Should You Trust HPE Point Next for Digital Transformation?
Transcript
>> Hey, welcome to another episode of the CTO Advisor, CTO dos. We have on the other side of this virtual connection, Craig Partridge, who runs digital transformation advisory services, for Pointnext services at HPE. And we're going to talk about advisory services inside of HPE. Should you trust a technology company with your digital transformation? So, Craig, right on the hot seat. Why should we trust HPE to help with digital transformation advisory services? >> Yeah, it's a great question, Keith, and a really great pleasure to be on, on this chat with you.
You know, I think the world has shifted over the last few years. It's become evident, hasn't it, that in order to get competitive advantage in almost any market these days, the underlying business model of most organizations is pivoting towards using technology as that key weapon in their differentiation story. So why wouldn't you work with a technology giant to start investigating partnerships that can lead towards that kind of level of differentiation? And I would say one of the benefits of working with someone like HPE is because we work very horizontally across multiple industries.
You'd be amazed what's happening in that digital conversation. What works in retail and the kind of technology and solutions that we're deploying there is being leveraged by hospitality and moved over into healthcare and into venues. And so actually having what you might have considered a kind of horizontal partner that looks at solutions across the multiple different industries, and then applying that technology to your value proposition actually makes complete sense. So I think it's the perfect time to be a technology company. We're getting much closer now to the heart of how customers reshape their value proposition.
And they're really keen to work with technology leaders like HPE in that conversation. >> So I get that. HPE talks to thousands upon thousands of customers across several industries, but again, a technology company. When I think of advisory services, I think of the big four, I think of these models and methodologies that they bring to bear, just years of service around business transformations. HPE has to have some type of approach to these problems before I even take the meeting. Like, so, you know, help me understand, what's the work behind, show me the work.
What have you guys done to earn the ability to meet with the CMO, the COO, the CIO? >> Yeah, it's a great question. And actually we've been on a bit of a journey, honestly, Keith, as a company, you know. I've been a consultant inside HPE now for 16 years. A lot of that time was spent helping customers optimize their environments, return that value back to the operating model, make them more productive. So in other words, make companies smarter, leaner, more efficient, more productive.
And we've been doing that very successfully for many, many years. But if you go back to my comment about why HPE, why a technology company when it comes to digital transformation? It's clear that over the last few years, as technology has made its way into the heart of the business model, that as a technology vendor, we need to up our advisory game when it comes to being able to understand what customers are trying to achieve in their business model and then working with them, ideating with them, co-designing with them, where does our technology and our partner ecosystem technology, where does that come into play, help them realize that.
And so we've been on a real journey over the last few years, developing very much the kind of content, and principles, and methods for how we deliver that kind of digital transformation advisory conversation. Maybe I can point you to a couple of things that have become really obvious to me, Keith, and I'm sure you'll feel free to use the visuals that we'll go through throughout the chat. But you know, it is true. And there was a recent report, I think I cited it here as a McKinsey report, March, 2020, looking at customers that are trying to digitally transform and, you know, good, 70%, seven out of 10 respondents saying that they are stalled in some way, progress is slow, they're somehow stalled in delivering on that digital transformation promise.
And what we found is that there's kind of four key reasons or barriers to that stalling motion that goes on between having this great ambition, which may be set kind of a board level and actually getting through the execution down to where the value gets realized. So the first one, it became really obvious to us very early on that that customers are really struggling to be able to communicate. And that's such an important skill when you're trying to transform is the ability to clearly articulate, clearly visualize, clearly represent the journey that you're taking the company on in order to be able to build that guiding coalition behind you in the organization that's going to be able to help you get to where you want to get to.
So Craig, >> And so-- >> You're hitting a key area, a key pain point when I'm dealing with customers. I provide advisory services typically more during the execution and planning stage. But what I see with a lot of these teams is that they haven't really identified a tie back to the digital transformation mission. So when you say customer, who are you talking to when you're presenting this stat in this deck? >> Yeah, it's another key question. It's a great question.
