 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the program. Lisa Martin here. I've got two guests joining me. Please welcome back to theCUBE, Paula Hanson, the Chief Revenue Officer and President at Alteryx and Jackie Van der Legg-Gradling joins us as well, the Global Head of Tax Technology at eBay. They're going to share with you how Alteryx is helping eBay innovate with analytics. Ladies, welcome. It's great to have you both on the program. Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. Yeah, Paula, we're going to start with you. In this program, we've heard from Jason Klein, we've heard from Alan Jacobson. They talked about the need to democratize analytics across any organization to really drive innovation. With analytics, as they talked about at the forefront of software investments, how's Alteryx helping its customers to develop roadmaps for success with analytics? Well, thank you, Lisa. It absolutely is about our customers' success, and we partner really closely with our customers to develop a holistic approach to their analytics success. It starts, of course, with our innovative technology and platform, but ultimately, we help our customers to create a culture of data literacy and analytics from the top of the organization starting with the C-suite. We partner with our customers to build their roadmaps for scaling that culture of analytics through things like enablement programs, skills assessments, hackathons, setting up centers of excellence to help their organization scale, and drive governance of this analytics capability across the enterprise. At the end of the day, it's really about helping our customers to move up their analytics maturity curve with proven technologies and best practices so they can make better business decisions and compete in their respective industries. Excellent. Sounds like a very strategic program. We're going to unpack that. Jackie, let's bring you into the conversation. Speaking of analytics maturity, one of the things that we talked about in this event is the IDC report that showed that 93 percent of organizations are not utilizing the analytics skills of their employees. But then there's eBay. How Jackie did eBay become one of the 7 percent of organizations who's really maturing and how are you using analytics across the organization at eBay? So I think the main thing for us is when we started out was that our, especially in finance, they became spreadsheet professionals instead of the things that we really want our employees to add value to. We realized we have to address that. We also knew we couldn't wait for all our data to be centralized until we actually start using the data or start automating and be more effective. So ultimately, we really started very actively embedding analytics in our people and our data and our processes. Starting with people is really critical. Jackie, continuing with you, what were some of the roadblocks to analytics adoption that you faced and how did you overcome them? So I think eBay is a very data-driven company. We have a lot of data. I think we are 27 years around this year, so we have the data, but it is everywhere. How do you use that data? How do you use it efficiently? How do you get to the data? I believe that that is definitely one of our biggest roadblocks when we started out and just finding those data sources and finding ways to commit to them to move forward. The other thing is that people were experiencing a lot of frustration. I mentioned before about the spreadsheet professionals and we're not independent. You couldn't move forward with depending on somebody else's roadmap to get to data and to get the information if you want it. So really finding something that everybody could access analytics or access data. Finally, we have to realize is that this is uncharted territory. This is not exactly something that everybody is used to working with every day. So how do you find something that is easy and that is not so daunting on somebody who's brand new to the field? I would call those out as your major roadblocks because you always have, not always, but most of the times you have support from the top in our case, we have. But in the end of the day, it's our people that need to actually really embrace it and making that accessible for them. I would say it's definitely not for, say, a roadblock, but they could do some blocks you want to be able to move. It's really all about putting people first. Question for both of you and Paula, we'll start with you and then Jackie will go to you. I think the message in this program that the audience is watching with us is very clear analytics is for everyone, should be for everyone. Let's talk now about how both of your organizations are empowering people, those in the organization that may not have technical expertise to be able to leverage data so that they can actually be data-driven. Paula? Yes, well, we leverage our platform across all of our business functions here at Altrix. And just like Jackie explained in eBay Finance is probably one of the best examples of how we leverage our own platform to improve our business performance. So just like Jackie mentioned, we have this huge amount of data flowing through our enterprise and the opportunity to leverage that into insights and analytics is really endless. So RCFO Kevin Rubin has been a key sponsor for using our own technology. We use Altrix for forecasting all of our key performance metrics for business planning across our audit function to help with compliance and regulatory requirements, tax, and even to close our books at the end of each quarter. So it's really your main across our business. And at the end of the day, it comes to how do you train users? How do you engage users to lean in to this analytic opportunity to discover use cases? And so one of the other things that we've seen many companies do is to gamify that process, to build a game that brings users into the experience