 From New York City, it's the Cube. Covering Automation Anywhere, Imagine. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. We're in Midtown Manhattan at the Automation Anywhere, Imagine Crawfers 2019. Really excited to be here. 1,500 people talking about RPA, but really the RPA story is much more than just robotic process automation. It's really a new way to work, which we hear about all over the place and really reimagining what this technology can do. We're excited to have our next guest, she's Shelly Kramer, an analyst and partner for Futurum Research. Shelly, great to see you. Great to see you too, and you got it. I got it right. You got it right. Well, you're a very busy lady. You got all kinds of stuff going on, which is what we like. So first off, just kind of, have you been here before General Impressions of the Show? This is my first, this is my first Automation Anywhere event. And so it's exciting. I write a lot about RPA and about the future of work and workforce transformation. So it's great to be here. Yeah, and you just wrote not a super uplifting article on LinkedIn about employee dissatisfaction and some of the issues with employee retention. We talked before we turned the cameras on about things like calling them human resources and human capital, they're people. And I thought Mahir really touched on it well in the keynote today that this is not a rip and replace technology for people. This is a tool to help us do our jobs better, just like our laptops and our mobile phones and our applications. So are you excited about the opportunity? Do you see it as transformative? I do see it as transformative. And I think that before we talk about the technology that we have to talk about people and I'm pulling this out of my memory banks. So on average, about 82% of employees within any organization are disengaged, okay? 82%. So the ping pong tables and the foosball tables are not doing it? And so when you think about it, an engaged workforce are people who wake up in the morning or whenever it is they go to work and who are excited about what they're doing, excited about their company they're working for, love the culture that they're working within, love all those things that they're doing. And so when you realize that 82% of people are disengaged, that's problematic. Then you're talking about the toughest talent acquisition market that we've had in a really long time. So we're all fighting for top talent, not just top tech talent, but any kind of talent. And so focusing on how we can make the workforce better and create better cultures and put systems and processes in place that can make people do their jobs more efficiently, more productively and actually like them. That's to me, that's the beginning of where we get to this technology piece and what our PA can do, how AI plays a role in there and how you can, how employees can partner, you think of technology as a partner as opposed to worrying about technology replacing them. So I think it's an exciting time in the workforce and when you think about it that way, it makes a lot of sense. Do you think the difference in kind of the expectations that people have when they go to work to be engaged as a function of the millennials who are looking for something that's more mission led, is it a function of just the competition, is it so robust that before people could get away with having maybe a less compelling work experience? What do you think is driving the change or has it changed and maybe now we're just paying more attention to it? You know, I think it's changed in a little bit. I think that you and I are old enough that when we were coming of age and we were working our way up the corporate ladder, you know, you kind of sold a little bit of your soul to the company store. No matter, I mean, I grew up in advertising, right? And you know, I worked crazy hours and I loved it, but I never questioned that there were dues that I had to pay and that sort of thing. And I think that people don't necessarily expect the world on a platter, but I think especially the more skilled you are, whether it's knowledge of tech or whatever it is, in today's market, I think that we know, and again, it could be someone my age, it could be someone that's 25, it could be someone that's 40, I can find something else. So the minute this isn't doing it for me, I can go find something else. Now that said, there are also people who are punching a clock. You know what I'm saying? And I don't mean shift workers necessarily as much as I need to pay the mortgage, I need to get my kids fed. I don't love this job. Maybe it's a path to something. One of my daughters works for an insurance company. She has a very non-glamorous job, she doesn't love it, but she knows she has to do it for X amount of time before she can be considered for this different promotion and she is watching the clock on literally, on getting to that milestone and asking for her promotion and if that doesn't happen, she'll leave. So I think that when you can, people don't feel like they need to be stuck. So I think that we as leaders and as executives in the workforce, I think you always have to be mindful about what the work environment that you're creating is and focus on how do we get people and how do we fulfill the value prop that we use when we entice them to say yes to our offer? How do we get them to stay? There's so many things there. But one of the things you just mentioned is, I don't think they accept it like we did maybe when we were coming up, which is you hire somebody and you hire them for the attributes that they're bringing into your organization than it used to be, then you give them the employee rule book and you basically squash all the individual creativity and ingenuity and enthusiasm, which is why you hired them in the first place and we don't see that as