So yeah, I guess historically we founded our relationships inside the IT organization, so CIO and directs, you know, looking at how to spend the IT budget and get the best return, the best bang for the buck on that investment. Again, when I said we've been on a journey doubling down on the advisory side, we've found that actually we're speaking to a whole different cast of buying persona characters within our customers. If you look at how we're using technology to drive new innovations at the edge.
who's popping up over there? Well, it turns out it's people like the chief digital officer, right, or the chief marketing officer, that's trying to use technology to connect to their customer base and drive new differentiated experiences through technology. 0 has kind of taken off at the edge in manufacturing environments, for example, well, that's going to be the VP of engineering, someone that's looking for a return to deliver on that KPI of OEE, for example, that make that equipment more efficient, more effective for the organization.
If you really want to extend out around the cloud conversation, it's no longer just an IT conversation, right? I mean the line of business armed with their developer communities are saying, you know what, I need cloud applications, cloud architectures, cloud service delivery models to develop my next generation, my new wave of software driven experiences, and services, and products. Again, so that pushes us into a whole different buying persona behind that kind of conversation. And then in the middle, all of that, trying to kind of orchestrate this whole conversation.
You've got characters like the chief security officer, chief operating officer, you've got maybe even chief data officers, seen those a fair quite a lot, Keith. I don't know if you're seeing that as well you know, people, data scientists, that kind of clustering of people that are responsible for getting some sort of value out of data. So it has become quite a complex landscape. We think there's between 13 and 17 key actors in any major decision around transformation. And that's because technology has become so pervasive right from the edge through to the cloud.
And then how do you use business model innovation to match with that, to get you there? So it is a, it's a minefield. >> Wow okay, yeah. That, you've you've kind of brought up some painful memories and painful interactions for me. But let's go ahead and finish talking about how HPE is approaching solving these challenges. >> Yeah, well, so just off the back of that, I mean, so we said communication can be a real challenge for customers. You know, if you ask, I don't know, 10 customers, what does digital transformation mean?
You'll get at least eight or nine differentiated answers on that problem. So there's confusion. Communication is difficult. But the second key area that we're seeing customers stall around is lots of good ideas, lots of proof of concept, proof of values, lots of incubations, but all being driven by different teams often in an uncoordinated, unorchestrated way. And actually that leads to some kind of complexity, which stalls the ambition. So orchestration, just sequencing, what's the key things that I need to lay down as a digital foundation first, before I can pivot to the next level, before I can enable the next revolution or innovation?
So orchestration and sequencing is a really difficult thing for organizations to get right. Certainly the larger the organization, the more of an orchestration and sequencing challenge that they're going to face. The third key thing that we're seeing organizations store around is, you know, when we think about digital transformation, you really want that to be underpinned by an agenda that has differentiation at the core. How do we use technology to do something different in our industry, something that sets me apart from the competition?
And too often, the digital ambitions of customers will follow that kind of follow, follow the competition, or kind of me too, kind of strategy already proven outcomes. We know how the technology works. We know what kind of experience it produces. We know what kind of revenue or cost saving it can deliver. And so we execute on the known stuff. The thing about digital transformation is it's much more exploratory. It's much more innovative than that. And you've got to have at the core of that, a sense of how do I create differentiation?
And so a lot of customers we're seeing stall because they, they haven't figured out the magic recipe to create something that's uniquely theirs, that speaks to their brand and their value proposition in the market. And then the final, I wouldn't say it's final by the way, these are just our four observations, Keith, right? In the thousands, as you say, conversations that we have. The fourth one that we really pick out as a common theme is prioritization. So that's quite, that's a little bit different to orchestration.
Orchestration is how do I get several things to work in harmony? So what's the prerequisites, and the dependencies, and the risks that sit between the different initiatives and projects that I'm rolling with? Prioritization comes down to for an initiative. How do I identify the key building blocks that are going to get me to that minimum viable product as quickly as possible, right? And so what you'll tend to find when customers are stalled around prioritization is they'll be in that paralysis by analysis mode, right?
So many different options, so many different vendors, so much different technology to consider. All of those vendors, trying to put some kind of proof of value into their environment, just paralyzed by the analysis of all of that. And so what we try and work with customers on that one is really about sequencing, that the key building block's getting functional in capabilities enabled in order to accelerate their initiative outcome. 'Cause what you really want to do is you want to get to an MVP as quickly as possible and test did that work, does that resonate, is that going to generate the result I'm looking for?
