 Hello everyone, and welcome back to day two of theCUBE's live coverage of UiPath Forward 6. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Lisa Martin. We're having so many great conversations here about the future of AI at work. And the journeys, the automation journeys that customers in every industry are on, and we're about to hear an amazing story. I love hearing stories from history organizations that have modernized and adapted and really are leading the way with these journeys. History organizations, we're talking about the Navy's journey with automation right now. So we have two great guests with us today. We have Rebecca Young, she is a consulting manager at Deloitte, welcome. Thank you, happy to be here. And Nicole Otero, she is the automation as a service program lead for the secretary of the Navy. Welcome, Nicole. Thank you, thank you for having us. So you both got a shout out today on the main stage of the keynote about Bobby Patrick, the CMO here at UiPath, talking about the deep advice you offered about bringing automation across the Navy. I want to start with you, Nicole, to give our viewers an overview about the Navy's automation journey. Okay, yeah, so we've been on a multi-year journey. We started off in very siloed. I think a lot of organizations kind of start that way when people understand what RPA is. And then we've been on this beautiful journey, I think, of trying to centralize our mission. And so at the secretary of Navy level, we have implemented those standards that go down into the commands and support both the Navy and the Marines. So it's been a really exciting journey. Standardizing our over 20,000 organizations that make up the United States Navy. And I don't think people realize how big it is. Definitely not. Talk a little bit about, Nicole, about establishing that centralized center of excellence. That's a challenging thing to do, especially with large organization. How has the Navy been able to achieve that? So our biggest thing is collaboration. You'll probably hear it a lot from us. So what we did is we went out right to the commands and their development groups and go and talk to their leads and ask them, you know, what should our standards be? How are you incorporated? We cannot tell people what to do. You have to be part of it to believe it, right? So that's how we've been able to kind of standardize that, is really getting all the leads throughout the various commands that we have working together and sharing. We have office hours. So we're always in communication, always trying to learn. Nobody knows everything, but we're doing it collectively together. We're trying to. And the collaboration is really, really key. Absolutely key. Yeah, so Rebecca, you are the implementation partner as Deloitte. So how do you work with Nicole and her team? I mean, I'd love to hear more about the centers of excellence, but also in general to achieve what their objectives are. I think transparency, honest conversation. So we are supporting the Navy. It's a contractual agreement. They are telling us what their dreams and their visions are. They were working on enabling the dawn. And you have to really believe in what they are supporting. And so an area that we've been talking about a lot too is so the collaboration, but we're also working at implementing the citizen developer, which this is brand new for us, but it's going to be an amazing next step in enabling the dawn throughout. So they're not just, even though I work for Deloitte, but if they, if we're able to teach Navy personnel how to automate a simple process and you don't have to hire a company and Deloitte might get mad at me for saying this, but I mean, that's, it's efficiency and it's money saved to the government. And so there's, it's a beautiful, like she was saying, it's a beautiful journey that we're collaborating on. Absolutely. So one of the big questions is, there's a lot of concern about, from the rank and file about AI, it's coming for our jobs. And so I'm curious when you are talking about this idea of a citizen developer, how receptive are Navy personnel to this idea? Is there any worries or any skepticism? Is there any fear? I'm not going to be any, I'm not a technical person. I don't want to learn this. Yeah. How would you describe that? So I think at the beginning of our journey, obviously everybody thought that bots, everybody's taking our jobs and we're saying, no, this is your assistant. This is going to help you not do that data entry thing that you're doing so that you can probably take that information and do something more meaningful with it. So that journey has been great and you're starting to see the skepticism and the fear go away. And then I think the citizen developer, I mean, we just, we live in a digital area. So I think everybody's excited and shockingly, I mean, we are having our first cohort in November and we have people coming from Japan and Hawaii coming out to DC. So it's getting a lot of buzz and so I think it's going to be exciting. I mean, what we're doing is for our country. So I think when you understand that mission, it makes it a lot easier to accept what's going on. And another piece to that though, and I was talking about transparency, you also have to be transparent with these citizen developers. You have to be honest about what automation does, what it doesn't do, what AI does, what it doesn't do. You have to, you can't just walk into a room and assume that, oh, there's 4,000 people here for this UI path conference that they understand at the same level that you do. So we call it RPA 101. So we initiate with those conversations. We have them bring in use cases. So that way we know that, well, we have an idea of what they're automating, but also because we're working at decentralizing, we want to make sure that we don't bring in these citizen developers and we have two of them or three of them automating the same process. It's just one, but then if they do bring in similar use cases, that's something that could be used across the enterprise because if it's a pain point for them, it's a pain point in other areas. And that's where that- Yeah, it's an opportunity to collectively bring the multiple commands together. Yep. Collaboration. Yes. Key. Key. Can you guys kind of shed