 from theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. Hi everybody, we're back. This is theCUBE's continuous coverage of IBM's Think 2020, the digital event experience. My name is Dave Vellante. Manny Dasgupta is here. She's the Vice President of Marketing at IBM. She's also the CMO of the Global Business Services Group. Manny, good to see you. Thanks for coming back in theCUBE. Oh, I'm so happy to be here, Dave. Fantastic to be here. You have a lot of experience with brands. IBM itself is this amazing, well-known, leading brand. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of how brands are responding to the COVID-19 crisis or the things out there that you're seeing that are inspiring you. And what should we be looking for? Oh my gosh. I mean, all around the last two months, we have been living now in a new reality and this is not going to go back to what we knew as normal. This is going to be the new normal and how brands react to it, sets us up for future growth and future success. As in the Global Business Services Team, as the CMO there, I meet a lot of clients every single day and they're coming to us with their business challenges. What makes the big difference right now, I think in terms of being a successful brand is the resilience and the adaptability. If you see a company like IBM and you talked a little bit about how iconic this brand is, it's been there for about 108, 109 years now and it has been able to successfully reinvent itself with every turn of the century and every turn of what's happening around us. It being able to pivot, I think is extremely important. What also is important as a brand is the empathy that you can feel towards the growth and success of your client's business, I think sets any brand apart from growth. So adaptability and empathy, those would be my two big things. I mean, we talked a number of CIOs. IBM came out as one of the companies that's really helping and it wasn't just IBM, there were many, many large organizations, small organizations that really had this empathic we're in this together sort of feeling to it. That's exactly right. If you look at it, it's both of what we do for our clients but also what we do for our own employees. 95% of our workforce across IBM is now working from home in a safe and secure environment. We've been able to work with our clients and move those teams that work with our clients also in a more safe and secure environment. For example, something like our co-creation workshop, the IBM garage, you would think that for co-creation innovation, you all need to be together in a room and put up sticky notes on the board behind you. But we have moved it to be a virtual experience and we are now offering free trials of a lot of our products and solutions to our clients for the next 90 days where they can get their most pressing business problems solved. And we just want to make sure we get together and get the economy back on track, get the companies back on the track of growth. Now, one of the other passions of yours I know is this notion of the cognitive business, the smarter business and I want to ask you, help us understand what that is, beyond the sort of marketing taglines. What is a smarter business? Yes, a smarter business is adaptive and resilient. So that would be the biggest things that I would highlight. Now, how do they do that? They do that because they are able to have business platforms. They use the data that they have at their disposal. And mind you, this is not the data that is searchable online. 80% of the core customer data is with organizations themselves. Now, how do they use that data to create business platforms that give them competitive advantage is one of the core tenets of what makes a smarter business. The second piece is around workflows that are more intelligent. Now, what makes these workflows more intelligent? What are these workflows? These are end-to-end processes. So think of supply chain. How do you make your supply chain more resilient in the COVID crisis right now that many companies are grappling with? How do you strengthen your direct-to-consumer routes? Many companies that used to deliver to stores now are figuring out how to get direct to consumers. So making these workflows more intelligent, more resilient, how do you manage your workforce, right? How do you make sure that the customer data that many employees work with is safe and secure? So second big piece is the intelligent workflows. And the third thing is all about the experience and being able to engage with your customers in newer ways. If you think of some specific industries that are dealing with customer claims, you look at the healthcare provider industry, you're looking at insurance claims and things like that, they are grappling with this new reality and being able to then connect with your customers in new and engaging ways, I think is of utmost importance. So the three things platforms, workflows, experience is what makes a smarter business possible and that business is adaptive and resilient. The way in which brands are engaging, it's dramatically different than it was just a few months ago. And our thinking is there's going to be some permanent changes here. What are your thoughts in that regard? Absolutely, 100% agree. When we go back to work, when we all get out of our home offices, it's going to be a new way of working. And we're already seeing the engagement within our own workforce rising. For example, I just came off of one of our all-hands calls and we create these new videos on how we have new coworkers, we have pets and kids and parents that we have to care for at home. With all of this though, there is a greater sense of togetherness. There is a greater sense of solidarity. And what inspires me the most is when I look at the people around us in the delivery teams across the world. If you look at India, if you look at Philippines, our big teams that are delivering for clients every single day, the resiliency that they have shown in being able to overcome these hurdles are giving us ideas that this is not a one and done. This could actually be the new normal going beyond it. The automation that we have been able to apply, when you apply AI, how do you make processes different? If things are more efficient, wouldn't it be a better idea to have that go throughout to the rest of what's the new normal around us? So this is absolutely going to change the way we work, the way we engage with our clients and the kind of new ways and new routes to market. I think that is the most exciting to me. How can we pivot quickly and find out new routes to market new customers and be able to provide them value? The Watson Digital Assistant is interesting to me because it allows, as one example, a hospital to be able to put out information that's accurate and timely, these things have to be done in near real time. As we know, the COVID situation, it changes daily. Maybe the change is decelerating a little bit, but it's still several times a week. And there was a period of time where it was changing multiple times per day. So for instance, do I wear a mask? Do I not wear a mask? How far do I have to stand away? Can I actually get this by walking behind somebody? Et cetera, et cetera. So much information that changed so quickly is the medical community got that. So you have to be able to access that data and to your point about that intelligent workflow, be able to do that in near real time. And that's what, to me anyway, it's about operationalizing that workflow, that data, that AI capability across the organization, not just in some stovepipe, where I have to ask somebody to run some analysis for me. That is a huge change in the way in which businesses operate, isn't it? It is a huge change. And I think it's also about visibility that the common man is right now, the citizens, the people who are trying to access these technology. I think it gives them a renewed hope in what technology could really provide, how we are still being able to work while we are stuck in our homes, how we are still able to buy things online and not jeopardize the safety of our loved ones who may be immunocompromised, who cannot go out and shop, how we are able to still do the delivery. And the beauty of this is we, in the technology industry, we knew this. So go back one year, we were working with Chemonix, a company that supplies life-saving medicines to many parts of Africa. The supply chain there and the technology and the intelligence that we had embedded in that workflow made it possible for this human and tech interaction. And I think that is what the beauty of this is, the renewed understanding of what technology can do for you and the ability to interact with the technology to make that happen. For example, in Africa, you have to sometimes rely on the goodwill of the local villagers when there are floods and the paths are run over with water, you have to trigger an email or you have to trigger to your cell phone so that the locals can then fund the medicines over the flooded plains to the hospitals. The interaction of the human with the technology that is there to help you and make your lives easier is I think right now, there's renewed understanding and acceptance of that. And I think it's a good thing. It's a good thing for all of us. I mean, it really is the uniqueness of IBM deep industry expertise, knowledge, and yet tons of R&D and technology galore. Manny, thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE. It was great to see you. Hopefully next time it'll be face-to-face, but I really appreciate your time. Oh, I so wish for that. I do miss the live connections, but technology will take us forward till then and fantastic to be here. I loved it. Talk soon. Great, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, for the IBM Digital Event Experience for Think 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.