How to Get Unstuck

Editor's Notes

• #3: Probably wondering on dates… We are happy to announce that the capabilities you saw in the demo are being brought to you in the Anypoint Platform June 2017 release, which we are calling Crowd. The reason we are calling it the crowd release is because it is all about enabling developers on our teams to build the right way with well defined contracts, discoverability, reuse and inherent collaboration across teams. Enabling you to harness the capabilities of the broader enterprise and the power of greater participation.
• #4: Headline: Over my career I’ve implemented a lot of tech that is “how things used to work” ERP: Between 12 years of management consulting and 12 years in retail technology, I’ve implemented and operated SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc. many, many times. Big, long, complex implementations. These technologies were the right solutions at the time, and served their purpose - but that time has past. As you all have felt - large, integrated, on-premis technolgies are how things used to work “legacy” “inflexible” “a trap” (opposite of adaptable). We implemented them for good reasons: Business applications were prized for features, Stability, integration, and security - silver bullets to business leaders that best case only partially delivered the results hoped for Infrastructure drove many of these changes and operations evolved (Mainframe, to client server, to Unix) Employee productivity tools were more about standardization and security over productivity The projects to make these transitions were long and slow and expensive - and frequently over promised and under delivered - usually ending up partially implementing leading to future projects Our technology was treated like we had built a building - 5-7 years of depreciation of a complex asset. Not easy to change. Not easy to try things and fail. The user experience on most of our technologies was Crappy at best - the people the systems were implemented for truly did not like using them.
• #5: Headline: Those technologies that were suppose to, and in many cases did, help our business are now what is blocking us. If you are a company older than 5 years old, you are likely stuck with these “legacy” technologies that are too complex and expensive to figure out how to unwind. I talk to many CEOs and almost without exception, they are looking for flexibility and speed in their business, and are somewhere between annoyed and angry about their current technology not allowing them to run their businesses the way they want. I talk to many CIOs, and many are stuck with fixed budgets, with old, depreciating technologies that get more expensive to operate each year. Their business needs new capabilities, needs speed and flexibility, needs visibility, that they just can not get out of their complex stack of technologies. Your employees want access to the best technologies to do their jobs. I feel you. I’ve been there. Being stuck sucks. How do you build a bridge out of being Stuck.
• #6: Headline: In large companies there is a mindset of risk management that limits being aggressive. There is a need for courage. You’re trapped by a false sense of security. That you have to increment change, to carefully manage the risk of any kind of transitions - that new technologies have to be proven out before adopting. In most industries there is a much bigger risk - the speed of which your competitors that you can see and can’t quite see yet, are rapidly leaving you behind with newer and better customer interactions, faster time to market, better insights to what is working and not working, speed of new offerings to customers, more quickly getting out of money losing products and services. Your trapped by your company's risk management business practices. At Zendesk we see this frequently show up in complex procurement processes that last for months - that are frequently for ass coverage, not for speed and agility, so that no one get blamed if something doesn’t work. Or highly complex business cases that get locked up with your CFO. Our entire product, as many SaaS companies products are, is available for a free trial - just sign up and try it. Want to buy it, you can sign up for a few licenses and pay by the month - don’t like it, cancel. Trying and learning new technologies, not making giant monolithic commitments is how to innovate and get yourself unstuck. For a CIO’s your impact needs to be quick and meaningful. Sad, old technologies are safe but strangling your business and your ability to help your business Business and technology processes manage risk so tightly that innovation and change are not possible This all causes you to spend time on the wrong things Longer you wait to make these decisions, the further you fall behind Conservatism and fear, not trying new things, not failing fast enough, not betting big enough, not learning
