SuccessConnect 2023: What you need to know

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, join me today, our actually two people who don't really even need in an introduction but you know what else they'll do one. So first Danielle Leroka, she's an SAP mentor, she's a SAP SuccessFactors Component, A sub volunteer who works at SAP U-SLABS where they help

[00:00:20] build cool things for SAP SuccessFactors customers. And then AJ is a colleague of mine, super busy these days, he's leading our messaging and go to market for round AI which is obviously very front and center on everyone's minds these days. And a key part of SuccessConnect which we're

[00:00:37] here to talk about today. So this is the first time I had two people on the podcast at one so we'll see how that goes so hopefully we're not talking over each other. So actually speaking

[00:00:47] of not in an introduction, I got a funny story. I've never had SuccessConnect and Danielle I think you were there as well for the three of us were there and we were sitting there and I actually care AJ introducing himself to someone. Didn't think too much of it

[00:01:00] and I think it might have been like Mike Tamer Mike was in the room and he was like, oh, I think that's the first time I've ever heard AJ introduce himself to someone.

[00:01:10] I'm kind of like the furniture. I was like, hmm, the first thought he's been kind of outlandish but then I started thinking to myself I'm like, you know what, what is the purpose? I don't know if I've

[00:01:25] ever heard AJ introduce himself even on like internal SAP call and I don't really hear AJ introduce him like, yeah, I know that person for about 10 years so yeah. That is that is the nicest way

[00:01:35] anyone has ever called me old. Experience. Yeah, there you go. All right, so thanks for thinking with our AJ and you know, jump right into it and then this is SuccessConnect right and I think

[00:01:50] underlying theme at SuccessConnect was a night tour work course potential. I think that was the best thing and there were seven tracks of content, a keynote, a lot of networking much more mentioned

[00:02:01] it earlier but AI was very front and center too so it's a super super busy few days, had a lot of fun and Vegas. I'll start with you Danielle. So what were some of the big announcements are

[00:02:11] taken into the two of her in their side? Well first just want to say I loved your recap blog. It really was the best one out there. You hit on every point that was interesting. I think the best

[00:02:22] set a second best of course. Well mine was my was only a page yours was like 40 pages so I think I have to bend the knee on that one. So key announcements, I also wanted to say that

[00:02:34] what I liked about the keynote and I don't think it used to be this way but it seemed like it was short little bursts of content. So it kept me interested the whole time that was never a time

[00:02:44] worry. I felt like somebody was drooning on so I guess that's the whole post-COVID thing or attention span is even shorter than it used to be. So I liked how they kept switching from one

[00:02:53] thing to another but I'll pick the easy one AI. It seems like it's real. For many years it really seemed like it was like theoretical people were talking around it and now it's actually here

[00:03:07] and embedded into everything. So I think it was Erin who said they put it into every different piece of human experience management and I thought that was really exciting. I know that

[00:03:20] it's scary for a lot of people and my friends outside of technology always asked me if I'm scared of AI taking my job or the robots taking over but then I think about there was a quote this guy said

[00:03:35] at Sapphire earlier this year I'm probably going to get his name wrong but it's been Vashita or something and he said he's been working on AI for a long time and he said something like

[00:03:46] AI is not going to replace you but someone who knows AI might and I think that was pretty interesting. Right. Yeah, I think that's pretty insightful of you know you have to be able to know how to use

[00:03:59] this technology. Right. So for sure. All right, again, that you probably took your answer by the same year. I'm a little biased. What I was going to do is come in here for this segment.

[00:04:11] I was just going to read your blog to the audience but I figured that was a little too lazy from minor. Well it depends. I mean who was nicer to me. That's so. No, I think obviously

[00:04:26] from my perspective because I cover AI and and BTP and accessibility and things like that. So my answer is going to be focused on those areas because it's what I do but Danielle's right.

