That Digital Show: Recent Episodes
Google Cloud
That Digital Show is a weekly business podcast presented by Google Cloud on innovation and growing value in a digital world. The show combines interviews with global experts and open conversations with industry leaders to share digital strategies and techniques that leverage cloud and application platforms to help organizations reach business outcomes faster and meet the continuously changing demands of consumers. For more information, find us online at ThatDigitalShow.com and throughout social media @ThatDigitalShow.
To deliver for its customers, Botify continues to reinvent how companies perform SEO. From those early days of the manual indexing of websites to the eras of keyword stuffing and anchor links, Botify is changing the landscape of optimization. In this extended conversation of The Transformation Debrief, Chris Hood, Digital Strategist at Google Cloud, hosts Pierre Couzy, Chief Technology Officer at Botify, and Robert Rothschild, Chief Marketing Officer at Botify, to discuss how they are helping drive more traffic and revenue with machine learning and artificial intelligence to reinvent how companies perform SEO.
CNA has a 120-year history of providing property and casualty insurance for U.S. customers. It turned to Google Cloud to modernize its analytics, consolidate data management, and deliver better decision-making tools for agents and executives. In this episode of The Transformation Debrief, Chris Hood, host of Google Cloud's That Digital Show, talks with two CNA executives — Rich Wein, a vice president and actuary, and Santosh Bardwaj, senior vice president for data and analytics — about the company's journey to the cloud and the effects it is having on business operations and the CNA corporate culture.
Baseball is a game that can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. Some fans, like season ticket holders, primarily engage by attending live games at the stadium. For others, the game is ubiquitous on their television, smartphone screens, or tablets throughout summer afternoons and evenings. Some people like getting deep into the massive world of advanced statistics, watching analysts on the web and TV, or reading sports reporters' daily stories. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Anil Jain, Managing Director for Media and Entertainment at Google Cloud, and Truman Boyes, Senior Vice President, Technology Infrastructure at Major League Baseball, to take a behind-the-plate look at how data is leveraged to create deeper insights to improve the game and help make baseball consumable by fans in exciting new ways.
Organizations are driving the complete transformation of their business by inventing new ways to accomplish their objectives using the cloud, from making core processes more efficient to improving how they reach and better serve their customers to achieving insights through data that fuel innovation. In today's continuously evolving digital world, it is increasingly critical to adapt to changing consumer demands and market trends as quickly as possible. Whatever your industry's challenge or use case, Google Cloud solutions can help improve efficiency and agility, reduce cost, participate in new business models, and capture new market opportunities. In this episode, Chris Hood sits with Umesh Vemuri, VP of Global Strategic Customers & Industries at Google, to discuss how customers can quickly implement cloud solutions to generate business value.
In this episode, we hear from Amit Zunjarwad, Chief Product Officer at ShareChat and Moj about India's home-grown, video-led social platform that has more than 1 million daily active users. The availability of affordable high-speed internet has encouraged the growth of video consumption in India. With that, ShareChat has positioned itself as a leading social media platform in the country that focuses on supporting video content creators and consumers. Along with short video app Moj, Amit talks about the creative economy and how content creators can drive social conversations and connect people across different parts of India, in 15 different languages. He also shares his strategy for growth, and plans that include turning ShareChat into a modern advertising platform through bite-sized content on the go. With concepts like virtual gifting where people can buy and send virtual gifts to content creators already in place, learn how the brand is boosting the Indian ecommerce industry while shaping the next generation of consumers.
The Covid-19 pandemic impacted many businesses, but the airline industry was perhaps one of the most affected. With travel bans that took place almost overnight, travel and transportation companies had to rethink and restrategize their business plans. In this episode, Theo chats with Kenneth Chang, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Korean Air, on how a business of 53 years had to pivot from its traditional ways to navigate the pandemic. Chang takes us through the challenges the airline faced, and how they leveraged technology to support quick decision-making that enabled the business to pivot quickly in turbulent times, taking advantage of the new opportunities presented to them during the pandemic. As a leader with foresight, Chang also shares how he instilled change management from an organizational viewpoint, building trust among employees. Keeping to the company's environmental values, we hear about the airline's green initiative, and how they are bringing in more fuel-efficient planes, steering away from the bigger is better mindset. But one of the most exciting things to look out for in the company's digital transformation journey is in the way they are looking to leverage the large pool of customer data, analyzing them to improve customer service. From building an app that gets employees their meals on time, to one that can help passengers track their luggage in transit, listen in to find out how the airline is innovating as it prepares for the future of travel in this post-pandemic season.
Ulta Beauty is now the largest beauty retailer in the United States, carrying more than 25,000 products from 500 established and emerging beauty brands, including Ulta Beauty's own private label. Despite many traditional retailers being faced with fierce competition, razor-thin margins, and declining sales, Ulta Beauty is still setting trends and producing fresh takes on what it means to be a beauty purveyor. Today, the company is trying on new digital offerings and cloud-enabled tools to deliver a vast array of personalized experiences and transform how shoppers buy and discover beauty yet again. On this episode, we continue our transformation series with Prama Bhatt, Ulta Beauty’s chief digital officer, to discuss the work her team is doing, and how they think through different perspectives and lenses to drive innovation.
In this episode, Theo speaks with ex-Googler, Dr. Jiang Hong, Head of TapTap Developer Services, and Founder of LeanCloud, which was acquired by gaming company XD Inc. Dr. Jiang shares his thoughts on the unique gaming market in China, and how XD, as the holding company of Asia’s largest game marketplace TapTap, is looking to help build a better web developer community in the industry. When it comes to the gaming community, understanding what players want in each market is key to growth, and Dr. Jiang discusses what factors support the success of Asian games in overseas markets. He talks about XD TapTap’s vision for global expansion, as well as the misconceptions and the opportunities that lie within the gaming world. Listen in to learn about his personal journey in the entrepreneurial world, the challenges that XD TapTap has overcome in its journey to success, and what he hopes for the future of web development and gaming.
