Michael Biltz: Vision, Future, Change | Turn the Lens #09

>> Okay. Three. Hey, welcome back. You're ready Jeff Frick here coming to you from the home studio. It's 2021. And one of the things that always happens in February of the new year is the new Accenture technology vision statement. Presentation point of view comes out. We've been really fortunate to been covering it for years and years. And I'm excited to have the author joining us today to talk about the 2021 vision which is probably a little bit different than we've seen in the past. Joining us from his home office. We're not in the Salesforce tower as we have been for the last few years is Michael Biltz. He is the managing director of Accenture technology vision at Accenture. Michael. Great to see you. I'm sorry we're not 30 storeys above the San Francisco skyline but this'll do just fine.  >> No, it definitely will. It's good to be back on your show Jeff.

>> Absolutely. So, you know, it's funny. And I remember at the beginning of 2020 when we sat down a year ago, right. It was before, everything really kicked in March. And I used to joke right. It's 2020 the year we know everything and with the benefit of hindsight. And in fact, 2020 turned into the year that everything we thought we knew we didn't know. So I'm just curious from a process point of view, after you finished in February last year with the 2020 version and you start looking ahead, oh my goodness. Mid March comes the whole world changes. How did you guys, kind of deal from a process wise of this, something he could never have anticipated.

>> Yeah and that was actually made the year. I mean, stressful because we're all going through it too. We're all now working from home, worried about getting COVID, and watching our families just like everybody else, but honestly it made for a really interesting piece because we've been looking at it. And I think for over the last number of years, most of our visions have been stretching farther and farther out because the things that we were looking at, in one year, two years out is those were the things that we all thought we did. Ah, yeah. Automotive is going to be moving towards electric vehicles and pushing towards your cars. AI is becoming, a larger piece of how we're automating the world around us. And all of these things were just these generally accepted. We know what's going to happen. And suddenly we basically, we had to go back from the very beginning and figure out if the things that we thought were going to happen are they still true? And you know, frankly, what's changed.

>> Great. And the other thing we've seen consistently, and your perspective is really valued in terms of trying to predict the future a little bit or at least kind of prioritize the future where, the common theme we've heard over and over through the course of 2020 is that COVID was just a big digital accelerant. So whether that was digital transformation in your business model, whether it was work from home whether it was, kind of so many of these things that were kind of moving along at their own little pace suddenly with COVID, it just kind of threw a bunch of gasoline on the fire when everybody got told to go home on March 15th, one of the, when you were doing your survey results, how much of that was kind of coming through from the field?

>> I mean, it came through hugely I mean. Because I think what we found is that, examples that over 90% of all supply chains got disrupted during COVID. And it was one of those instances that you look back and you said, well, people have been investing in cloud and digital and all of these things specifically to make themselves more reflective, more, effective, but also more flexible in dealing with things like this, but they still work. With one of those, moments that a light bulb. And everybody's had, they realized that as they've been taking this nice, slow gradual journey to making themselves digital, flexible, is that that wasn't really an option anymore because they had to change. And they really had to change now.

>> It also really exposed kind of the interdependency right? Of so many components that built the interdependency. And then something that was something of goodness of getting inefficiency out of the system. So suddenly, kind of your buffer stocks and when things are running smooth, you don't have a lot of safety stocks and then you throw a wrench in the works and the interdependency was probably a bigger factor in as a negative than the flexibility as a positive in responding to this, system-wide shock with no place to hide.

>> No, it really did it, it honestly switched the priorities because most companies, when they look at it as the once you do something well and you're making money off of it, is that you're doubling down hard. Is that how do I get every country, every company in the world to be buying and using my products. And that's all about efficiency and optimization. And so that's where most company efforts were. And suddenly what we had is the know what we're calling is that this world COVID it caused a giant collective displacement, it said suddenly everybody's lives there are different how they were working different the demand that was going out there, and honestly it goes so much for, then I'm going to say, GDP or even, job losses. They start looking at how fundamentally we were living differently. A recent stat. I saw it said that 52% of Americans are now living at home, which is the largest that it's been since the great depression.

And so we're talking about big shifts in the basis for what we've done. And what companies have suddenly realized is that they optimize themselves for a world that suddenly doesn't exist anymore. And so their priority is no longer how do I make myself more efficient, but rather the how do I turn myself into a company that can change as absolutely fast as possible? And that's where we're really pushing where we're seeing as going forward is that how quickly can companies shift gears that says my primary job is going to be changed and changed quickly, versus, eking out those extra bits of productivity or efficiency.