[00:04:38] I mean AI was everywhere and I figured who said it in the recap that the or maybe was Meg who said Meg Bear said you know if it would be shocking if AI wasn't mentioned somewhere. Right. You know

[00:04:52] I thought that was fantastic. I love the segments with Josh person in the keynote and then having customers like Delta Airlines up there talking about their experiences. But you know my personal bias makes me look at AI first and foremost and we had

[00:05:06] from an AI perspective, we had this story around our gender to Bay I use cases that are being rolled out. You know creating job descriptions and creating personalized learning recommendations and things like that.

[00:05:16] We had kind of the the big coming out party for jewel which is you know what everyone called we call it a co pilot but you know some people for a long time and we were calling it

[00:05:26] digital assistant. I guess it's really kind of cool to see the reaction to to people from that technology because I didn't get you know that whole hey I'm scared of AI is going to take

[00:05:39] my job. I got a lot of hey this is cool. Do you realize the potential for this and then the conversations I have with people were more around you know what this could probably do this

[00:05:49] and this could do this and it's you know and people are starting to see use cases that we probably won't even have out in the market for a long time but they're starting to see the potential which

[00:05:58] was the the biggest change where it wasn't just talk anymore we were able to show things that were doing and whether the functionality is coming out next month or next year there's a lot of

[00:06:10] good stuff coming and I I don't want to give the short answer to talent tell it is on because that was a really big part of this event as well is you know what's kind of essentially that AI

[00:06:24] called AI powered engine for for companies learning and tell us strategy. It's it's really cool what the work they're doing there and that's part of Danielle what you said about Aaron was talking about where AI is being embedded everywhere across the the suite and I think talent

[00:06:39] tell which is how it is kind of the star of that show when it comes to that so there was a lot of good stuff at the event but you know my personal bias maybe focus on the AI.

[00:06:50] Yeah and for me I thought the whole jewel thing was super cool right and it changes how people interact with the system right and so now you can do things by simply asking a question right I

[00:07:03] think that I saw a video or you know some of the demos showing oh I want to hire someone right and be able to do that get the prompts back from that do you want to start from XYZ plays

[00:07:15] and it just made that super simple so I don't need to know where to go in success factors where to click what to do you know it's just conversational I thought that use case was a super cool on my

[00:07:26] yeah that create a position one sorry you can just see that one do you remember all days when you had to create a position you had to go to like org management and make it make all the details there

[00:07:36] and then go hire somebody then jewel example I saw was they said are I create a position similar to this one I was like blown away. I know to go to they don't have to go to pp ome any more

[00:07:46] pp ome any yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's chief it's amazing no matter how many years past I still remember the transaction codes

[00:07:58] but but you're right a lot of things like that and that's where some of the values going to come into these AI use cases isn't just like hey this is cool technology but is what are we doing

[00:08:07] it's more efficient that is more accurate that you know so our people aren't spending all the time doing those tedious tasks so that the position creation is one of these cases that we have

[00:08:16] rolling out in early 24 it's going to be a good one so yeah that's a good example yeah and I know I saw the other use case that Chris Payne had deposited about I think he also did a podcast with

[00:08:30] John from Digin Amica and he talked about he actually going and directly playing around with this right so yeah and he he was doing it of like a performance call right and he's like well I want to

[00:08:43] have a performance call for building a pp application so help me come up with a goal for this and so not only did it help give the steps of hey you should go do XYZ and new with btp was

[00:08:53] you know the context of that and then you know I think it gave them all the steps of how to kind of accomplish this and he mentioned at the end is like it even offered a recommendation like hey maybe

[00:09:04] should put this on the s ap store right so that can contact with just like super cool I mean you know if you impress Chris you know you're doing something right too that's true the top even silent you're really doing something right

[00:09:19] it's easy to click on him when he's not here Danielle absolutely all about for him well you know he does a lot but you know that covers a lot of the main

[00:09:28] announcements on the the main stage too but what about at the the breakout session level and you know you attended many sessions you run around all over the place for some of the things that

[00:09:37] you saw her that she had you most excited kind of at that level I liked Danielle Lange's she did one on cross system workflow which was pretty interesting and it was targeted toward the

[00:09:52] hybrid audience and basically it's on message with s ap in terms of getting customers to move from on premise to the cloud and s ap agreeing to make it easier to do so I liked that one but I