In this episode, Theo and Paris speak with Professor Denpong Soodphakdee, VP of Khon Kaen University (KKU), on KKU’s digital transformation journey. Founded in 1964, KKU is an established university in northeastern Thailand with more than 40,000 students studying in 19 faculties. On a mission to prepare future global citizens to work in a fast evolving world, KKU also aims to be recognized both internationally and regionally as a leading university in research and technology. Prof. Denpong shares the challenges KKU overcame in digitalization, such as implementing training for less technical staff and driving a mindset shift for better adoption. He also talks about the benefits of no-code platforms, and how to get people engaged and excited about developing their own apps. Hear his first hand account about KKU’s first hackathon, the results, and what it takes to help lead the organization towards being a “Smart University” that others in the sector can model.
In this episode, Theo chats with Ash Austin, Practice Lead for Platforms at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (Bendigo) on simplifying the banking experience for more than 1.9 million customers. As a community-focused bank, Ash shares what it means at Bendigo to put people first, and how Bendigo uses technology as an enabler to support the needs of their customers. He talks about the concept of a service-based model, where products, and skills, from dev-ops to project management, are developed based on the requirements of individual teams. This approach enables the bank to adopt a customer-first mindset. As people’s needs change, particularly since the pandemic, the organization is now exploring the potential of APIs in supporting new business opportunities and building partnerships across different sectors. Tune in to hear about the frictionless experience that sets Bendigo and Adelaide bank apart, and exciting new projects like their mobile-only digital bank, Up, that is set to transform the way people think about banking.
If you’re interested in the world of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), then this episode is definitely not one you want to miss. DeFi has experienced exponential growth over the past few years, capturing the attention of investors globally. But with new opportunities, come new complexities and risks. One of the biggest challenges is distinguishing quality crypto assets from pure hype, particularly for non-institutional Investors. In the hot seat for this episode is Alex Svanevik, the Co-founder and CEO of Nansen, a blockchain analytics platform that enriches on-chain data with millions of wallet labels. Nansen’s mission is to be a driving force in offering crypto investors trusted, high quality data intelligence to enable them to make informed decisions, quickly. Crypto investors use Nansen to discover opportunities, perform due diligence and grow their portfolios with real-time dashboards and alerts. But he’s not the only guest we have on the show. In the co-host seat with Theo is Paris Tran, Territory Account Manager, Digital Native of Google Cloud. Listen in as Alex shares the genesis of Nansen with Theo and Paris, as well as the inner workings of deploying AI algorithms to analyze petabytes of crypto trading data per day, and their vision for the future of DeFi.
This week, Theo speaks to Ashish Kumar Singh, CHRO of Meesho and our pioneer HR C-suite on the show. As India’s fastest growing internet commerce platform, Meesho is democratizing e-commerce and bringing innovation online. With the Meesho marketplace supporting small businesses, individual entrepreneurs and everything in between, Ashish touches on their “users-first mantra,” which not only refers to customers, but also Meesho’s own employees. When the pandemic hit, it not only affected demand on Meesho’s platform, but also impacted ways of working. One main area of focus was brought to light - the challenge of achieving work-life balance. As CHRO, Ashish shares unique, first hand insights on how the company leverages technology such as MeeBOT for pulse collection, and to measure the employee experience, looking for areas of improvement. He also covers the importance of ensuring transparent communication and collaboration. From tips on enabling a remote workforce to leveraging tools like Google Meet, listen in as Ashish discusses future-of-work models, the implications of technology on our everyday lives and how Meesho has stayed at the forefront of reimagining new ways of work.
David Lynch, Group CTO from bolttech, joins the show with Jay to talk about how insurtechs of today are emerging from the convergence of technology and insurance. As the world’s largest technology-enabled ecosystem for protection insurance and the most international insurtech, bolttech operates in over 30 markets. The business works collaboratively with 180+ insurance carriers on its platform that need access to technology, advocating the need for insurance companies that implement AI and machine learning, to augment their services to deliver better products and protection outcomes. David also discusses trends such as the shift towards usage-based insurance and the consequent need for the industry to invent new products, with insurtechs fuelling the acceleration of product innovation. At the same time, the fully digital insurance purchase journey is becoming a reality in the embedded insurance or microinsurance areas. He shares insights on finding a balance between supply and demand, as well as achieving growth in the marketplace. From key factors that affect customer acquisition, to new revenue generation opportunities, tune in to find out more about bolttech’s research on what is needed to build a successful, future-ready marketplace.
Zebra Technologies is one of the largest suppliers of barcode printing and scanning devices globally. In 1991, Zebra introduced 2D barcode scanners followed by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking tags, rugged mobile computers, tablets, and wearable devices for increased inventory and asset visibility. Lately, it's been acquiring companies in software, robotics, AI, data capture, and real-time location systems, all to help it transform from a traditional hardware-centric company to a software solutions organization to realize a vision it calls enterprise asset intelligence (EAI) at the edge. Today, Zebra has customers in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, transportation, logistics, and the public sector, with over 10,000 partners across 100 countries. In today's episode, Chris Hood sits down with Janet Kennedy, Vice President, North America Regions at Google Cloud, and Tom Bianculli, SVP and CTO at Zebra Technologies, to go behind the scenes of this Transformation Debrief conversation to learn how Zebra Technologies has navigated these changes.
In this episode, Theo speaks to Ronak Shah, Head of Data at apna.co. As one of the largest gig economies in the world, India is seeing rising numbers among younger people joining the ecosystem. Driven by digital adoption and new ways of working, Apna saw an opportunity to help bridge the gap between employers and potential candidates. Leveraging data and AI technology, Ronak shares how the company is able to level the playing field for those in the gig economy, and help millions of people achieve their goals. By focussing on what data reveals, Apna is able to apply the learnings to the marketplace, assist in upskilling people and build a community. With over 500 million users on the platform, Ronak also shares how Apna maintains safety and security not just in terms of data privacy, but also in creating a collaborative and inclusive space for all to learn from one another. Through quizzes and language aptitude tests, Apna helps recruiters identify skill sets easily, for a good match. Listen in as Ronak reveals Apna’s global expansion plans to serve one billion users, and provide even more upskilling on the platform.