>> All right. So let's, talk about a couple of them. So number one was right. Leadership wanted, masters of change at the moment of truth. And it's funny when we had to shift when we're no longer doing, events on site and had to do everything remote as we're doing here today. I've reached out to some leaders to talk about that. And one of them was John Chambers and he talks about so many of the cycles that he's gone through and seen whether it's the crash of 2000 or the financial crisis in 2008. And it's really an opportunity for good leaders to lead. And one of his points was that, you don't wait for it to get back to what it was it's can you take advantage of this opportunity to redefine? And I think, you know, you had a line from the report that said it's a blank slate in every industry waiting for the next vision of the future to be defined by the today's leaders, really great opportunity. If you have the right mental attitude and the right position to take advantage of it.

>> It is. It's a great opportunity, but I think it's more than that is the opportunity is there. And every time we have a crisis or an economic downturn is that there's always the opportunity there. But I think what's unique about this situation is that there is no good business plan to just do nothing it's forever today. It was always the one who's leading and who's lagging behind and who's watching to see how it can take safe. But the reality is the, if your supply chain is broken if your customers no longer are interested in your product or they wanted to deliver it in a different way or is that suddenly if just by not doing anything, you've pulled yourself behind. And I think this is one of the things is that as that it's not just the opportunity for the people who are looking to be really, oh, you know there's suddenly a fire under everybody that says just to stay afloat and keep my business running. I suddenly have to change. And that's every industry in every country that honestly it's going to turn into a wave of innovation that I don't think we've ever seen before.

>> Yeah, that's so cool. Another thing that I think was so different about last year and now going forward, really highlighted by Black Lives Matter in that, people want their leadership to show, who they are, what they stand for. And I know, it used to be kind of the often quoted Michael Jordan quote was Democrats, Republicans both buy sneakers. So I'm keeping my mouth shut. That's not the way at all. I know Julie Sweet there Accenture has taken a aggressive leadership position on a lot of these things. Andy Jassy opened his keynote at reinvent probably the biggest tech event going right now after Salesforce with a whole statement about where they feel and doing better. So that to me is another kind of fundamental change in leadership where we've gotten beyond just shareholder value. And hopefully we are actually starting to get to some of these, kind of triple line accountings with what your customer experience what's your employee experience and what do you stand for?

>> No, and that's something we were honestly seeing pre COVID. Maybe it wasn't getting all the headlines that we were looking at but as we look at Black Lives Matter and we look at a lot of the things that happened to you during this, and, suddenly the public consciousness to say that the health of our employees, the health of our society is more important than what our businesses is, that these are things that we're starting to trickle up anyways. And I think what's really interesting, exciting though is that we're about to find out whether or not it's all lip service or whether it's real. What we're at right now is what we're calling it. It's a moment of truth, because as you said is that enough things have changed and enough companies are going to be making really big cushions to change things going into the future here.

And the question is whether or not the things that we've now suddenly been talking about, it says, yes, it's shareholder values but it's also, how do I value my workers? How do I protect them? How's the health and safety is it sustainable for the planet? You know, are we including or not diversity and making sure that our society is an equal and fair. And all of those themes that we've been seeing in small bits is that when we come back and companies start to make big plays now for defining what that next generation is it's going to come back to both a moment of truth that says are you bold enough to do it and define what it is versus reacting, but then similarly it's that question of the, are you going to do it with the trust of the people around you? Because what's really funny is that maybe most people don't realize is that when you look back in 2020, the amount of trust that we had in technology and companies was really low.

Is that the assumption was always that, automation is going to be cutting on jobs and it's going to be bad for our society. That, things like privacy, were things that companies didn't respect and they don't care about. And that's a lot why a lot of these issues really came to clot. But with COVID, we've watched technology change from the villain to the hero. It says, it's, what's keeping you in our jobs because we can do it on Zoom.. It's what's keeping us safe in hospitals. It's keeping us, allowing businesses to stay afloat from restaurants to travel to others, through all of this technology. And I think we were, at the point right now, is going to be that question that says I have the trust because people suddenly see the real benefits.

Can I keep it? And can I use that trust responsibly? And I think we're in a better position to do that than we have been at least in the last 25 years that I've been looking at things.

>> Yeah. I don't know. I think it's a weird dichotomy. We've talked about it a little bit before where people trust in the technology to the point where they climb in the back seat of their Tesla that is not a level five autonomous car and take a picture and put it on social media but they don't trust the companies. And actually you've had trust in prior years and trust didn't make the grade this year. I wonder if you had started it in October, November if it would have been different. Because it does seem that there's been, an erosion of trust in institutions, whether that be government or whether that be, whether vaccines are safe or not. And yet we trust the technology more than I think we trust the companies behind it. I think people forget there is actually a company behind it. And the other kind of odd thing which strikes me is, as the interaction with the company moves to mobile and contact centers, right that you don't go to the store.