much anymore. But at the same token, now everyone's worried about robots taking their job. At the same time, there's so many unfulfilled wrecks out there and as you said, it's the most competitive labor market out there. How are employers supposed to kind of square that circle because they need to bring the automation, they want to keep the people happy. It's a hyper competitive market and they need mission, but we've got to pay the bills and get the products out. I think that we can never forget that people who work for our companies need to pay the bills too, right? So when you can give them something that they can be excited about to do, that helps, right? But it's just kind of like, I'm thinking back to the presentation and I can't remember his name, but the VP of product did a presentation about today on mortgage loan application. That has to be one of the most boring things, right? If you're in the mortgage loan processing, do this, do this, do this, fill in this spreadsheet, blah blah blah, by the way, I hate creating spreadsheets. I just want to look at a finished one. But anyway, it was so cool to just look at this and I shot a video of it and shared it on Twitter if you want to see what I'm talking about, but it was just so cool that you can do this and do this and do this and you create this process and in no time the technology has done all the work and all the calculations and you've got a recommendation, approve, not approve. And so if you're in the mortgage loan business, the way to think about that, at least the way that I think to think about it is, does it mean that your job is going to go away? It's just like my daughter doing that not very exciting job that she's doing. If automation could fuel some of the mundane, repeatable, banal tasks so that she could focus on the other part of the equation where it's more interesting and more exciting, I think then that's really the value equation there. But I think as, I think what businesses have to do is be transparent and very honest with their employees and tell them this is why we're doing this and this is what our PA means and this is how it's going to add value and we're not doing this to necessarily replace humans. This is so that we can make this work better, more efficient, more, you know. And I think that, you know, I'll step back and say from a personal example, we went through a process last year where we evaluated all of our business processes and we looked at how much time our employees were spending because we tracked time doing certain tasks and then we were realizing the value there, we were actually paying too much in terms of the time investment or tasks that didn't make sense so then we set out integrating automation into our processes and it was a big project and people were kind of worried, you know and they were kind of worried about it but one of the things that we told them early on was like this is not so that we don't have work for you, this is so that we can make what it is you're doing more efficient and you can do things you like better. And so, and that has happened and we didn't lose any of our team and a lot of those tasks that they were doing are now automated but they're doing stuff that they like more so I think that's really the challenge for businesses is the messaging and then involving your teams in the process of deployment of any kind of technology. I think it's just the soul crushing expression is so valid for these types of activities and I think again Mahir had a great stat, 4% of his jobs require a medium level of creativity which people want to get off from under that but if we can define it as a tool and as I'm thinking of personal digital assistance well that used to be just my Palm 3 was my PDA, right? Wow, no one was threatened by the Palm taking the job away so I think you're right, if we can put it in the context of it's just another tool that's just going to help you get your job done, that's a very different way to frame the problem versus kind of this rip and replace narrative which we hear kind of over and over again. Well and I think it also goes beyond Jeff, it goes beyond and I think that employees at every level have to understand this, it goes beyond just helping you get your job done. It really is about the companies that survive today and tomorrow are the companies who transform and we talk a lot about digital transformation and I'm out there on the front lines all day every day and I can promise you there are many, many companies who are far from really understanding and embracing this and understanding what it takes from a technology standpoint and the value that data adds and how to use that data and the impact that that has on customer experience and all that sort of thing so I think it really is about much more than this will make your job suck less, right? I think it's about this is how our company stays successful, this is how you help make your job and the role you play within our organization, what you want it to be and I think that you can probably tell I've been marketing because I'm always thinking about how you spin something and I don't mean in a spin like a PR way but I think we all have to step back and think about it in terms of the whole equation and there are a whole lot of companies that don't exist anymore and whether you're talking about the financial services sector and every business everywhere is being disrupted. I told a story I was talking with here earlier this morning and I was telling him a story about how my husband and I just bought a new car and we expected to get a loan for that car from our community, it's not a community bank from our local bank. Your local bank. Our local bank has been recently purchased by a bigger bank in the last couple of years but we run all of our corporate money, I mean everything that we've ever