Theo is in the interviewer’s chair for this episode as Frank Liu from Zilliz joins the show to talk about how AI and machine learning are making it possible for developers to understand and extract more value from unstructured data such as text, audio, images, video, and more. Traditional databases are great for handling structured data, such as information that can easily be captured and categorized in a table. For example, a book database would have columns for the title and author. This allows the data to be searched, sorted, and filtered according to those values. However, unstructured data isn't so easily managed. Frank explains how vector databases and AI can use algorithms and increased compute power to search unstructured data without relying on just tags and keywords. This has led to Zilliz being a major contributor to two open source projects - Milvus, which stores embedding vectors and feature maps from trained machine learning models, and Towhee, a machine learning platform built on top of Google’s Tensorflow and the Pytorch open source machine learning framework. Tools like these could be used to do a reverse image search to find similar photos, or even music recommendations based on the rhythm or sound of the music instead of being restricted to artist and genre keywords. Frank shares some of the highly specific and interesting use cases Zilliz has seen in fields like network security and pharmaceutical molecular analysis, in their journey to being the one-stop-shop for anyone needing to understand human-generated unstructured data.
In this episode, Jay and Theo are joined by Pak Kusumo Martanto, CEO & Co-Founder of Blibli, who shares how the business is constantly adapting and staying agile to ensure excellent e-commerce experiences for millions in Indonesia. Pak Kusumo discusses how the pandemic was a wake-up call for many, with the needs of customers constantly changing. Keeping in mind that the digital economy saw a 50% increase globally over the past two years, and insights that are unique to Indonesia, for example being a gadget centric-culture, Blibli saw an opportunity for service fulfilment and helping partners with digital infrastructure. By leveraging technology and big data, Blibli was able to build a single customer view to guide their omni-channel strategy. In doing so, the business was able to introduce features that help improve the daily lives of people in Indonesia, swiftly and securely. From “Click-and-collect” at the closest store available, to their “Cinta Bumi” and “Buy-now-Pay-Later” programs, people and technology have been at the centre of every innovation, be it online or offline. Pak Kusumo also shares how Blibli places emphasis on digital security to ensure that customers’ data remain safe from cyber threats. By having a deep understanding of customers and their motivations, Blibli is able to ensure a seamless end-to-end experience across the retail value chain, right up to last mile delivery.
Faced with changing customer behaviors and demands, tightening margins, and increasing threat from digital competitors, financial services institutions (FSIs) will need to meet customers where they are, open up their services, and establish new ways to monetize their products. Doing so will also enable them to build a better profile of their customers, and deliver more personalized user experiences and fast, convenient banking and payment services. Cloud technology plays a big role in this shift toward digital FSIs. In Asia, bank branches now account for just 12% to 21% of monthly transactions in the region, with customers turning to digital channels for routine transactions such as peer-to-peer transfers and bill payments, according to McKinsey&Company. Overall customer engagement has climbed from an average 12.7 to 14.9 transactions a month in Asia's developed markets, and from 6 to 8.1 in emerging markets. In today's episode, Chris Hood chats with Paul Rohan and Aser Blanco to learn why embedding financial services into digital experiences can generate new revenue.
Enterprises across the globe are struggling to innovate because their data and applications are siloed, disconnected, and not easily accessible. Today, Google Cloud is announcing the general availability of Apigee Integration, a solution that helps enterprises easily connect their existing data and applications and surface them as easily accessible APIs that can power new experiences. Data and applications are enablers of digital experiences. However, for many enterprises across the world, data and applications are siloed, buried inside various on-premises and cloud servers, and cannot be easily accessed by internal developers or partners. This challenge slows down efforts of digital transformation by extending development timelines from weeks to months. Integration and API management solutions address this challenge by enabling developers to seamlessly connect their data and applications, and surface them as easily consumable APIs. In this episode, Chris Hood sits down with Scott Haaland and Andrew Pickelsimer to better understand how an API-first approach to integration can help deliver on consumer expectations and generate business value.
Enterprises across the globe are seeing surging demand for digital experiences from their customers, employees, and partners. For many of these enterprises, hundreds of business applications are hosted in private or public clouds that interact with their users (customers, partners, and employees) spread across geographies, channels (web, mobile, APIs, VPNs, and cloud services), and time zones. As a consequence of this surge in demand, enterprises are also experiencing increased pressure to fortify their technical infrastructure against cyber attacks. The number of reported cyber attacks on U.S. companies rose 69% in 2020 from the previous year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Web and API attacks cannot be prevented but can be mitigated—a recent study showed that 55% of organizations experience a DDoS attack at least every month. While many enterprises are accelerating digital transformation to build omnichannel experiences, they need to keep security and privacy top of mind across all of these channels. This goal can only be supported by implementing a robust security architecture and organizational policy enforcement model that enables enterprises to prevent, detect, and react to newer threats, in near-real time. While it is easy to say, implementation of such a system can be extremely challenging. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Sai Saran Vaidyanathan and Sachin Kalra to break down the benefits and best practices for securing APIs for safer application development in the cloud.
FinTech is a fast growing and competitive industry. To stay ahead, companies need to innovate and release new features more quickly than the competition. In this episode, Theo chats with Giovanni Sakti (Gio) and Giri Kuncoro from Indonesian financial services platform GoTo Financial, which includes the popular e-payment service GoPay. Gio and Giri discuss their commitment to improving the developer experience (DX) and how that led to the creation of their new internal developer platform. Gio explains that GoTo grew rapidly in the beginning, releasing more features and hiring more people. But that velocity soon reached a plateau as developers began to work in silos, leading to fragmented decision-making. And because GoPay’s systems need to be scalable and reliable, a lot of innovation is focused on cloud-native technologies such as microservices, containers, and service meshes. But as the infrastructure became increasingly more complex, developers found themselves spending more of their time fine-tuning infrastructure instead of delivering on features. Listen to the firsthand account of how Giri’s team built their internal developer platform called GoPay.sh to improve the developer experience using not just the four pillars of good DX, but also how empathy played a major part in improving the experience and ensuring full adoption.