The expectation of trust and execution is determined not by the best player in your industry. It's determined by the best experience of whatever that is on my phone or the app that I just got out of it. And I think you guys had a great stat in the thing that 90% of Starbucks business went through the app after this change, that is fascinating. Coffee is not a digital product. It's not music, it's not a book, and still digital transformation accounted for 90% of the revenue. That is amazing.

>> It really is. I mean, but it shows you both the, I'm going to say the push effect that COVID had that basically says you have an entire company, that relies on in store traffic for people to buy a coffee that essentially overnight disappeared. But on the other hand, you realize that there're actually positioning themselves super well because they took everything that they had been thinking about from a mobile app, from drive throughs and to delivery. And all of those pieces is that it got accelerated and now it comprises of most of their business. But as you said, is that that trust factor, is going to be, I think the question for the future but I think there's a reason why we don't focus on it as one of the trends this year.

And it's not because it's not important and it's not because I don't think it's going to be increasingly important future it's rather the companies have essentially been given free pounds (mumbles) Is that everybody realizes that huge things have changed. Companies are hurting, everybody's scrambling to do it. And so whether it's the app is a little bit buggy or we don't quite know what is or is not going to be, make us safe from the how does COVID acts actually get transmitted is that there's lots of question marks in the air. And everybody realizes that we're all kind of trying to go through this together. And so companies have been given a lot of leeway in order to be able to change and keep themselves afloat?

And I think the question that we're seeing right now is that, for the moment is that the first thing out of people's minds is whether or not, the products are going to work whether or not we can keep our lifestyles whether or not we can help keep our families safe and all of those important questions. And so the trust in the company is almost assumed for the moment. And honestly, I think this is going to turn into a big boom for the companies who realize that, the trust that it's been eroding for years and years in companies in general is that we've just shown how companies can help our society on large scales. And so the question is, can we use that goodwill and trust and then back it up, to continue to build their trust in the future.

And my guess is that, we may not talk about it this year because we're going to wait for the results, but over the next few years, we're going to be holding up the examples of the companies who did it super well and use it as a way to incorporate ethics and their responsibilities and all of the things that they want to push as a company in society, beyond the bottom line. I mean, bottom line is still there to it. And then we're also going to watch some companies fail (mumbles) as they go through a process of going back to their old ways, where maybe they're not looking as closely as they should be at things, outside their shareholder value.

>> Right. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning. You talk about it here, really in the I, Technologist, in the democratization of technology and we're seeing it. And the cool thing is that we're seeing it baked in to so many little applications and I've been excited about applied AI since it started coming out. And I think a lot of the conversations about just general purpose AI are less exciting but everything from Google maps, rerouting you based on changes in traffic or, the new thing, a lot of people probably see on their Gmail is, suggested replies to an email. So, we're really starting to see this proliferation of it in. And the other word that we're hearing on the streets is that now the price of the compute and the speed of the networks is in such a place that they can actually apply it to so many more problems in real time than they just simply couldn't afford to do before because the compute power was too expensive for what you needed. And the latency was too high to actually do something in time to have an impact.

>> No, I think that's right. But I think we're really excited is we're now ready to take that next step is, we've all been working on and we've all seen companies work on the big problems, and whether it's, COVID or cancer research or automated driving is it the AI has been pointed and we've been making huge leaps and bounds you for a large number of years. But I think for the first time, because it's an expensive because it's, more mature getting embedded into it is that we're starting to see it be a way to enable individuals to use technology more effectively. And let me give you an example. So you take a G & J Pepsi who's a distributor of Pepsi products. And what they're doing is they're using Microsoft power.

And so essentially what it is is it's a low-code slash no-code environment that says how do I get not IET people, but business people on the ground enabling themselves that says we're not talking about the biggest problems of the world. We're talking about the little things, that bother them from day to day that make their job painful or inefficient. Yeah. And so what they've done is that they've allowed them to build their own applications for their own benefits. And one example was this that, using things like AI, from an image recognition, is that they're able to snap a, have a snapshot of a shelf understand what products are there and have it automatically update, the plan for what the inventory which they should replace.