for training and to work with each other to problem solve. And along the way maybe earn badges depending on the capabilities and trainings that they take and just have a little healthy competition as an employee base around who can become more sophisticated in their analytic capability. So I think there's a lot of different ways to do it. And as Jackie mentioned, it's really about ensuring that people feel comfortable, that they feel supported, that they have access to the training that they need and ultimately that they are given both the skills and the confidence to be able to be a part of this great opportunity of analytics. That confidence is key. Jackie, talk about some of the ways that you're empowering folks without that technical expertise to really be data-driven. I think it means to what Paula has said in terms of getting people excited about it but it's also understanding that this is a journey and everybody is in a different place in their journey. You have folks that's already really advanced who has done this every day and then you have really some folks that this is brand new and or maybe somewhere in between and it's about how you put everybody in their different phases to get to the initial destination. And I say initial because I believe the journey is never really complete. What we have done is that we decided to invest in a group of concepts and we got our CFO to sponsor a hackathon. We opened it up to everybody in finance in the middle of the pandemic. So everybody was on Zoom and we had and we told people, listen, we're gonna teach you this tool, it's super easy and let's just see what you can do. We ended up having 70 entries. We had only three weeks. So in these are people that don't have a background, they are not engineers, they're not data scientists and we ended up with a 25,000 hour savings at the end of that hackathon from the 70 entries with people that have never, ever done anything like this before and then you have the result and then it just went from there because people had a group of concepts. They knew that it worked and they overcame that initial barrier of change. And that's where we are seeing things really, really picking up now. That's fantastic and the business outcome that you mentioned there, the business impact is massive helping folks get that confidence to be able to overcome sometimes that the cultural barriers is key there. I think another thing that this program has really highlighted is there is a clear demand for data literacy in the job market regardless of organization. Can each of you share more about how you're empowering the next generation of data workers, Paula will start with you. Absolutely and Jackie says it so well which is that it really is a journey that organizations are on and we as people in society are on in terms of upskilling our capabilities. So one of the things that we're doing here at Altrix to help address this skillset gap on a global level is through a program that we call SPARKT which is essentially a no-cost analytics education program that we take to universities and colleges globally to help build the next generation of data workers. When we talk to our customers like eBay and many others, they say that it's difficult to find the skills that they want when they're hiring people into the job market. And so this program's really developed just to do just that, to close that gap and to work hand in hand with students and educators to improve data literacy for the next generation. So we're just getting started with SPARKT. We started last May but we currently have over 850 educational institutions globally engaged across 47 countries. And we're gonna continue to invest here because there's so much opportunity for people, for society and for enterprises when we close the gap and empower more people with the necessary analytic skills to solve all the problems that data can help solve. So SPARKT has made a really big impact in such a short time period. It's gonna be fun to watch the progress of that. Jackie, let's go over to you now. Talk about some of the things that eBay is doing to empower the next generation of data workers. So we definitely wanted to make sure that we kept that momentum from the hackathon but we don't lose that excitement, right? So we just launched a program called eBay Masterminds. And what it basically is, it's an inclusive innovation initiative where we firmly believe that innovation is for all upskilling for all analytics for all. So it doesn't matter your background, it doesn't matter which function you are in, come and participate in this, where we really focus on innovation, introducing new technologies and upskilling of people. We are apart from that, we also said, well, we should just keep it to inside eBay. We have to share this innovation with the community. So we are actually working on developing an analytics high school program, which we hope to file it by the end of this year, where we will actually have high schoolers come in and teach them data essentials, the soft skills around analytics, but also how to use alterics. And we're working with, actually we're working with Spark and they're helping us develop that program. And we really hope that it's a safe by the end of the year have a pilot and then also makes sure that we roll it out in multiple locations in multiple countries and really, really focus on that whole concept of analytics for all. Analytics for all. Sounds like Alteryx and eBay have a great synergistic relationship there that is jointly aimed at, especially kind of going down the stock and getting people when they're younger interested and understanding how they can be empowered with data across any industry. Paula, let's go back to you. You were recently on theCUBE's super cloud event just a couple of weeks ago and you talked about the challenges the companies are facing as they're navigating what is by default a multi-cloud world. How does