This week, Jay and Theo talk with Anny Huang, DVP & Head of Digital Business for Singaporean insurer Income (previously NTUC Income). Singapore’s only insurance co-operative, Income is also one of the country’s oldest and largest insurers. It is also one of the most forward-looking. Income is the only composite insurer to offer all of its products and services online and has ranked as the number one digital insurer in Singapore for the last two years. Anny describes the pressure to retain that title as more insurers and InsurTech players enter the market. Central to Income’s success is its commitment to providing a fantastic digital experience. While Income has a digital transformation office, Anny believes true digital transformation starts with the BAU staff. She began by looking at marketing’s core activities to identify ways that technology could improve tactics and increase returns. By adding a data person to her team, it became possible to analyze how marketing activities in various channels produced financial returns for the business. Once it became possible to identify the weak links or failure points in these connections, Anny built a MarTech team to find solutions and improve returns – supported by machine learning and the Google Cloud team. Anny sees a key part of her role as being on top of the latest technologies and digital trends – which requires her to be naturally and insatiably curious. Whether she’s configuring her own smart home or checking out the latest apps her son has found, Anny never stops exploring, experimenting, and playing. Her formidable skills, experience, and passion for digital technologies of all kinds sees the discussion turn to gender biases in tech roles. According to McKinsey, the finance and insurance industry in Singapore is leading the way when it comes to gender parity – particularly at the executive level. But as certain roles in the industry continue to be dominated by males, Anny is proof, if proof were needed, that digital talent is defined by passion, not gender.
In this episode, Associate Professor Sarah Kummerfeld, Head of Data Science for the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, joins Jay and Theo to discuss the vital role cloud computing plays in genomic sequencing. Genomic sequencing has been contributing to medical research to improve the understanding and diagnosis of rare diseases for many years. However, sequencing a single genome produces approximately 100GB of data in its raw format, which then needs to be converted into a format that can be analyzed and shared with researchers. This process can take as much as 600 CPU hours per genome. The Garvan Institute knew that processing vast amounts of genomes was far beyond the capabilities of on-prem infrastructure. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, genomic sequencing took on even more importance. Sarah’s team realized that moving to the public cloud was the only way, embarking on a pilot program to process 14,000 genomes. Listen in as Sarah reveals how the team at Garvan Institute reduced the time it took to sequence the virus from a PCR test from two days to about four hours – dramatically speeding up contact tracing and reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the community. She talks through how the team uses a system called Terra, and how it became easier to manage the privacy and security of genomic data in Google Cloud, and the vast capacity required for this data in the region. In fact, Sarah’s team discovered that with Google Cloud, there was enough capacity available within Australia to run a pilot program three times as big. As biology increasingly becomes a data science, generating enormous pools of data, Sarah shares how the Garvan Institute is embracing the huge opportunity machine learning presents to help build and improve the vital genomic infrastructure for Australia.
In this episode, we are joined by Paul Thanaarmates Arriyavat, Head of Venture Builders at Kasikorn X, to discuss how Kasikorn X is making blockchain technologies, NFTs, and decentralized finance more accessible to people. Kasikorn X has long been committed to building the future of digital banking through its Business–Technology Group (KBTG). In 2021, KBTG launched Kasikorn X, focused on the rapidly evolving world of decentralized finance (DeFi). In partnership with Google Cloud, Kasikorn X develops projects that make the benefits of DeFi, the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs accessible to most people. With the DeFi space growing so rapidly, any new startup needs to move fast to avoid missed opportunities. As a result, Kasikorn X operates separately from the bank and the KBTG, with its own operating model and culture. To date, Kasikorn X has already launched Kubix, the first ICO portal from a Thai financial institution, and Coral, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) empowering Thai and Asian artists to sell their artworks globally. Pauls gives a firsthand account of how the bank is looking to simplify the buying and selling of NFTs with the Coral platform, as most people lack the knowledge or understanding necessary to navigate this space. Coral aims to solve pain points by focusing on three key areas for both the artist and collector community - security, payments and reach. He ends by sharing how Kasikorn X intends to stay competitive by consistently innovating, and creating products that people love because they’re simple and easy to use. At the heart of the business is the same spirit of innovation that continues to drive rapid developments in blockchain, NFTs, and decentralized finance, while the culture is one of learning fast by trying everything.
In this episode, Marcus Lopez, Senior EVP of Digital, Data and Technology for Cathay Financial Holdings, joins Jay and Theo to discuss the organization’s approach to innovation as it rethinks its services and customer journeys. As the largest financial holding company in Taiwan with about 14 million customers, Cathay operates in China and most countries in Southeast Asia. Marcus explains how a joint venture with Alibaba six years ago prompted the Cathay team into reconsidering their approach to acquiring customers, product innovation, and the technology stack. Since then, the organization has undergone a mobile-first, data driven digital transformation with the help of Google Cloud, which he believes has allowed Cathay to become a market leader in Taiwan. Marcus breaks it down for us into three pillars with Cathay’s transformation. First, improving the customer journey and experience with new products and innovations. Second, looking at long term infrastructure investment to ensure the business has the capabilities it needs three to five years from now. And third, helping people adapt to more tech- and data-driven ways of working. Cathay is also looking beyond its own operations to find ways to embed its products and services within the customer journeys of its strategic partners with an API-driven strategy, as Cathay as a Service (CaaS). Cathay has been able to scale up this ecosystem of financial services and analyst capabilities to partners by using the Google Cloud and the Apigee API Platform. Learn what were some of the challenges faced, and about Cathay’s future expansion plans through Southeast Asia, where they treat each operation as a fresh start, redesigning everything from the ground up with a cloud native, mobile first approach.
In this episode, Jay and Theo are joined by Herman Widjaja, CTO at leading marketplace platform Tokopedia, to learn more about its culture of customer-focused innovation. Tokopedia’s recent merger with Southeast Asia's leading mobile on-demand services and payments platform Gojek to form the GoTo group, made headlines as Indonesia’s largest business deal. 13 years ago, Tokopedia’s two founders set out to solve the problem of transparent pricing for Indonesians, regardless which of the 17,000 islands they may live on, while also helping merchants to be successful without relocating to Jakarta. Today, 12+ million merchants use the platform to sell 638+ million products. Herman outlines six priorities for Tokopedia’s technology team over the next two years. These include strengthening the platform, increasing security and privacy, focussing on consumer technology innovation, AI-first and data driven transformation, financially optimized execution, and ultimately, building a world-class technology organization. Platform stability, reliability and quality are of maximum importance for Tokopedia. While five minutes of downtime might only shave a tiny fraction of a percent off the platform’s uptime record, every second has an impact on the lives of customers and the income of merchants. Tokopedia is also keen on expanding their use of AI and ML to solve problems and provide more powerful data-driven features for customers and merchants. Central to Tokopedia’s vision is customer empathy. Every new feature or build is guided by the question 'What’s in it for the customer?' Herman talks about how this has led to a cultural shift within the technology team that doesn’t seek to simply deliver on a PRD or BRD. By talking to customers and understanding their pain points, the team reveals new opportunities for innovation that solve genuine problems.
