really fortunate to have a really great support system by the executive team. Charles Phillips, Duncan Ango, certainly. I mean, it's been incredible about meeting a team like Hook and Lube. Like David was 15 people, maybe a little more. And now it's 120 that run that core team. When we launched H&L Digital last year, we were like nine people, now we're over 40. That investment, those dollars they put back into those, these kinds of endeavors are really indicative of that. And I think that it comes through to the creatives and the other people that we bring in that this is the kind of investment that Infor is interested in. We have a beautiful working environment inside New York City, inside our headquarters. We have a beautiful new garage. We just opened up an innovation lab. We get to play with the greatest toys. I think we're actually very, very fortunate to be inside a company like Infor and get to work with the people we get to work with as designers and as creatives. And that was an uphill slope to keep people motivated to do that as creatives. And we call them left brain creatives, certainly. But I think we're there now. I think we turn away a lot of people that come work for us now. So it's very exciting. You work London, Dubai, right? That's exactly right, yeah, thank you, yeah. We are, we opened London just recently. We're opening Dubai next. And then we have two teams in New York, yeah. It's pretty exciting. Great. Love to see the Dubai. Yeah, yeah, Dubai's being built up right now. We have an officer already. We're going to the next destination for the... Cube Dubai. We should go to Cube Dubai. That'd be great. They would love it there. Yeah. Yeah, all right. I love it. We'll mark that on the list. Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. It's always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you, thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. We will have more from Inforum after this.