some of the like Rebecca- Our Rebecca, Rebecca and I talked about. It's good that we have two Rebeccas on stage. Yes. Can you shed some light on some of the deep learning that you guys dropped, that wisdom that you dropped yesterday? Give our audience a little bit of that wisdom. Well, we've really spoken to it. I think it's, you know, the lessons learned have been, like I was saying, you need to be transparent. You've got to really educate before you can implement. Yes. Then it's the collaboration. It's reaching out to other BSOs, other commands. What are you doing? What are your pain points? Let's work on this together. And one of the points I was talking about yesterday is that automation journey, you bring them along with you and it always has a beginning, like we were talking about the history. Yep. And then in order to be at the future of where we want to go and implementing AI and models, and you have to start at the very, very beginning. And I will say to leadership, having that support has been huge. They've been able to take those barriers away. They believe in the mission that we're doing. They're seeing the benefits for it, which is what's helping them, you know, help us move into AI and getting that. Because, you know, we do have a unique environment, obviously just with the nature of the work that we do. The security protocols. Yeah, so it's not as easy for us to do all the cool things that UIPath offers, but we're getting there. And a lot of it really is, we have amazing senior leadership, really driving automation in the Navy. Well, as Lisa was saying, the collaboration is so critical to this partnership and making it work. So I'm curious about the cultures of your two organizations, the Navy and Deloitte, very different kinds of places. So how are teams working together? I mean, so much of our conversation here is about leadership behaviors. And this is what I write about. This is my wheelhouse and teamwork. And how are you bringing different teams together from different organizations and different lives together to achieve your objectives? That's a great question because the Automation as a Service team were spanned across from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. So time zone differences, Nicole's and Georgia, Daniel Bethke, who's her partner, he's in D.C. So there's an aspect where we're able to go meet in person, but I think what's really beautiful about our team is even though we're spanned across the U.S., we have conversations throughout the week. We have teams chat, text messaging. So it's back to that transparency, the conversations I was mentioning in the beginning, just being open and having that dialogue and coming to Vegas with each other helps, too. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we're a team, right? Obviously, everybody knows we're, there's that line, but we're really here for the same mission. And I think when you go into projects like that, those barriers kind of go away and it doesn't have to feel like government contractor and the government, you know? When you recognize together the bigger picture that you're trying to achieve. The objective, yep. Yeah, and you really listen to that. Then you can shape your team around, like they get, I think, kind of heads down in their individual developments, but when you take a step back and you look at what you're doing and the impact that it has and what we saw yesterday from our conversations, it's huge. Yeah, oh yeah, yesterday was amazing. Like I said, we had 90 minutes of questions after our speech. From all different agencies outside of the DoD and it was really, it was humbling because I realized how far the Navy has gone after talking to these different agencies and them coming to us for help or advice. Yeah. Yeah, I know where she's going with that. And it was great. I mean, like I said, it's humbling. It's a humbling to be leading this great team. It is not an effort I do on my own. We have amazing developers and functional leads and things like that. It is definitely a joint effort. It's the senior leadership behind it that you were talking about earlier. It's imperative and even if you have to maybe give them an RPA 101 session to bring them on your automation journey with you, but the senior leadership collaboration is really important. Nicole, oh sorry, Rebecca, comment on, it sounds like a very synergistic partnership. Very symbiotic. What was it about your organization that made Deloitte and UiPath the right choice? So I was just kidding. Done. Well, that's OK. I just think it's the work, right? I think Deloitte's proven that they're a great partner. They're a great partner with the federal government, I think, so their track record. And UiPath has worked really well with the government in getting those authorizations and approvals. So it's just really that partnership and them knowing how to come in at that angle because we are a very unique space. It's their struggles as anybody can imagine. But I think it's their expertise and them being able to work. I know that a lot of the people we work with at UiPath are formal federal employees. A lot of people from Deloitte have that background. So I think it's deep understanding of the organization. And then too, I was talking with Tyson Powell, who's our UiPath liaison. And we were talking yesterday after the speech and all the things that we're looking at implementing, like the Citizen Developer Program, it is a keyword again, collaboration. I can't do it without UiPath. UiPath can't do it without me, but we can't do it without the Navy. So it's really coming into those conversations, really presenting a team atmosphere that makes it so successful. Having 90 minutes of questions yesterday. That sounds intense. But I'm curious about whether or not you're also being able to take your learnings beyond even the DoD. And so maybe more of a question for you, Rebecca, in the sense of what you're finding and centralizing at the Centers for Excellence about the best practices, about the insights, about how to do this right. And whether or not it's applicable to other government agencies beyond the DoD, and even other industries. I mean, of course, automating a spreadsheet or an HR intake guide, sure. But is there anything in particular that you've