In this episode, Jay and Theo chat with Arjun Gupta, Senior Software Engineer at Josh Talks, to learn about the company’s mission to empower the youth of India, with relatable role models and e-learning. The media platform targets young people in smaller towns across India with content in ten vernacular languages. Arjun likens Josh Talks to an elder brother, guiding users through critical life decisions and mentoring them to improve their lives. Josh Talk’s ten YouTube channels currently have 14 million subscribers, with videos garnering about 70 million views each month. The success of Josh Talks led to the launch of an e-learning application, Josh Skills, to upskill young people and better-equip them to find employment. The flagship course is Spoken English, as this remains a common reason employers reject job applicants. A popular feature of Josh Skills is P2P, a peer to peer service allowing users to click a button to talk to friends within the Josh community, practicing their spoken English skills. To improve completion rates, Arjun shares how his team is currently working on ways to gamify the learning process, with subscribers competing in trivia contests to climb the leaderboard. But interactive features like this don’t come without technical challenges, which is where Google Cloud can help. To make game play within the app as real-time as possible, Josh Talks will scale its servers to handle the increased load with minimum latency. Josh Talks long-term vision is to support subscribers from school age (14-15) until they are settled into their careers (30-35), which is why Josh Talks is building an infrastructure capable of supporting multiple tools and products so it can grow alongside them.
In this episode, Jay and Theo are joined by Manav Doshi, GM of Technology Solutions and Keith Junius, Enterprise Architect, both of Equifax Australia, to talk about the organization’s ambitious cloud transformation. As a global credit bureau and data analytics company, Equifax is helping financial institutions, companies, and government agencies make critical financial decisions. In 2017, a critical event triggered a complete rethink of its security in all 24 locations. Equifax Australia embarked on a AUD2 billion journey with Google Cloud to migrate 100% of its key platforms and credit bureaus into the cloud. Manav shares how, prior to 2017, Equifax AU had previously believed its data was safer in private data centers. However, maintaining a high level of security requires a lot of investment. Equifax AU realized that the maturity of cloud platforms, particularly Google Cloud, has progressed beyond what it could achieve on prem. The cloud allows Equifax AU to respond far more nimbly to critical security events, with much of the security work taken care of by the platform. Meanwhile, by adopting a CI/CD methodology the company can roll out security changes and new features quickly and iteratively with push-button deployment. Improvements to a product can now be made and deployed within minutes. Keith ends with how Equifax AU is treating the move as a global business transformation, pairing technology with the right human skills. Equifax wants its people to be curious enough to seek out and play with new things, focussing on a growth mindset and a passion to learn, along with a willingness to collaborate.
In this episode, we speak to Pak Kaspar, CEO of Bank Raya, and Pak Gibbon, EVP of Technology System Information, Bank Raya, who share in more detail how Bank Raya is disrupting themselves first internally, to meet the challenges of tomorrow. As one of the largest and most distributed banks in Southeast Asia, Bank Raya (previously known as Bank Rakyat Indonesia Agroniaga (AGRO)) has been on a digital and cultural transformation journey since 2016. Working closely with Google Cloud, the bank has managed to modernize their infrastructure to increase security and scalability, helping them enable the capabilities to build out a digital bank. Pak Kaspar talks about 'Super Raya' and how the bank has two main goals - the first is to capture new types of customers, and the second is to create tailored products for specific problem solving. It is looking to push innovation forwards within their product development, with eyes on the metaverse future. Bank Raya has been investing in their people for many years, ensuring that they have the right talent in place to help scale up at speed. By putting people and security first, with the best practices in place, they stay true to their PPT core - people, process and technology. With strong foundations already in place, Bank Raya is able to customise parts of the business with new applications and offerings, to meet the changing demands of customers.
Singtel is a household name in Singapore as the leading telecommunications company. But did you know it serves more than 744 million customers across 21 countries, including Australia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines? This 143-year-old established telco doesn't look any bit its age, as over the years, it has continuously evolved and reinvented the way it does business to keep up with changing times. Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to transform through data-powered innovation with the best infrastructure, platform, industry solutions, and expertise for digital transformation. In today's episode, we are joined by Manoj Prasanna Kumar, the Head of Technology leading 5G and Internet of Things innovations at Singtel, to discuss Singtel's rich history, the drive for reliable connectivity, and their continuous focus on innovating for the future.
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Google Cloud recently announced a new strategic partnership to accelerate digital transformation across consumer and enterprise segments in Indonesia. Part of their efforts includes digitally transforming Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison's operations ‒ To continue on its path to innovation and build a cloud-first organization, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison will modernize its infrastructure and applications on Google Cloud. In particular, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Google Cloud will define a clear roadmap for advanced data analytics modernization and AI/ML adoption that will not only enable the telecommunications leader to improve its core operations, costs, and customer experiences, but also help the company advance its position in the telecommunications ecosystem and enable it to identify and maximize new business model opportunities in future. In this episode, we continue our conversation with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, featuring Bayu Hanantasena, Chief Business Officer, to dive deeper into their innovation and transformation journey and how they are building a cloud-first organization to improve their core operations.
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Google Cloud recently announced a new strategic partnership to accelerate digital transformation across consumer and enterprise segments in Indonesia. Strongly aligned to the Indonesian government's digital economy development program goals, the multi-faceted partnership will serve Indonesia's SMBs as a priority target segment and spans many areas that are core to the capabilities of both organizations. The pillars of the strategic partnership will see the two organizations working jointly to; Digitally transform Indonesia's SMBs across their business lifecycles, Digitally transform enterprises and communities with the power of 5G, and Digitally transform Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison's own operations. In this episode, we are joined by Vikram Sinha, President Direct and CEO at Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Rob Enslin, President, Cloud Sales at Google to dive into the strategic partnershp and learn more about the three pillars of digital transformation and the impact they will have on Indonesia.