[00:10:04] really liked the I'm gonna say his name wrong Sorin hopey on be Harvey sorry Sorin sorry and had a great session but he was talking about people analytics and data sphere

[00:10:20] which used to be that s ap data warehouse cloud and the way that he explained it to the audience was really really well done so usually these topics get very technical real quick as I'm sure

[00:10:35] A. I know A. J. knows with A. I start calling me A. I. But the way that he explained it I liked it it was almost it was almost like real world so we was talking about reporting and he said you know

[00:10:48] even in s ap anyone who's ever tried to make a head count knows it's not easy to do because of effective dating and the way things work and he said what a lot of customers do is they dump

[00:10:58] everything in like excel or access and they manipulate it and then report on it and the way that he position data sphere as that place where that manipulation occurs made it was like an aha moment

[00:11:11] for a lot of people it wasn't just this you know what is this tool what does it do it's where you transform the data so it makes sense so you could use it in other places in the organization

[00:11:20] I think really did a good job of explaining what that was I saw a lot of heads nodding and you don't get that a lot with reporting people usually you know so now when you start talking about

[00:11:30] analytics cloud in api interfaces but he made it very clear where that fits in the Ecosphere and why it's important for customers yeah it's always hard to get away from excel,

[00:11:41] sort and filter right now but even the days have do you remember when you used to like take data and then if it had a leading zero and dropped off all the leading zeros so then you had a

[00:11:52] format to a text field all these you know pain points everybody who's ever played with data goes through or losing the date formatting yeah all of that stuff is no longer a concern if you have one

[00:12:04] place to put all of your data and put it in a transformation stage that's repeatable that you can use continually to process your data through it it's pretty interesting stuff yeah for sure and

[00:12:14] you know across the some workflow that's another one that I think is important because you know we do have a lot of customers there in the hybrid environment where they're you know lively employees

[00:12:23] central but they might still have on prem payroll I think what this is helping with is really that processing aggression right not just data integration you know because I think

[00:12:32] anyway can do that of getting data from point A to point B but how do we put a process around this when you have that kind of hybrid environment so I know our product team has done a lot of work

[00:12:42] to make that easier for customers and in that environment so I think that was a good call out we're going to hold it against you that you didn't take my session for one but I thought that

[00:12:55] be too easy and I thought that's what AJ would do. Well AJ was super busy so he I don't think he could attend my session so I'm not going to hold it against you as a but I think you're presenting

[00:13:07] a lot of sessions and then you're running around all over the place tell about that I don't have to talk about your sessions in the customer sessions and how did I know from my session

[00:13:18] perspective yeah I didn't want to talk a lot about that but I did a I hosted a panel with Google Cloud so Dr. Alias and Johnny from Google Cloud and rural staleman who is our chief technology officer

[00:13:32] and we talked about the partnership of Google and SAP and the work that we're doing you know kind of under the covers when many I perspective to really work on skills intelligence

[00:13:43] and the skills ontology and all of the engines underneath so that was pretty cool because we don't talk a lot about what's in development today we tend to talk about the stuff that you see

[00:13:55] in releases but there's so much work going on with our partners behind the scenes I had fun doing that that was kind of a cool session you know we had Microsoft go up and talk about their

[00:14:06] use of AI and HR and that session was not my pact I mean it was there are there's 100 seats in the theater I think they said there were 200 and something people that were there yeah and that was a

[00:14:19] great session as well but I think from I always look at the customer sessions because to me it's I want to hear what the customers are doing with the technology because I mean we

[00:14:30] around the United every day we talk we talk about the product ourselves but you know what is our luck session right the Starbucks session was fantastic and you know if you look at

[00:14:40] what where I spend my days it's you know outside of AI but at BTP extensibility and Starbucks does such a great job of using success factors and SAP technology to improve employee experience to kind of increase employee retention and what they're doing in this session where they talked

[00:14:59] about is their process of doing this building and app using BTP that brings data together for their employees they refer to their employees as partners that's the term they use for all their retail and business workers so for their partners about all their benefits and perks and