And then if it doesn't iterate, pivot and iterate, you don't want to get lost by analysis. So those are the kind of four key barriers that we're seeing, Keith, if you're seeing something similar in the conversations you're having. >> So absolutely, similar things in the conversation. But one of the things that we run a into is the entry point, you know, where do we start this conversation? And I know HPE has a methodology. I would love for you to walk me through that model of how do you enter the conversation, put some kind of ground rules so that we can refocus and anchor these different components of a digital transformation around a set, or at least around a set theme or core set of principles?
>> Yeah, let's get straight into that because I think that's really key. And so just to finish off on that McKinsey survey, clearly then customers that are un-stalled or accelerating have a clear vision or clear ability to communicate their strategy. If they have strong alignment and commitment across the organizations, they have some distinctive nature to their strategy and they have strong core competencies, good design on the ground. They know how to put digital building blocks in place. And so if you can deliver that and you can start to create that value, then you can create that virtuous loop that goes back and then feeds the ambition even more and starts to grow the capabilities of an organization.
So when you talk about HPE's methodology, we call that digital next advisory. That digital next advisory framework is a joint engagement framework with a customer. And it's about focusing on those four common barriers to effective digital transformation. So let me start with the entry level model. You asked about the model that we use. And actually, I think, you know, when you think about advisory, having an underlying model that allows you to share a taxonomy, and a language, and a vision that can help you to orchestrate and have a similar conversation is really, really important.
What we decided, what we ended up creating was what we call the HPE Digital Journey Map. And that breaks the digital transformation conversation down into some key component areas. And let's pause as we go through just before we paint the whole map here. The first thing that we realized is that most organizations are going after a digital transformation conversation are hyper-focused at the edge, Keith, right? Because we call that edge centric inside HPE, but the demonstration of how to use technology to create an exchange value at the operating edge of an organization, how they translate their value to their customers.
So how do they, how do they pass value, how they transact value, and how do they use digital technologies to enable them to do that in a differentiated way? That's where we think the conversation starts. And you need to be able to break that down again, because what's happening at the edge, we believe is constituted around two key, what we call journeys, what many of our customers would call initiative areas. The first one is the use of technology to drive differentiated experiences.
And so that's a very persona driven journey. It's a journey that uses technology to delight and exceed the expectations of customers. If you're a commercial customer, if you're a government organization, citizens, because that's who you're serving, that persona could be an employee if it was an internal focused conversation. But really it's a conversation that identifies a key beneficiary persona, walks in their shoes, describes a day in the life, and then starts to see how can technology improve the way that they live and work.
And you've got a lot of stuff going on in there around design thinking, a lot of work going in there around customer experience design, lot of the acceleration coming out of this post-pandemic, new normal conversation. A lot of that acceleration is really focused on that journey. How do we use digital to engage our customers in the products and services that we deliver? >> So let me see if I can paint an example of the two different areas we're talking about. So that edge, that delivery of services where most of us live.
Let's say that a friend of mine's, actually daughter, created some CTO advisor mask for us, because obviously we're in an area that people should be wearing a mask. The experience, that edge delivery of getting me the custom mask is what the thing, is the thing that I want as a customer. The way that she delighted me as a customer is that I could just go to a portal, the digital transformation part of that, design the mask, procure the mask, and without talking to anyone receive the mask.
So there was a digital experience that wowed me, that edge experience of getting that produced and delivered to me. She could have skipped the digital experience and just focused on that edge value, but because she had an end to end digital experience that wowed me as well alongside that edge experience provided a answer in value that I appreciated helped me come back as a customer. >> I mean, that is such a great example, exactly what we're talking about. I mean, she could have just made masks, right, and put a stall out in the marketplace and, you know, hope that people would walk past and buy something already pre-configured that wasn't unique to them, but she's thinking how, if I could use technology, I can change this relationship, I can make it interactive.
I can delight my customer. I can personalize it through that portal experience. And then they can get that delivered as soon as she can get that manufactured. That a great example of what we mean by using technology to redefine the customer experience at the edge. Yeah, really, really love that story, Keith. But it's also true, isn't it, that we're using technology, not just to delight our customers, engaging them through digital channels, but we're also looking to increasingly instrument and digitize the physical world as well.