And it's one of those little things that says we're not groundbreaking changing the way that it works but for the people who do this on a daily basis it allows them to help themselves to make their jobs better. And the crazy thing is that, you take it as a small scale start that says the group that we're starting to do this is they actually built eight applications. And over the course of a year, they say it's half a million dollars. And it seems small until you realize that the goal is not to do that once or twice as a big initiative, but rather to let all of your thousand employees do those things from yourself is that suddenly you get multipliers that says this has a potential to vastly change the way that all of my people work.

>> Right. I want to shift gears a little bit and go to number one, which is also kind of a number five, right? Stacks strategically architecting for a better future and five you got from me to we multi-party systems. And where I love the clarification is before. You're always talking about, compete, where you compete and don't compete on undifferentiated stuff that you can get anywhere now with Cloud. And again, kind of the crashing prices around technology, everyone kind of the same with the democratization has access to the best. I can build my startup on an Amazon cloud or a Google cloud and have the best of Tensor Flow and the fastest microprocessors, et cetera if I can afford them, but I'm not really competing there directly. I'm leveraging it. So when you think about, is it really kind of architecting so that you can take advantage of the best when you think about competing on architecture in a world of Cloud kind of square that circle for me a little bit.

>> Sure so the problem is that we almost have too many choices at this point in time is the literally every level of the stack and whether it's the chip you're using or the Cloud, that you're sitting on the services on top of it, the AI, the interface I mean like literally every aspect of that stack, allows you to do something different and specific. But the problem is that in the past what we've been looking at is there's a way that says I need a generic capability and then I'm going to build my stuff on top of it. But more and more as companies really are becoming digital is they're realizing that the choices that they're making are I'm going to say intertwined to their overall strategy so much that we really can't think of this as a separate technology strategy from a business strategy.

So let me give you an example. So you look at somebody like GM, so GM just announced that they're going to invest $27 billion to make their suite fully electric by 2026. So the question--

>> Which is crazy who would've imagined that three years ago?

>> Yeah, but the question is, is that a technology strategy? Or is that a business strategy? And more and more we see, this is the... You can't separate those things anymore. And so with that comes that recognition that says the thing is that the choices you're making in the stack and the technology you're investing in those are both going to define your strategy of what you can and cannot to and be defined by what your strategy is. A fun example of how your companies are doing different things to compete. So if you looked at Sony and Microsoft in the gaming platform piece, for their last generation and honestly, multiple generations before it was exactly, as you said is that you put a new box out there you put more processing, power and chips on it. And then basically you're just competing with very similar platforms that says I run games but in this latest generation is they're both taking different tasks, both in terms of the technology they're investing in as well as what it's going to do in the strategy of how they could hit their market, where the market is that Microsoft is doubling down on the cloud.

And so they're less concerned with having the best chip or the best processor, you're on there, thinking that the next generation of gaming is going to be online. It's going to be their game pass, where you put one subscription down, it had access to all the games. And it's also going to be in multiple formats that says, well, why am I just going down to my X-Box when I can also go to my iPad and like go to my phone and maybe I want to connect them all together. And so that's what they're doing. And that's the technology we're looking at. Now PlayStation and Sony they're going the opposite direction is that they believe that a better experience, better solid state drives, better processors. There is virtual reality and creating this immersive environment on their platform is the way to go.

And what it turns into is the use now suddenly have two products that they're both built from the same technologies that existed out there in the marketplace now but now they're suddenly diverging based off of what they think that they want to do in marketplace. And more and more, we're going to start to see that on one hand know you can do either. But the second thing is, is that now that they've really gone down this path is they're enabling themselves to do something different than their competitor but they're also restricting themselves because if they were to want to take a step back and then retool to do the other things. Now you're talking about, ripping out a lot of your technology your technology investment to go into a different direction.

>> Right, right. There's so much in there, but the one piece I just wanted to follow up on that was in the report post COVID, is they actually can pivot easier than they probably ever thought they could. I think you had a couple of examples. It sounded like World War II making early days of PPE. Not that that's your business, but just showing that dedicated resources with a mind to change you can actually pivot these things pretty quickly.

>> You can pick up faster than you think you can. And I think you're aware there's a will there's a way but there was an interesting start that says, if you ask the executive how long it would take to get half or more of your workforce to fundamentally working remotely, the answers would have been anywhere from, three to five years, in some sort of detailed planning. But the reality is that one, we were all forced to do it within months, but we've got lots of examples like the national health care. Yeah. And in England is that they shifted from almost none to having 1.2 million people, on their team's platform. And they did that in a couple of weeks. They moved it from having the majority or almost all essentially of their appointments, being done in the hospitals, in the clinics or in person you have to suddenly being done virtually. I think there's an amount that everybody surprised themselves with the ability to do it. But what we also realized is that how well they're able to do it depended on how much their investment had been the last 10 years on a lot of these digital transformations that they've been going through.