[00:15:16] things like 401k and stock options and things like that into a single place because what they realized was a lot of their employees didn't know everything they were eligible for or if there was something like a stock option grant that had to be executed by certain date

[00:15:32] a lot of times they wouldn't do it by that date and then they would miss it and you know there were things that they weren't taking advantage of that they weren't aware of because these are retail

[00:15:42] workers they're not sitting in front of the computer all day when they get all these emails and reminders and so they created this app that really is unique because it pulls data from a lot of

[00:15:51] different sources it pulls in you know 401k data from fidelity and it pulls in all this stuff and it's not used to execute benefits it's not like it's replacing any functionality from

[00:16:01] that success factors offers it is to communicate to the employees what they have and what they don't know about and they you know they found a lot of those things were going on claimed which creates

[00:16:11] a problem for the employees they might decrease your retention but it also creates accounting problems for the company if you're creating stock options that you've got in the books and now

[00:16:21] you've got to go back and pull them back so it's creates a lot of work for everyone and I think integrating data across all those third parties and fidelity and success factors

[00:16:31] they give some real time updates and really cool stuff so they've done a really nice job with that there and you know they're tracking metrics around turnover they're tracking all this stuff how

[00:16:41] this is going to impact their their organizations so that was one of the sessions that really stood out to me because I love hearing stories about customers are using BTP to extend success factors

[00:16:52] and it doesn't always mean that there's a gap in functionality it means there's a build something that's going to help them improve their business based on their business model and that's exactly

[00:17:00] what they're doing yeah so I think to me that that's the crux of like HXM right how can we use technology to help make things easier for our employees right now I've been there too before

[00:17:11] right like sometimes you don't realize these benefits and then when you find out afterwards that something's expired you know there there's a little bit of bitterness on man I wish I

[00:17:19] used that right so you can avoid it that that makes a big difference in you know the employees relationships with the employer so I actually couldn't attend that session but I think that was

[00:17:30] a great overview I wish I could have been there yeah and we hope to do more with them and around that story you know as they roll this out because I think it's a really good example of

[00:17:41] of of extensibility really positive story about extensibility and and and BTP and you know I might again with BTP because there's so much that customers can do with it and to put it into

[00:17:54] a practical use case like that that they'll understand is great yeah for sure for sure I think the more practical you make it then the more people will understand it and they're like you know what

[00:18:03] that actually will work for me because every industry has their specifics right um we do things XYZ way and and you know that doesn't really fit in you know traditional HR or yeah whatever you

[00:18:16] might be doing right yeah and there were other stories there I'm trying what going to detail on but you know CAP gem and I talked about there use a BTP to extend their solution their treatment during their transformation project and then Hordeau which is a company from Brazil

[00:18:30] talked about using BTP to extend performance and goals so there's all different ways that can happen and I think that's where I get excited is hearing those examples because each one is different and it's not necessarily what success factors is doing it's what the customer has been with

[00:18:46] technology yeah exactly what ones again I think that's the exact like you know where HXM fits right looking beyond that and focusing on that employee experience all right I know you have you know

[00:18:59] what in wrong can I add one note on that of course one of the things that was mentioned at the partner event I don't remember if it was Marianne or someone else but they said

[00:19:11] SAP success factors is not intending to build every different type of technology and they're relying on their community of partners to assist with that and it's yeah yeah and it's making it

[00:19:23] easy to be accessible and to integrate with these different solutions that I like that they said that out loud that they're saying we we know we're not going to build everything that there is to build

[00:19:33] and we know that there are people out there who're going to really get job with it and they've just made it easier to integrate with these BTP and the extensibility so that was a good take away as a

[00:19:42] partner. And I think adding on to that and not to make this into an extensibility podcast but sorry I'm trying to take over is extensibility used to be kind of a dirty word because people infertment

[00:19:54] that we weren't delivering what needed to be delivered and I think if you it's not the case if you look at we're giving all this functionality but we're also providing the platform that

[00:20:03] allows you to do what you need to do to improve your business to transform to do whatever and that's what's really cool about these stories and I think I'm I'm happy to see accessibility become something it's a little more mainstream and accepted and not seen as