And so that's, that's more the, if the top left hand corner here is about people, the bottom left hand corner here is about things. And don't need me to tell you just how, how pervasively now as a tech industry, we are in instrumenting and digitizing everything in the environment in which we work, but also the environment in which we operate at and deliver our goods and services as well. And that's increasingly about this efficiency, because it's about gaining some level of insight into that environment.
And then beyond that insight, because insight is one thing. But if you can act on that insight and then you can return some level of control back into that environment, then that really is where the value play is at the physical edge. And then if you, if you really think about it, if you connect these two journeys at the edge together, and that's where we're seeing really mature organizations going after the digital agenda, they're saying, how can I take what I know about the physical world in which I might be offering my goods or services and bring that insight, not just to exert some control there, but actually to provide a better experience because I can connect the persona and the environment.
And now I can make this really highly contextualized and very personalized. That's kind of the golden goose at that point. And that's what we might describe more as the digital edge when you can start connecting those two journeys together. So again, hope that makes sense in terms of breaking down this edge-centric >> Yep. >> side of this model. Then the other thing we realized, Keith, and you might already begin to see from the shape of the model here, that we're actually about to explore a Venn diagram, kind of two overlapping key components.
What we realized is that the appetite for organizations to be innovative and explorative in the way they use technology at the edge has to be backed up by the capability of the organization to consume, and acquire, and assemble, and leverage technology through what we would describe as the cloud-enabled side of this model. So what's that about? It's about ultimately tackling two kind of, again, major journeys as we call them, initiative areas. And I'm going to start in the top right-hand corner. You know, that example you gave, that portal needed to be engineered.
It needed to be engineered with a great experience. It needed to be engineered for scale. Let's imagine that your example, she's telling millions across the world, we're talking about scale here as well. And to get innovations, new features, new functions to continually innovate that experience, well that's driven by software and that software driven innovation is increasingly pushing customers towards the establishment of CICB pipelines and the use of cloud native architectures to build those new ways that next gen of application experiences, and services, and products, that delight our customers over on the left-hand side.
And so we've noticed that there's a distinct journey, which is really developer led. We call it accelerate development. And it's typically also very linked to the ambition of the line of business in the top left hand corner. You can kind of see those as a pairing at the top. Line of business and developers speeding up time to value in order to get new software driven features, to engage customers digitally over on the left-hand side. But that isn't the end of the cloud-enabled journey because obviously for most organizations, a lot of the transactional side that enables that transaction of value, a lot of the backend systems of record is already in play.
It's been supporting organizations for decades. It's been enabling transactions, and sales, and all of the business functions for years. I mean, think about the kind of ERP systems that we're talking about that are in play here. And for many of our customers to complete their digital transformation, they need to consider this modernize and move journey that we're just driving here, organizations. So again, does that kind of make sense to how we break that-- >> Yeah, this is why the McKinsey study makes so much sense and the feedback with, it boils down to, in my experience, communication and governance, around getting this boardroom level vision executed from a technology perspective.
You mentioned the, you know, the ERP systems that we've had in place for decades that has, just basically the cash register of our business, the systems of record, and this need to move much faster than we've typically moved with these systems of record. So how do you, how do we practically create an environment that application environment that meets the demand of the edge, but keeps the resiliency and the dependency of our systems of records that we've depended on for decades? Very, very challenging thing.
I don't want to under understate how difficult it can be to keep that vision while maintaining the capabilities we want and also the dependency IT is known for. So I absolutely get the entire model. I think it's a great approach. >> Yeah I think you're touching on something really key here because in disorganized or disaggregated customers, you'll tend to find that each of these journeys, and by the way, each of these have got their own KPI, which indicates there's a different kind of key stakeholder or principle behind persona at least, behind each of those journeys, if organizations aren't careful they'll execute across those four journeys quite independently, >> Yeah.
>> without recognizing or realizing the relationships, the risks, the dependencies, the prerequisites that sit as they start executing across the map. And that's an environment in which you'll tend to find IT organizations will kind of, you know, have that do more with less mentality. And why is my budget keep going down every year? And why am I not getting the investment that we're seeing going into kind of digital efforts that the CEO is running or the CMOs running? And it's because that relationship hasn't been drawn across the map to your point that we've got to make sure that the existing systems play their vital role in helping with the scale-out and the industrialization of some of these digital efforts.