Jitesh of Federal Bank and John of Riafy join your hosts this week to chat about what it takes to build and maintain a specialized digital banking representative. John starts the show with a history of Riafy, including how he and his co-founders chose this magically-inspired name. Jitesh walks us through Federal Bank’s journey to a digitization strategy that started in 1996. With an eye for the future, the bank adopted mobile banking early on, supporting this feature along with international banking and more for 20 plus years. In 2016, Federal Bank started a campaign of research and development to strategize the continuing build-out of digital and mobile banking offerings. These efforts paid off, and now 88% of customer interactions occur in mobile or digital banking. Jitesh details the individual projects that make up their robust digital presence, like their revolutionary mobile banking signup that makes getting started easy. With the help of Riafy, Federal Bank has implemented beneficial tools like Feddy, the AI chat agent who offers 24/7 assistance to online customers. John and Jitesh tell us how Feddy was created to be not only helpful but friendly, acting as a mascot for the bank. We learn how Feddy was engineered, including the planning process for building the AI and how John and his team designed Feddy’s training program. With the help of Google solutions like Dialogflow, the team created Feddy quickly and efficiently with a likable personality all his own. Overcoming initial consumer reservations, Federal Bank chose a slow rollout for Feddy. Through research into customer behaviors, Federal Bank planned to start small, keeping him external, and slowly introducing him to more banking areas as customer trust developed. In the future, Riafy and Federal Bank will continue to grow Feddy and foster a trusting relationship between Feddy and customers through advanced conversation, context principles, and more. John and Jitesh offer advice to other companies looking to incorporate AI into their digital platform.
This week, the APAC Podcast welcomes Ram Radhakrishnan, the Head of Analytics, Loyalty, and Customer Data at Woolworths. He starts the show with a brief history of Woolworths’ online presence, including how WooliesX was introduced to leverage modern technologies and facilitate a smooth online grocery shopping experience. As the company evolved, leadership had to grow and adapt. The startup culture of WooliesX enables an innovative, future-thinking environment that gives employees autonomy in learning things like AI to solve problems. Understanding customers is vital to improving the online shopping experience, so data collected from rewards programs are essential metrics. Ram describes how this data is collected, analyzed, and used to meet high customer expectations. For example, in the app, personalized lists make it easy for customers to select their everyday items quickly. Google Cloud’s myriad capabilities have fostered the digital growth of WooliesX. Ram details the Cloud Platform tools used by the company and how Google’s commitment to innovation means new, valuable features are continually released. We hear about the structure of WooliesX and how the practices and tribes in the company are supported to foster continued learning and growth. Ram closes the show with a look into the future of WooliesX and retail in general. He talks about the challenges and exciting advancements in analytics he anticipates in areas like robotics and AI.
Cloud FinOps is an operational framework and cultural shift that brings technology, finance, and business together to drive financial accountability and accelerate business value realization. Today, Chris Hood is joined by Eric Lam, Bruce Warner and Pathik Sharma to discuss an actionable set of steps that will help your organization implement FinOps and maximize your cloud investment on Google Cloud.
Jay and Theo are back this week hosting Tony and Tars from Taiwanese company Mlytics. Mlytics strives for a faster, safer internet through cloud-disrupting solutions. Our guests talk about the origins of Mlytics, and how the company closely monitors, refines, and analyzes a plethora of data as part of their AI solution for customers. This system revolutionizes the Content Delivery Network, working faster through caching and compression and safer by protecting the networks from attack. After studying the CDN market, the CEO of Mlytics realized the powerful solutions available, while technically impressive, were not end-user friendly. With Mlytics, he sought to change the space by working backwards and beginning with a detailed picture of customer needs, then building solutions to satisfy them. Mlytics clients are provided with easy access to multiple CDNs quickly and safely to offer ultimate control and tailoring to their particular goals. By building this ecosystem of choice, Mlytics has created a one-of-a-kind brand that enables clients to choose the tools that work best for their company. With standardized CDN usage, clients know they’re using the best networks and paying for only what they use in a centralized billing platform. AI is a big part of this Mlytics Smart Load Balancer solution. Through machine learning techniques, Mlytics analyzes data to find patterns in CDN infrastructure and reactions. They’ve built in a 15 second performance prediction based on this information, allowing them to predict CDN downtime and automatically move client projects to more efficient networks when necessary. The company’s ethos of full transparency has fostered a supportive and collaborative work environment as well. Our guests offer advice for other tech companies looking to exceed customer expectations and empower employees to experiment and innovate.
Verizon has been one of the leading innovators in the telco industry and, not surprisingly, is also one of the early adopters of leveraging the cloud for digital transformation. In addition, Verizon has been at the forefront of tackling the cloud FinOps. In this episode, we are joined by Ulaga Subramanian, Director of Cloud in Global Technology Services, to share Verizon's cloud journey, and lessons learned using the tools and practices that help them manage and budget their cloud spend to support continuous innovation.
Matthew Chan, Chief Digital Officer of the Jardine Restaurant Group, joins Jay and Theo this week on the podcast. Operating KFC, Pizza Hut, and PHD branches in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and other Asia-Pacific cities, JRG has created a robust data collection and analysis system to realize their customer-centric business strategy. In 2019, Jardine Restaurant Group began a digital transformation geared toward creating the best customer experience. By leveraging new technologies, the team developed strategies like TTT. This talkability, traffic, and transactions framework identifies talking points that will encourage curiosity and start meaningful conversations, driving traffic to the site and ending with successful transactions. Through real-world examples, Matthew describes how JRG takes data from sources like Google to pinpoint customer interests. The team then actively engages with customers, gathering more data to enhance their online presence and drive traffic to their offerings. Through detailed site optimization, JRG is able to boast a double digit conversion rate from browsing to transactions. Matthew explains that staying relevant is the best way to grow and adapt with changing client needs. During the pandemic, for example, JRG launched their online ordering and delivery system, Cloud Kitchen, to provide contactless food service for employee and customer protection. Their charity kitchen initiative also grew from the needs of locked down clients with few food options. JRG provides these meals for free to strengthen the communities they serve and bring joy during hard times. In the future, Jardine Restaurant Group will continue their mission to adapt new technologies in smart ways, creating value for customers and exceeding their expectations.
Cue Health is reshaping healthcare delivery through connected diagnostics to empower individuals to live healthier lives. In this podcast, Chris Hood joins Cue's co-founders Ayub Khattak and Clint Sever to learn how they are leveraging data and AI/ML to democratize healthcare to create a more accessible and more equitable healthcare system. During the episode, you'll also hear about the challenges they've faced and the learnings they've gathered along the way.