done is here in this bank and so we of course fill out the loan application, no problem, give us an interest rate, no problem but they made every part, my husband and I both travel a lot for business and every part of the process required us to be somewhere together to have an official closing, to do this, to do that and it was just like we couldn't ever purchase this car because they were making it so difficult for us so we ended up talking with the car dealer who said oh my God we can fix you up, financed it through their banking partner which is a huge national bank, approved in five minutes, loan documents in five minutes, hey come on out, you sign this tomorrow, he can sign this when he gets back and when I talked to my bank after the transaction I said here's the deal, I wanted to do business with you but when you make it difficult for a customer to give you their money they're not going to hesitate to give somebody else their money so I think the banking industry is one example of these processes that are so cumbersome that in some ways can be automated but it just, it doesn't make sense and customers today, you and I are impatient people as are people younger than we are and we know there has to be a better way. Technology can give us a better way. Right, and you know they can use different data sets and I mean I bought some stuff recently and you just push the button on the phone and it takes a minute, the wheel spins and then you're approved, right? You're done. You're done and it's a completely different experience but the part about the digital transformation I wanted to follow up is it came up today where a lot of times people are the integration point between these systems, very similar to the example that you just used and you can't digitally transform if all these automated systems ultimately have to bottleneck through some person to take this piece of data and stick it over there. So it's absolutely critical to get those people out of the way. So as you look forward 2019, what are some of the big trends beyond RPA and kind of personal digital assistance not called POM that you're seeing and that you're excited about? Well I think that it's hard not to be excited about RPA just simply because it's predicted to be at 1.9 billion this year and to almost double by 2021. I mean it makes sense that companies like Automation Anywhere are doubling down on that, right? It also makes sense that gigantic companies like IBM and Deloitte and EMI, I mean they're all here in force. They're all here, right? There's a reason for that, right? Because IBM's customers want this and Microsoft's customers want this. So I think that in general I think that technology is fueling our world, our personal lives, our business world and I think that probably one of the biggest things that I pay attention to and that we pay attention to is that technology alone isn't the answer. It's the partnership of human beings and their skill sets and capabilities and data and automation and artificial intelligence and all those things. So I think that it's an incredibly exciting time. It's kind of like when you go back to the video that we saw this morning in the overview about the internet and I don't know if you remember this. I don't know, I don't know how much older I am than you but I remember that internet machine and wow, I could send an email, you know? But then when you think about how and those comments, you know, that Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were making, like the word dumb comments, we didn't know. We didn't know the impact the internet could have, would have, you know. And so I think the same is true of this kind of technology today, this next generation of technology. So there's not just one thing I'm interested in. I'm interested in all of it. You've got to keep learning, right? Because we have a hard time with, we're very linear and everything's growing exponentially. So you've got to be willing to learn the next thing because it's right around the corner. And I think that's so key. That's a great wrap. I think that people who are happiest today are people who actually love change and who love learning. And I would say, I would posit that most, those are not inherently things that people, traits that people possess. I'm lucky because I do. But you see what I'm saying? I think that, I don't think that you would be, I think- It's an interesting question whether that's inherent if there's just people that like to learn and are curious all the time. And then they got to stick in the muds and can the stick in the muds change their attitude and become learners again? Or maybe they won't. I mean, you know, I think that they're, I do think that there are people who are wired to like change and are curious and who love learning. And I think there are a whole bunch of people who are not. And I would, I truly believe that for success in today's world and moving forward for young people and not so young people, you better get there if that's not your deal. Because I don't think that, and I have stumbled across conversations of people having like, that's not going to happen. So I don't have to worry about it because I'm going to be out of here by then. And you know what? There are a whole bunch of people that have that mindset and that's A-okay. But especially for young people making their way. It's an A-okay mindset, but it's not the fact. That's the problem. It's happening, I mean, the future is here and it's happening at a faster pace. Well, Shelly, we could go on and on and on but we're going to have to leave it there. And I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your day. Absolutely, my pleasure. All right. Shelly, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Automation Anywhere Imagine in Midtown, Manhattan. Thanks for watching. See you next time.