>> So obviously, you know, like an on the ground example of this is let's say your SAP group, very, very important part of a organization, and you're experiencing those budget cuts, you're experiencing kind of the squeeze. It's upon the leadership, and it's upon the overall organization to help these groups understand their value and their role in this digital transformation. We won't have, we can't sell mass if we don't have a SAP system on the backend to support that, it just won't work. And when you have that, you know, kind of everyone pulling in the same direction we tend to get the results we want.
But without a model similar to this, we don't know what that direction is. A lot of times I walk into a situation where, you know, people are just doing things because it's a modern thing to do, but not necessarily tied back to the business value. >> Right, and sometimes that's not, you know, it's not, that people are doing it deliberately, disruptively. It's just, there's no visual framework for them to connect together, absolutely right. The key thing though, Keith, that we found is that, and I said this is a model, and I also said this is a Venn diagram 'cause we're seeing these two big journeys on the right-hand side, which is injecting agility and time to value through cloud native architectures on the right-hand side, through being cloud enabled.
And then the big two journeys on the left, which are around engagement, and operational, and business efficiency, digitizing the physical world, translating that into experiences. If you really look at what's going on behind those big agendas, you'll notice that there's three very common ingredients. And that means that there is within this model, the notion of a core digital backbone that organizations must establish in order to be able to successfully fulfill the agendas of these big four items on the outside. Now, two of them relate to data.
There is no journey on this map that doesn't have a voracious appetite for either creating, manipulating, acting upon, storing, processing, visualizing data, data's at the core in many ways of the digital narrative. Many will say data is the currency of the digital era. And so connecting into the middle of this framework, into the middle of this Venn diagram is the notion that every journey will attempt to abstract from that data, a level of intelligence, why? Well because that intelligence can lead to the ability to innovate and constantly differentiate the companies and service offerings.
The second component, and again, it's highly related to data is the idea that if you're going to create, and manipulate, and store, and process, et cetera, all of this data, what you better be trusted in the ecosystem that you play, you better be trusted with that data. Now that data comes in many forms, top left-hand corner. If you're driving initiatives around the experience, it's clearly going to be personal data. And so you're getting into all sorts of landscapes and minefields around regulation, and compliance, and privacy, and increasingly things like ethics, right?
But if you look at then the bottom left hand corner, what happens when we start connecting the world to our environment? You're getting into areas like adaptive security and behavioral analytics and zero trust. If you start in the bottom right-hand corner, moving applications and workloads around your supply chain, you're getting into issues of federation and encryption, and how do you secure data in transit and at rest? And if you're up in the top right-hand corner, you're worried not just about DevOps now, but DevSecOps.
How do you integrate security into the dev life cycle? So you know, intelligence and trust are key enablers for any of the big four journeys that we're seeing on the outside. Okay, and then, so there's this final part, this final ingredient, which is core to this conversation, and that is that you cannot hope to deliver the value of a digital transformation if you're not prepared in some way to tackle the underlying operating model, which means getting involved in the value chain of what you do, it means looking at the processes.
Can those processes be augmented, replaced, adapted by the technology improvements that you're driving? And what about the people? How do you bring the people with you? How do you re-skill them? What kind of culture do you drive? Many customers, Keith, are telling me that the key to their digital transformation is actually a cultural management, a change program. It's a digital first mindset, digital first culture that customers are rolling out because it's getting the culture right and the people, and the direction of how they think, innovatively, using technology first, which is really key.
So that, that becomes a really key central theme to, again, any of the big four journeys. And now you can begin to start seeing the model. There is one last component and it's contextual, and it's going to sit behind the conversation, but it's always there. It's pervasive in everything that we discuss with our customers through this model. And that is that increasingly everything is shifting towards that as-a-service business model innovation. And that is just as true if you are driving journeys out there at the edge.
So when you're attempting to deliver new digital products or services to your customers, to redefine the experience, are you looking at an as-a-service model to drive that new revenue stream, that new digital revenue stream> Equally applies on the right-hand side when you're reassembling your supply chain to get agility and to speed up time to value. Are you consuming technology in an as-a-service model as well? And almost every one of these conversations is considered, you know, is a consideration for how are we delivering that?