[00:20:16] oh you've got to you have to do this to because that answer is not in the software but instead we use this and we can get extensibility or extend value out of doing this too

[00:20:29] and that's the biggest difference. No doubt about it I mean you know that's the whole purpose of really platform of the service right in a while people that have an idea to come up with

[00:20:38] something really really cool and not have to go and do something that you know back in the day if I had wanted to come up with an idea to extend some on-premise software I would have to go and

[00:20:49] you know buy the infrastructure I would have to you know almost write all of the code from scratch we're in here that's not the case right you already have a platform for okay I can get the

[00:20:57] analytics I can get the integration and I have this platform that will help me be successful in that so yeah I agree I don't think you know I think partners have never been more important and we're seeing

[00:21:09] a lot of innovation that that comes as a result of that and you know one vendor even one as large as they can't can do everything themselves yeah you know I did a session on process automation using

[00:21:22] VTP as well and one of the stories that I told we actually demoed this use case in our integration accessibility demo pod on the floor at success connect but it was it was taking kind of the whole

[00:21:36] BTP platform starting we started with Signavio to to kind of analyze business processes and to look for bottlenecks and what we do is we took kind of the new hire onboarding process and we we automated

[00:21:47] some of the external things that happened during the process so we didn't touch the success actors functionality but when you when you hire somebody you know you maybe got to order a new laptop for that person or you've

[00:21:57] got to create a ticket to give them network security access in a certain way you've had to have all these different things done you need certain approval past setup so we set up these these process

[00:22:08] automation that really did that process and created a ticket in this in this service system to create the security for their network access in a creative purchase order in a reba automatically based

[00:22:20] on their job and based on the approvals and all that and it was a great use of end-to-end starting with Signavio to find the bottlenecks in the process using integration suite and VTP using business

[00:22:32] process automation in in BTP and you know using success factors technology as it's delivered and it was it was a really cool example so that's something that I you know just wanted to mention

[00:22:44] it was that's the kind of stuff I want to see more of that customers are doing and we had a really good response at that demo pod from people who came up and saw it because I think they start

[00:22:52] to understand how the platform can help them yeah I think we'll see more of that so all right cool well let's let's move on let's talk about some of the interactions right i'm i think both of you

[00:23:04] know a lot of customers work with a lot of customers you talked out of their partners you know involved with the whole success factors confident program as well so what were some of the topics

[00:23:14] of conversation or was there anything those stood out to you that was super interesting that you might have heard Danielle start with you I liked all the transparency on the next gen payroll stuff

[00:23:26] so which has a new name which has an official name it is SAP Success Factor's payroll which I think is a good name and that was even part of the conversations that I had with

[00:23:38] customers and colleagues and stuff but what I liked about those conversations it seemed like in the past it used to be like a whispered conversation to talk about next gen payroll it was something

[00:23:50] that was coming we weren't talking about it too much but even in uh Danielle is session and I think in your roadmap session with uh pepine you were completely transparent you said look this is

[00:24:01] something we're building we continue to innovate took us a long time to build the one that we have now and then you actually shared you know where it's happening in the UK what they're doing

[00:24:11] who the target customers are and what I thought was interesting is it said this is this is great that it's innovation but it shouldn't slow down but what everybody is is being tasked to do which

[00:24:22] is to innovate today and I saw this quote from Brandon tombs a confidant uh one of my favorite he also had a pretty good blog I'll put his in third place yeah all channel that all sure all that

[00:24:36] but he said something something along the lines of you know customers keep hearing about next gen payroll and they're wondering if they should sit around and wait for it and he said think of

[00:24:46] next gen payroll or SAP Success Factor's payroll like your favorite sports team and they're building a new arena it's something to get excited about but it shouldn't prevent you from buying season

[00:24:57] tickets to the games and cheering on the squad and I thought that was such a clever way to explain it next gen payroll I got to get used to the new name SAP Success Factor's payroll is not coming