The more complex a dataset is, the more difficult it is to build interoperable systems around it. Clinical data is extremely complex, and EHR vendors build and manage their own proprietary data models to handle those data challenges. In this podcast, you'll hear how Humana is democratizing data and focusing on interoperability as a key pillar in its digital and organizational strategies. Chris Hood joins Patrick Murta, Chief Interoperability Architect at Humana, to discuss how they're leveraging Google Cloud, data, and APIs to advance integrated care delivery and transform healthcare within an interoperable ecosystem.
Welcome to the brand new APAC Podcast! On our inaugural episode, Group CTO John Hanna shares the techniques and technologies The Winning Group employs to provide the best shopping experience for consumers. With all the exciting advances in technology available today, John tells us how he and Winning choose which technologies to leverage for the maximum benefit to customers. Service, safety, and sustainability, the main criteria in this decision, steer them in a direction that best services the customer, keeps employees safe, and is environmentally sustainable. Along with the Three Ss, Winning’s customer-centric Four Strategic Pillars keep the business running smoothly, and John tells us more about each one.
That Digital Show is expanding, and we're happy to announce a new weekly addition to our show in the Asia Pacific region. Each week our team will continue to share incredible stories from the Cloud, insights from our customers on digital transformation and innovation, and build new connections with our growing Google Cloud community. In this episode, Chris Hood welcomes new hosts Theo Davies and Jay Jenkins to get their take on our latest podcast and our plans to bring more Cloud Thought Leadership to the Asia Pacific region.
As podcasting and remote work both explode in popularity, so does the need for quality remote content production. SquadCast is a SaaS remote recording platform that empowers podcasters by capturing quality audio and video conversations that their listeners love. With customers in over 130 countries, SquadCast has revolutionized the way we use technology to record conversations. On this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Zachariah Moreno and Rockwell Felder, co-founders of SquadCast, to learn how remote recording has evolved and how they are empowering media creators to produce incredible content in the cloud.
A design strategy is an intersection of what's valuable for customers and what's profitable for businesses. It is the process of creating a set of guiding principles that articulate the business mission and vision with the design of their products or services. Through it, businesses can answer the question, what's next. In other words, it ensures your team produces what your business needs to align its success to its customers’ needs. Product teams are working overtime to fix bugs, ship the next release or update, and handle tactical day-to-day tasks without having the time or resources to think beyond 12 months. Navigating only in the short-term, teams chase down only the things they can see just ahead. But how do teams unlock ambitious multi-year plans, growth strategies, and new products that take the business beyond their current roadmap? In this episode of our Digital Master Class series, Chris Hood and Natalie Piucco are joined by Golden Krishna to discuss how Google thinks about design strategy, and how organizations can focus on what's next.
People Analytics is about using a data-driven approach to inform your people practices, programs, and processes. Analytical techniques, ranging from reporting and metrics to predictive analytics to experimental research can help you uncover new insights, solve people problems and direct your HR actions. At Google, we use people analytics as a foundational building block that informs everything we do to find, grow and keep Googlers. When faced with a challenging people issue or an important people decision, the conventional approach is to engage in endless debate based on emotions, instincts, and anecdotes. We believe instead that an analytical approach incorporating facts and science can lead to more effective and fair solutions and decisions. In this episode of our Digital Master Class series, Chris Hood and Natalie Piucco are joined by Mary Kate Stimmler to shed light on how to begin adopting data-driven decision approaches in HR, and how Google uses People Analytics to build one of the world's best places to work.
Organizational transformation is about transforming and changing an existing corporate culture to grow the business, improve employee satisfaction and drive innovation. However, the challenge for many organizations is knowing when it's time for organizational transformation to happen and not being sure of what the corporate culture should be. This can be achieved by focusing on six tenets of change - People, Strategy, Structure, Environment, Empowerment, and Innovation. In this episode, Chris Hood and Natalie Piucco welcome Tanushree Gupta, Head of Digital Transformation for EMEA at Google Cloud, to walk through our organizational transformation workshop, and discuss how Google thinks about building successful environments that empower people, grow business value, and cultivate innovation.
Executive teams across all industries are using digital technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for greater innovation, business transformation, operational efficiency and speed to market—and intelligent automation is proven to be the shortest path to success. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Neeraj Gokhale from Automation Anywhere and Vikas Anand from Google Cloud to discuss how the two companies are partnering to speed value creation for every enterprise using intelligent automation. The team will share how Automation Anywhere’s RPA platform, Google’s Apigee API platform, and associated Google Cloud technologies like Google AI can transform customer engagement, strengthen supply chains, and streamline internal operations by automating workflows that span across multiple systems, teams, and business entities.
One of the biggest challenges modern organizations face is implementing change successfully. Our rapidly changing world often generates a strategic imperative to change: Unless we make things different, our business will not succeed, or last. Ultimately, change leadership is about creating a shared understanding within your organization of the change required to achieve success. In this episode, Chris Hood and Natalie Piucco welcome Anna Baird, Head of Culture and Innovation for Customer Success at Google Cloud, and Sarah Masotti, Digital Transformation Lead at Google Cloud, to walk through a Master Class on change leadership, and the importance of communication and psychological safety to support organizations on their cloud transformation journey.
Many of Google's best ideas begin as experiments or passion projects in Area 120, Google's in-house incubator. At Google Cloud, leaders often ask for practical lessons for empowering large distributed workforces to find, fund, grow, measure, and launch new product innovations that drive business and customer value. In this five-part podcast Digital Master Class series designed for technology leaders, we set out to 'open-source' Google's lessons learned on growing cultures of innovation, setting 10x product visions, driving organizational transformation, and leading people through the art of the possible. We've bottled these insights into practical and actionable learnings to support your technology, organizations, and people through cloud digital transformations. To kick off the series, Chris Hood and Natalie Piucco team up to chat with Paul Lambert, Partner at Area 120, and take a peek behind the curtains of Google's in-house incubator, where Googlers work on 20% projects 100% of the time.
Now, more than ever, there is an urgency to incorporate diversity and inclusion into every aspect of your business. Not only because it enhances your ability to be responsive to users and customers, but because it builds trust and a sense of belonging for your employees. Companies have seen massive amounts of change in the past few months. As operations return to capacity, innovation will be vital to accelerating transformation and preventing future disruptions. This is achieved across your organization's people, processes, data, and technology. In this episode, Chris Hood joins Bella Bardswell and Finn Toner to take an inside look at how Google thinks about organizational development and operates to drive a continuous culture of creativity and innovation.