How are we consuming that? Are we using business model innovation throughout the service? And are we using the financial flexibility considerations that come with that, everything as-a-service model as well? So that's kind of pervasive, it sits behind the whole and frames up the context of the conversation. Hopefully that makes sense as well. >> Yeah, it makes sense because when we think about everything as a service, you know, I think the temptation is to look at it from a technology perspective and you can say, okay, yeah, I can think of servers storage compute as a service, but what happens when you think about it from the business value, the business service as a service?
I think we, we had this in one of our prep calls you talked about, and I didn't know that they even offered this. I got to look it up. You know, instead of buying tires, you're buying miles as a service. You want the, as a driver, I don't want to, I don't go out to my car and look at, I don't care how much tread is on my tire. I just want to know when I have to get a new tire.
So, you know, this whole ideal of miles as a service, while my father may frown upon that idea as a kind of person who just wants to consume a vehicle, it's a perfect example of everything is a service. >> Yeah, and you know, the whole business model relies on technology. It's not that difficult to concede how that could be done. As long as you're putting the tire on and you're taking a mileage check at that point, and then you're getting the telemetry from the car that's telling you how many miles you're putting on those tires, then you can put the billing engine around it.
So you've got the instrumentation, you've got the billing side of it. Then you get to be able to bill the customer as they're driving it. It makes perfect sense. It's a good example of digital transformation because it's attacking the business model, right, and shifting the way that they sell tires, instead of selling them as capital assets, you sell them as a service, business model innovation, perfect. >> So I understand the model and I think we've given some great reference mock examples.
Let's go into a conversation around HP. And how has HPE taken advantage of this themselves? You guys are one of the largest companies in the world. Obviously you have some of these challenges. Walk me through that process. >> Yeah, yeah. It's a great question because actually the model can be used to look both inside of my own company, inside HPE, kind of what we're doing to respond. And we use it obviously in our advisory, that approach, in our digital next advisory engagement framework with customers.
But here's a really good example. So let's take the map now and say what happens when you want to change the customer experience through digital? In actual fact, this is exactly what we've been doing inside HPE. HPE has already been, always been known for industry leading customer satisfaction and recommendation scores when it comes to the support experience that we deliver to our customers. But how do we get it to the next level? How do we create a digital support experience for our customers?
And that's a good example, right, of something that starts out in that top left-hand corner, because we're trying to drive better experience, to create more loyal, more advocate, more customers that are with us for the longer term. So what the model does, and you can apply this to any kind of customer experience initiative. It starts to ask some basic questions. So we've said it's a Venn diagram. That means anything that starts life out there in one of the big four journeys, in this case, the redefined experience journey, it asks some basic questions.
It says, okay, what do we know about that customer? What kind of intelligence can we extract from the digital transactions and engagements that can provide us with some level of intelligence? So your example before, Keith, right, what could that, the young girls selling those masks do more if she knew exactly how you bought and what kind of masks you chose? So buying behaviors might be a really cool piece of data to capture, to leverage for intelligence. It asks the question of the operating model.
Are you prepared to support the customer in that digital channel? And what does it mean to the processes and the people and the skills, and how do you create the, the set of core activities that now change because the support experience is going to be driven through digital means rather than a traditionally over the phone. And then of course, we're dealing with personal data, we're dealing with customers. And so privacy and regulation, you know, things like GDPR become, and record retention, right?
How long should we keep records for, et cetera? So that immediately you can see that the model's asking some basic questions about that initiative. But it informs us even more. It says, okay, well, is there something that you could take from the customer's environment, the physical world, that could be instrumented, that could add to this digital backbone story? In HPE's example, our customer edge is the customer's data center where HPE infrastructure is running on their floor. Well, it turns out that those products are connected back to HPE, and we get telemetry about the configuration and the performance of that footprint in our customer's environment.
That's our edge. That's where we transact and translate our value. That telemetry then feeds back into the intelligence model. It tells us about what's going on in that customer's location. And we can start to triangulate that data with what's happening in other customer locations. And so, you know, you may have heard, Keith, of the HPE InfoSight, InfoSight is that AI layer that gives us the ability to run intelligence about all of these connected environments that we have. Okay, great, well can I turn that intelligence back into that digital customer experience that HPE customers could have?