the Alteryx analytics cloud platform enable CIOs to democratize analytics across their organization? Yes, business leaders and CIOs across all industries are realizing that there just aren't enough data scientists in the world to be able to make sense of the massive amounts of data that are flowing through organizations. Last I checked there was 2 million data scientists in the world so that's woefully under represented in terms of the opportunity for people to be a part of the analytics solution. So what we're seeing now with CIOs with business leaders is that they're integrating data analysis and the skill set of data analysis into virtually every job function. And that is what we think of when we think of analytics for all. And so our mission with Alteryx analytics cloud is to empower all of those people in every job function regardless of their skill set, as Jackie pointed out from people that are just getting started all the way to the most sophisticated of technical users. Every worker across that spectrum can have a meaningful role in the opportunity to unlock the potential of the data for their company and their organizations. So that's our goal with Alteryx analytics cloud and it operates in a multi-cloud world and really helps across all sizes of data sets to blend, cleanse, shape, analyze and report out so that we can break down data silos across the enterprise and drive real business outcomes as a result of unlocking the potential of data. As well as really lessening that skills gap as you were saying there's only 2 million data scientists you don't need to be a data scientist. That's the beauty of what Alteryx is enabling and eBay is a great example of that. Jackie, let's go ahead and wrap things with you. You talked a great deal about the analytics maturity that you have fostered at eBay. It obviously has the right culture to adapt to that. Can you talk a little bit and take us out here in terms of where Alteryx fits in as that analytics maturity journey continues and what are some of the things that you're most excited about as analytics truly gets democratized across eBay? When we start about getting excited about things when it comes to analytics, I can go on all day but I'll keep it short and sweet for you. I do think we are on the topic full of data scientists and I really feel that that is your next step for us anyway. Is that how do we get folks to not see data scientists as this big thing like a rocket scientist? It's something completely different and it's something that is in everybody in a certain extent. So the game partner with Alteryx who just released the AI ML solution allowing folks to not have a data scientist program but actually bold models and be able to solve problems that way. So we have engaged with Alteryx and we purchased the licenses quite a few and right now through our masterminds program we're actually running a four months program for all skill levels teaching them AI ML and machine learning and how they can build their own models. We are really excited about that. We have over 50 participants without the background from all over the organization. We have members from our customer services. We have even some of our engineers are actually participating in the program. We just kicked it off and I really believe that that is our next tip. I wanna give you a quick example of the beauty of this is where we actually just allow people to go out and think about ideas and come up with things. And one of the people in our team who doesn't have a data scientist background at all was able to develop a solution where there is a checkout feedback checkout functionality on the eBay site where sellers or buyers can verbatim add information. And she built a model to be able to determine what relates to tax specific, what is the type of problem and even predict how that problem can be solved before we as a human even step in. And now instead of us or somebody going to verbatim try to figure out what's going on there we can focus on fixing the error versus actually just reading through things and not adding anybody. And it's a beautiful tool and I'm very impressed when we saw the demo and they've been developing that further. That sounds fantastic. And I think just the one word that keeps coming to mind and we've said this a number of times in the program today is empowerment. What you're actually really doing to truly empower people across the organization with varying degrees of skill level going down to the high school level really exciting. We'll have to stay tuned to see what some of the great things are that come from this continued partnership. Ladies and I want to thank you so much for joining me on the program today and talking about how Alteryx and eBay are really partnering together to democratize analytics and to facilitate its maturity. It's been great talking to you. Thank you. Thank you so much. As you heard over the course of our program organizations where more people are using analytics who have deeper capabilities in each of the four E's that's everyone, everything, everywhere and easy analytics. Those organizations achieve more ROI from their respective investments in analytics and automation than those who don't. We also heard a great story from eBay, great example of an enterprise that is truly democratizing analytics across its organization. It's enabling an empowering line of business users to use analytics not only focused on key aspects of their job but develop new skills rather than doing the same repetitive tasks. We want to thank you so much for watching the program today. Remember, you can find all of the content on thecube.net, you can find all of the news from today on siliconangle.com and of course, alterics.com. We also want to thank Alteryx for making this program possible and for sponsoring theCUBE. For all of my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. We want to thank you for watching and bye for now.