• #7: If you started your company from scratch today, you would do things very differently than you are right now. This is the case if your business is 2 years old, 20 years old, or a 100 years old. This will never change. Most if not all new companies we work with do not have a CIO or IT leader to start with Module - pick them as you go Architecture - frequently overlooked but critical. Architect your business into micro-services/slices so that you can continually move to the best and most modern tech when you need it They walk down the SaaS/Subscription shopping aisle and pick the business apps they need, they quickly integrate, and are off and running. In weeks. The idea of setting up your own data center or your own hosted data center is no longer a thing. Start with the Public cloud providers leveraging the automation, scale, tooling from the cloud providers Open source code - there has never been as much free software available, ever. Jump in and jumpstart everything you want to build Architecture is frequently overlooked but critical. Architect your business into micro-services/slices so that you can continually move to the best and most modern tech when you need it. Don’t fall into the giant platform trap. Employee productivity. All SaaS. Nothing on prem. Listen to your employees, try things. Have standards, but make them friendly. Subscription economy. All of the above, you can pay for by the month. Change out anytime you want. Use the mindset of “if we started our business today, what technologies would we operate our business on”. Do this annually. Get informed. Go try some things. Know what would bring the most speed and flexibility into your business. My experience leaving massive retail and moving into tech It is so nice to be able to make decisions and go fast In retail I was used to daily giant operations meetings looking at stores, ecommerce, supply chain tech issues. In a SaaS world, those are not really necessary. I was used to long and painful transitions of everything - 6 months at best, 18 months more likely. When I arrived at Zendesk we rolled out a new video solution globally to all employees in less than a month. We transitioned to a new employee collaboration tools in less than a month. We are transitioning our data warehouse and all integrations in less than 6 months. A big part of this is an archtiecture setup for SaaS where you can more easly change out SaaS services. Find a better one, change it out. Speed and agility are game changers. When you can move fast, failures can truly become learning experiences and not tragedies. Putting customer data/information in the middle of all your technology solutions Data and analytics to support better/faster business decisions Flexibility to quickly adopt modern technologies and not be burdened with obsolete technologies
• #8: Unpacking what “fast means”. How fast is fast. Try things fast - at Zendesk our avg implementation time is less than two weeks. Large complex implementations may take 2-6 weeks. Most of our customers start with a free trial. We currently have over 100k paying customers. Figure out what works for you. We are often asked about integration partners - as our competitors require significant external support to implement for much longer durations - while we welcome the idea, when you can implement this quickly, the need for large amounts of external support is just not required. With SaaS you can Integrate other data fast for better and more interesting decision making You get Flexibility and Agility in your business by being able to quickly try new of use cases You can personalize your interactions with your customers in real time (that’s a real thing), not an overnight batch email type experience Your employees want to be using the most modern technology to do their job. Period. Being able to keep up with new technologies keeps you modern. **This is what CEOs want from their technology/from you - how do you get to this point as fast as you can to deal with competitors/competitive advantage
• #9: Main takeaway: lighten-up, stay modern Speed - weeks not months; try things quickly Subscription: pay for what you want; architect to always be on the best SaaS solution for your business. Fire SaaS providers and change them out. See how quickly you can build this muscle. Customer relationship - interact with your customers with relevant answers and offerings in real time. Not tommorow which is how most retail interactions work. Stay modern: If you architect correct, you can continue to take advantage of new/better technologies and you’re never locked into a long time commitment to a technology. Benefits: Speed of deployment You pay for what you use Reduced costs Improved customer experience
• #10: Highlight: I was excited to come to Zendesk - coming here made me realize it doesn’t have to be so hard. Think about the customer relationship first and in everything you do. Give your customers the best experience. Give your employees the best experience. Connection between your previous experience (with legacy systems) to a cloud/SaaS company Customers love using Zendesk Customer service folks love using Zendesk Creates loyalty on both sides, generating better customer service Zendesk is: Easy to integrate Easy to bring data together highly adaptable use cases for any type of service request or question Customers learn they can count on your business for quick and relevant responses - Build and maintain trust Scale: you don’t have to worry or think about handling growth - SaaS providers figure that out for you
• #11: Highlight: If I were sitting in your shoes…. Modern SaaS Architecture - slice your business into micro services. Bust up your giant, integrated, monolythic systems. Don’t be afraid. Implement a modern integration layer to allow you to decouple complex ERP integration. And to build speed into your Focusing on the highest value first - customer interactions and services is a great place to start. Or a modern analytics tools to bring together your data into a better decision making approach. Turn your organization loose to experiment and trial Saas provider - come up with a simple way to evaluate Prep your procurement org, Please!, for what it means to operate in a SaaS world. Get started today, not tomorrow. Zendesk + Mulesoft Mulesoft - bridge between your legacy system and starting to leverage SaaS providers Internal support organizations and starting to work with customer service software Great example of the power of SaaS