Is that a way of improving through the digitization of the physical world, the kind of support experience I can get so that customers don't start entering bad configuration parameters that we already know are going to create a problem or a case for that, for that customer? >> Well, you know, one of the interesting things is that as we go back to kind of this consumer example, if there was, you know, if the young lady selling masks could understand how customers were actually using the mask.
Are they wearing it in the car? Are they wearing it to, on a date, on social events, et cetera. If she got that rich types of data, she could improve the digital experience. The same thing with HPE, I'm assuming, this data that you're getting off the InfoSight site, I can improve the digital experience by not understanding how customers are actually using my products at the edge. >> Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. And then, across the map goes on to ask us even more probing questions.
It says, well, there has to be a relationship here between the appetite and the ambition at the edge, and what's happening at the backend to enable that, not least of all up in the top right-hand corner, how does things like location-based data and customer buying behavior, how does that flow back to the developer to give them the capability to build the intelligence into that experience, driven through software development? But then in course, increasingly at the backend in that bottom right-hand corner, well, you know, if more and more of our customers transact with us on this digital channel, are our backend services going to cope with that?
What's the impact analysis on those systems of record, those transactional systems that host our support environments? Can we even store and process all of this data where we would we place it in our supply chain? What would give us the best cost optimization and agility outcome? So again, it poses questions which need to be reinforced at the backend in order to ensure if you flow all the way back through, you can still deliver on that ambition to create a great customer experience.
And I think, again, this is that relationship we were talking about, Keith, between what happens on the right-hand side, what happens inside IT and actually what's happening at the business edge, in order to create value. The last thing that this also challenges us to answer, we said there was this global consideration. So now as you try and build that new customer experience, are you thinking about the business model? Are you going to deliver that as a service? As you think about the backend implications, are you going to consume that as a service as well?
So think of this as a kind of mental checklist. If you're a digital initiative owner, if you're creating new digital products, or services, or offerings, can you answer the questions that this map asks for your initiative? And if you can't, reach out to someone like an HPE as a partner in your ecosystem to try and help answer that question. >> Craig, I don't if you've made my job any easier. I think you've come on and you've helped us ask better questions, but the job itself doesn't seem any easier.
You've walked me through a model, that on paper looks great. You gave me the data in the McKinsey study that I think I need to arm myself to understand why I need to ask these questions and how to start to begin to answer these questions, but I'm personally overwhelmed and I'm sure the viewers of this webinar are overwhelmed too. How do they engage Pointnext services? Because Pointnext services is not necessarily always at the forefront in my customer engagements or conversations. How do I reach out to you guys?
>> So you're absolutely right, Keith. HPE may not have made its credentials in delivering strategic advice to customers. We might have been known as a great technology organization with great support experiences and great customer experiences, but increasingly the effort to pivot, to use technology in a customer's business outcomes means that we have developed an enormous capability over the last few years. And this is an example of how we use that capability with our customers to help them map their initiatives and help them orchestrate, and sequence, and better prioritize what it is they're doing.
As you can imagine, behind this level of detail, which is very surface, if you click one or two layers down, you get down into functional level building blocks and technical level building blocks, and so we can really help accelerate customer's outcomes. The easiest way is just to pick the phone up and speak to your HPE sales rep. There's everybody from an enterprise account manager through to inside sales. We have a huge sales force distributed around the world. Any one of them, if you pick up and you say, hey, I want to speak to an advisor at HPE that can help me figure out how to formulate, how to communicate, and prioritize, and orchestrate my digital ambition.
And if you say the key words of digital next advisory, that's going to be a trigger flag. That's probably going to end up in my teams email inbox, honestly, Keith, and we will be more than happy with a growing global community of digital advisors to come and engage in a conversation and help you figure out your own unique map and your own unique journey as well. >> Well, I appreciate HPE sponsoring this conversation. It is a great example of when I call for technology companies to start advisory firms, HPE has been doing this for years.
com. You can find me on Twitter, @CTOadvisor. Talk to you at the next CTO Advisor virtual event.