[00:25:09] for the masses anytime soon it I'm I cite that they're working on innovation I'm excited that abuse is involved in it it's just it's just not for everybody and everybody should be following

[00:25:20] the path that's laid out which is doing what's best for them in a lot of cases that's SAP Success Factor's employee central payroll yeah no doubt about it you know like I know we

[00:25:31] have been talking about a number of years but you know part of it is in the early phases of this you don't know what you don't know right and so you want to be kind of careful about it and so maybe

[00:25:40] that's somewhat why you know it was more whispered but now that we're getting more clarity and we're understanding our target market and a lot of you know when we roll this out it's not overlapping with our employees central payroll so the target market's not going to be for

[00:25:54] our existing install base of on-prem customer right so just getting a little more clarity on our side you know comes with okay now we're a little further down the road we can talk about these things

[00:26:04] understand it and you know kind of roll our plan out there right and so yeah I enjoyed the conversation that we had around there and I think there's a lot of excitement to come in the space but you

[00:26:15] know like employees central payroll that's still the gold standard for enterprise payroll for complex payroll right you know we wind yield because of that right and you know it can accomplish things that I'll know other payroll system on the market can in some cases then we

[00:26:31] consistently hear that so you know it's just as much from our side about being realistic and understanding that you know we're going to have multiple payroll solutions and markets so yeah I know there was a lot of excitement around that and we're super super excited about it too

[00:26:46] yeah definitely AJ how about you more some of your interactions well we one of the things that I heard from Josh person was his commentary about innovation success factors because it's it's really important listen to people like Josh because he's so

[00:27:01] deeply knowledgeable about the industry and all the players and when he does a comparison he talks about these it's it's so true so when he says that we are we at SAP are kind of at the forefront of

[00:27:12] innovation or our approach to AI intelligent technologies on target it says a lot and I think that that's what we were hearing is that we are further down the road than our competitors we have

[00:27:23] were doing things in the right way um I also think it was it was good for me in conversations I had with people to get acknowledgement that all of the work that we've been doing at SAP kind of behind

[00:27:34] the scenes of like all the housekeeping and plumbing work um yeah in recent years because there's been a lot of things that are going on that a lot of customers aren't aware of and some say they

[00:27:44] start to learn but it's all starting to pay dividends because it's giving us that really that huge strong foundation for innovation so I think what you're seeing is faster innovation and then you're

[00:27:53] going to see that going forward and I had more than one person say that now they understood why we've been to hard in so many things behind the scenes you know like data center migrations and other projects

[00:28:03] because it does speed the innovation so that was that was kind of pooled to hear that from different customers that they're starting to see that I think for a while customers we're thinking you know

[00:28:11] where's the innovation what are we doing and now they go oh you were setting the stage to you know to make it faster and better okay I get it yeah yeah I definitely heard Steve I talk about that

[00:28:22] a little bit too about you know you have to prep these things and you know a lot of the operational things that you don't see um or you know don't necessarily make it to a road map so I think that was

[00:28:31] definitely a good point there alright so last question I think no promises on that tell me what was the most fun thing at the conference for you Danielle um let's dispel the myth

[00:28:47] that these conferences are all fun they are a lot of work I saw the both of you guys running around giving sessions managing customers managing executive so even though I don't work for SAP as a

[00:29:01] partner being there there are a lot of people to meet a lot of customers to check in on and a lot to consume I mean just the roadmap sessions that that talk about the future of the products

[00:29:13] that I care about I need to learn all of that digest it and make sure that I share it with anybody I work with who was fortunate to go in person so there's definitely a lot of work that goes into these

[00:29:24] events I know that people get the impression that we're in Vegas some world is having a great time and that it's one large fashion show between you and Todd and Aaron and AJ has got to up his

[00:29:36] up his sneaker game I'll never be in that category but yeah they were pretty they're pretty good looking at details I like those my story does how do you know I'd be that's all sorry sorry yeah

[00:29:51] but it was nice to spend time with everybody um I love spending time with the rest of the confidence there are some really smart people you were joking before about Chris but that whole

[00:29:59] group of confidence and I'm not gonna name him because I'll miss somebody but they bring so much value to the community and I learned so much from them so that spending time with them and folks