found that you can apply across a wider range? So we were actually talking about that yesterday. When we were walking out the door, we were stopped by a group of women that we're meeting with after this conversation. But there is a lot of applicability to what we're dealing with, with their agency as well, the security parameters. We're even thinking that there's code that we've already implemented that we can potentially share with them through reciprocity. So that's a beautiful thing about having this platform at UiPath is being able to say, this is what we've done so well at the Navy. Where are your pain points? We've probably already experienced it. We've already automated it because Deloitte does that. Yeah. Nicole, give us a sneak peek if you can share. That's not top secret. What's the next phase of the Navy's automation journey? What are you seeing? Our next phase is AI. We got to get document understanding. We got to be able to read those reports. Our unattended environment. Unattended environment is huge. So really, it's just being able to fully utilize the UiPath suite and the AI suite that they have. So it is getting the authorization. It is getting it tested and getting us using it. Yes. I want to ask about the labor force because this is a big question. We know so much that we're in a labor shortage. We have a talent and skills gap. You're both women in this industry. How are you thinking about recruiting and retaining more AI talent, but also in particular women because this field does need more women leaders? That's a great question. I think once citizen developer is going to be huge, because even if you are not technically technical, I think everybody has. Yeah, technically technical. But no, even if you're not a technical person by trade or a developer, I think people know technology enough that if you give them the skill set and the tools to be able to fix their own problems, naturally they're going to want to share that and show what they can do and get everybody more involved. And I think that that naturally comes with bringing in the women, bringing in younger people. And I think it's exciting because what we're doing, I mean, you're getting kids right out of college and you're like, you can build a bot. And it's not like they're sitting behind doing a PowerPoint. They're doing some really cool tech stuff in the government. So that's where I think it's exciting. I just think the work naturally is going to pull people in. Because I think it's exciting. And if we continue to talk about the bigger mission at hand that we are working to achieve, it's a bigger story than, yes, you're just automating this simple mundane task. But if you look at the grander scheme, you're able to focus on more analytical things that you need to that this was taking you away from. And as we know from surveys, Gen Z cares much more about working for purpose-driven organizations. They want a real mission. And as you pointed out earlier, there's no better mission. This is actually true. There's no better mission, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I want to just end by having you talk a little bit about what the conversations you're having here that you're going to bring back with you at the Navy and at Deloitte, and also together, of course, and how what you're learning at Forward Six is going to inform your work. Well, that we're the best. I'm kidding. We've been having so many great conversations. Again, like I was saying, I think this platform has really been able to, so she lives in Savannah. I live in D.C., so we've only been able to communicate over teams and cell phones, so meeting in person. Is this the first time you've met? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Oh my gosh. You're two pieces apart. Yeah. Besties. But I think what we're going to take away is maybe a better, positive, like yes, we really can do that. It's really out there. We're seeing what is being done all around us, but also we have the ability to help other government agencies. Not just, we're not just enabling the dawn, perhaps. We're also maybe enabling the government to be better. Yeah, to go to your sentiment, I think that's what I'm going to take. One is it's confirmation we're on the right path. One. And then two, it's exactly being able to probably expand out of the dawn. And see how we just work together as a federal government. I definitely am going to take that away. Collaboration is key. Yeah. And also realizing, I mean, the more and more you talk to everybody, we all have the same problems. Yeah. You know, even though we may be a little bit farther in our journey, things that we've been hearing are the same problems we had. So it's been really nice to be able to talk and share what we've done and know that we're going to make a difference in other agencies. Yes. I cover future of work. And so it's so fascinating to hear you talk about the value of in-person time. And we know this is we're in the era of remote work, which is so critical for so many people's work-life balance and being able to get done what they need to get done. But having this in-person time meeting each other, bonding and really understanding each other's lived experience is so important to getting the work done. Yes, absolutely. That's a great point because there's impact that you're making that you wouldn't have the opportunity to otherwise. Exactly. Those hallway conversations and things that just can't happen on teams or just us. Absolutely. And the fact that you are also able to impact other organizations, the government at large, is huge. Congratulations. Thank you. Because the government needs help. Yes. We're doing our best. To having two women up front and we're younger really helps get that mission that talk out there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in that, that's a great thing. Oh, definitely. Yes. So yeah, I feel like also what's going to come out of it is I feel like people are going to see that people like us, younger and women, can lead tech teams. And I think that's powerful. Very. Great note to end on. Rebecca and Nicole, thank you so much for joining us here in theCUBE. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Lisa Martin. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.