>> Right. So I know we're run out of time. And I think I want to close on number four which is kind of a followup to what you just said which is anywhere everywhere, Accenture is kind of an interesting animal because you guys have had distributed teams forever. You've had shared workspaces forever at the same time. Most engagements are onsite, right? Traditionally where you have a team onsite living with the client for whatever three months four months, six months, whatever the engagement was. So you guys were kind of split in both sides of the fence. So what was the experience on the Accenture side and from your team, and actually executing this project you clearly have the capabilities to be remote but you're used to talking to people face to face and getting out in the field.

>> I mean, honestly, it was easier in some respects, that for us, just because, we're used to going from client to client, we're used to, being in strange locations, to work. But from the same standpoint, is that we're muddling through it as much as everybody else's that says that we're trying to innovate on the fly, but says, okay a huge piece of how we used to do this, our work stops and brainstorming sessions where we take our experts and we sit them all in the same room with a whiteboard and we try to talk through what's happening and why, and suddenly those things, aren't possible. And so it's really this interesting phase at least from my perspective. And at least from this report is that it's solidified a lot of things into a process.

That said the things that used to be an art form that because you were sitting next to the people, and you would just ask them a question have now turn into a... Okay. So do we need a daily stand up? How often do we need to meet? And the here I'm meeting even though I don't have anything to discuss because we need 30 minutes just to catch up to find out what I don't know to ask.

>> Right. Right.

>> It's a different problem.

>> Well, hopefully you won't have the wrench thrown into the works. And in 2021, like you did 2020. As you wrap this one up and start to look forward.

>> I think that there's going to be lots of wrenches but I think that rather than the... I'm going to say horrific one that we started with with a huge loss of lives, here is they think we're going to start seeing people do really interesting things. You know what I mean? Because if you look at everything from, how do we change the way that we do entertainment, to does public transit, survive and what takes its place is that the amount of opportunities. And I think the big plays that we're going to start to see in the marketplace I think is going to be a really exciting time and it start from a good place. Then we never want to assume, that this type of tragedy is something that we would want but the reality here is the we're going to make so much progress for the things that we've been talking about changing know for a while. Because I think for the first time collectively as a world is that we all know that we have to change. So now we just have to make sure that those changes are for the better.

>> Yeah, yeah. Let's hope so. Because the other good things is we've got vaccines going out less than a year from the lockdown. And that just wasn't possible before. And I'm not a vaccine specialist and I don't know what the story is but I would be willing to bet a mortgage payment or two that, a lot of big data and a lot of heavy science and genomic sequencing and all the great stuff that has been built over the years, help to enable us to react in record speed and start shipping vaccines out.

>> No, and I'm pretty sure that every vaccine development and we're seeing them with, 90 plus percent effective rates as the they've all been done in record time. I mean, I don't think they've ever had a from zero to shipping out the top of this as quickly as it has now. So, let's hope that keeps going and that keeps going well.

>> Well, Michael, again, congrats to you and the team for pulling it off. I love going through this every year. The themes are pretty are still good. There's a lot about people and human factors whether that's in management or democratization of technology that comes up over and over and over, it's about using data and technology to drive better business. So the little things kind of shift here and there, but I think the big kind of macro stuff that's important just continues to shine through.

>> No, I think they do. It's always been people, it's always a bit about respect and it's always been about understanding why you're doing the things that you're doing. You are beyond just making money even though that's going to be a part of it. Yeah. But I think that the exciting piece, that we have this year, it seems similar, or not similar but I mean, it seems simple, but it's not question of change. Change has been scary for so long. Most people really tend to shy away from it, but we're in that unique opportunity. We're changing and trying to shift away for a really dark period in the time. And I think that it's going to be a powerful moment too for technology and for companies, to share how they can benefit the world. Yeah.

>> It's we've been talking about it forever, right? The only constant has changed, but if in this continuing accelerating rate of change if you're not using that as your opening position as you said, you're not falling behind you're off the table. I mean, you got to get get with the program.

>> Exactly.

>> All right, Michael. Well, thanks again for taking a few minutes. Great to catch up. I look forward to when we can catch up in person again hopefully in the, not too distant future.

>> I'm looking forward to meeting some folks in person, and I'll take you up on that when it happens.

>> Great. Well, he's Michael, I'm Jeff. You're watching Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching and check. That's a wrap.

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