[00:30:09] like yourselves was the best part for me I appreciate that and yeah I agree that's a great group um and you know I learn a lot just from sitting there even listening right even when I'm not asking

[00:30:20] questions I'm just sitting kind of listening to the conversation that I get a lot of value on that too so AJ how about you? Well I mean I think the question you asked was about funds I mean

[00:30:30] the the party at Tau is always a fun time and we go to success connect to the donation well well I'll speed can you drink a beer next to a person who's dancing night away in a monkey costume

[00:30:41] so I don't even explain that to anyone else it wasn't there but I thought having the closing keynote wrapped with TED talks was brilliant because everyone by that point had heard all of our messaging

[00:30:54] they'd heard all of our talk and the last thing you need was another session of us talking about ourselves and I think having some outside speakers and no celebrities but people actually giving advice and sharing great stories and and talking about personal improvement was really good so I

[00:31:08] enjoyed that um quite a bit because we tend to get into the the ruts some some of these events of you know we just talk about ourselves or we'll bring in some celebrity who has nothing to do with

[00:31:17] anything that you do in a daily basis and you know um yeah but if I have to give my my nerdy marketing answer I think the most fun thing for me was watching the reaction to people who are seeing

[00:31:28] jewel for the first time and you know I think you had some great questions you had some skepticism you had a lot of excitement you had and I'm still processing a lot of those questions that we got

[00:31:39] and trying to go through because it's gonna actually shape what we're doing with the product and what we're doing with the messaging and how we're going to present this to our customers so for

[00:31:47] me that was really important that was then and it was fun yeah and I know about it from a fun standpoint and you know I really enjoyed the whole cookie theme right I think that was super cool

[00:31:58] because it was tied from the beginning right in the keynote showing the demo of the functionality but then when you go to the show room floor it was there and it explained you know in I think

[00:32:08] a way that anyone could kind of understand right it here's a business that's growing how does this software help them and how can it help them and how can it help their growth and then you know

[00:32:18] you also got a cookie at the end which was actually really good did you all try the cookies? I did not should I should have a look at that. I absolutely tried to cookie every day that I

[00:32:30] visited. Well one of the things that that I want to point out to is you know Imran and I are part of a team at SAP as success factors that does a lot of work or on the content of success connect

[00:32:44] and does a lot of the planning and does a lot of all that and just our brilliant team I'm not going to take credit for it's not me I wasn't going to put the whole building of that scenario

[00:32:53] in that that demo company was was done by the solution marketing team. It's so impressive that they could take our products put it into a scenario like that and focus on something that's

[00:33:04] engaging to people that's fun and so I mean it's it's really cool yeah and I can't take credit for anything that was not part of that process at all. Yeah made it and they did do a great job. I actually

[00:33:15] had someone a couple people saying like is this a customer they thought it was a real company and the people were like looking about and it wasn't right it was a fictional company

[00:33:24] there's fictional company. Yeah and it's it's a great way of you know when we talk about all the technology and things that go across the entire suite of showing how businesses impacted by

[00:33:35] the technology throughout the life cycle of an employee or the life cycle of the business so it was really well done and I think that's a good template for us to use for future events

[00:33:45] but shout out to our team for probably work they did on that. For sure. I also like the way Amy Wilson did that in the keynote so whenever she talks she's very approachable and fun and she takes

[00:33:58] kind of a light attitude to it all so she made it fun because the person who was on the iPad who was playing the different roles of first the employee and then the manager she was kind of

[00:34:10] like a wink wink not nothing that made it fun to watch and kept us engaged. Yeah I joined it I know you earlier mentioned having that in the like snippets right the whole keynote and I think that was

[00:34:21] really kind of part of it just having that little snippet of you know showing the cookie to like company and once again tying that back in so yeah I enjoyed it a lot too. All right well this was actually

[00:34:32] a longer than I thought we got into good and tell but I really enjoyed it so thank you both for joining me I appreciate your insight and I thought it was great thank you. Thanks for having me yeah. All right bye.