Major League Baseball is partnering with Google to transform how fans engage with the sport, both on and off the field, using data and AI. In this episode, we chat with Josh Frost, VP of Product Management for Baseball Data. We learn how the MLB is capitalizing on baseball's rich history - and data - to deliver personalized, immersive experiences for today's audiences and the fans of tomorrow. Our Telco, Media, and Gaming series goes deep with the industry's leading innovators to learn how they are evolving the entertainment landscape.
The financial services industry is evolving at a rapid pace, with shifting consumer expectations, new technologies, and developing regulatory requirements. Financial services firms need the right technology to help them stay agile and prepare for the future. The cloud is a key point of leverage for firms looking to improve performance across a broad range of activities. Moving to the public cloud can advance operational resiliency, improve staff productivity, increase regulatory compliance and enhance business model innovation. In this Episode, Chris Hood and Sam Maule are joined by Angel Diaz, VP of Technology Capabilities and Innovation at Discover, to discuss how Discover is establishing a framework for smaller, self-empowered engineering teams to drive innovation.
Today’s world is cluttered with messages, devices, and alerts. Customers are getting inundated with digital messages and have to be more selective on what they focus on or ignore. To hold customers’ attention and stand out, businesses must deliver personalized digital experiences that both meet and dare to surpass customers’ increasingly high expectations for a digital, in-person, and hybrid landscape. Digital experiences are the dominant factor in a customer’s purchasing decision. That friction-less and personalized experience must be delivered quickly across multiple devices. How do businesses meet these high expectations? In this episode, Chris Hood is joined with Evan Scheessele, the DevEx Leader of HP, Inc., who explores how they have created digital experiences built with APIs to deliver more personalized, adaptable, and consistent experiences that delight their customers.
Faced with changing customer behaviors and demands, tightening margins, and increasing threat from digital competitors, financial services institutions will need to meet customers where they are, open up their services, and establish new ways to monetize their products. Doing so will also enable them to build a better profile of their customers, and deliver more personalized user experiences and fast, convenient banking and payment services. Cloud technology plays a big role in this shift toward digital FSIs. Moov leverages Google Cloud to make it easy for developers to accept, store, and disburse money. On this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Wade Arnold, Co-Founder and CEO of Moov Financial to discuss how developer communities are helping businesses easily embed financial services.
By some accounts e-commerce adoption has accelerated to a level that was not expected to be reached for another 10 years. Lowe’s has an intimate understanding of dealing with that growth. In this episode we’ll chat with Neelima Sharma from Lowe’s about the importance of channel-less experiences and how her teams are advancing their approach to digital commerce. Our Retail Takeover features a series of conversations with leading brands and retailers where we dig a little deeper into what it’s like to be a leader in today’s landscape. Listen to additional episodes featuring Ulta, Albertsons, Crate & Barrel and Zulily.
Crate & Barrel is taking a unique approach to leveraging data insights across the organization. From optimizing marketing spend, to creating personalized experiences for their shoppers, they are seeing the benefits of being a data driven retailer. In this episode we chat with Joe Orlando, Sr. Director of Marketing Operations, Technology & Analytics at Crate & Barrel. Our Retail Takeover features a series of conversations with leading brands and retailers where we dig a little deeper into what it’s like to be a leader in today’s landscape. Listen to additional episodes featuring Ulta, Albertson’s, Lowe’s and Zulily.
Albertsons is working with Google to create the world’s most predictive grocery engine, including integrations with Maps, Search, Business Messages, Google Pay and our Cloud AI Retail products & solutions. In this episode we chat with Chris Rupp, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer & Digital Officer to discuss how Albertsons is disrupting the grocery industry with continuous innovation and developing a roadmap for the future. Our Retail Takeover features a series of conversations with leading brands and retailers where we dig a little deeper into what it’s like to be a leader in today’s landscape. Listen to additional episodes featuring Ulta and Zulily.
Differentiation is core to Zulily's mission to help busy moms find unique and interesting products—including clothes for the whole family and products for the home at the best possible price—with the industry’s most exceptional and personalized shopping experience. In this episode we speak with Julie Penzotti, Principal Data Scientist and Sudhakar Krishnamurthi, Director of Engineering, Data, ML/AI & Marketing to discuss how Zulily is leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to personalize millions of interactions every day. Our Retail Takeover features a series of conversations with leading brands and retailers where we dig a little deeper into what it’s like to be a leader in today’s landscape. Listen to additional episodes featuring Ulta and Albertsons.
Ulta Beauty is redefining the beauty industry by creating personalized, digital experiences for their shoppers. Their focus on innovation has been a true point of differentiation and an important topic that other retailers and brands could learn from. In this episode we speak with Michelle Pacynski, VP of Digital Innovation at Ulta Beauty, to discuss how her team is focused on bringing innovation to the enterprise, to build a digital store of the future. Our Retail Takeover features a series of conversations with leading brands and retailers where we dig a little deeper into what it’s like to be a leader in today’s landscape. Listen to additional episodes featuring Zulily and Albertsons.
Accion has a commitment to support families and small businesses in the Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador – and help address the root causes of migration. Over the next three years, Accion, a global leader in microfinance and fintech impact investing, will provide advice, guidance and consulting services to the financial institutions that are helping micro and small business owners in the region – ultimately benefitting more than 400,000 people. In making this commitment, Accion is a founding partner in Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent call to action to support economic development in the region. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Sam Maule, Google Cloud and special guest Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion, to discuss how they are joining forces with the White House to support digital and financial inclusion in Central America.
The cloud enables businesses to effectively and efficiently utilize hardware and software. It also introduces new complexity and challenges to traditional IT financial management and requires the right financial governance, communication, and partnerships across the organization. In this episode, we are joined by Jon Naseath to discuss how enterprises address technology and strategic transformation and how financial engineering of CapEx helps in the migration to the cloud.
Some of the most important data at your company isn’t living in databases, but in documents, and marketing assets. Yet most companies are still manually writing copy and are reliant on guesswork to get consumers to click or share. Organizations are also leaving heaps of value on the table in the form of new and better social marketing that can be unlocked with artificial intelligence applied to the process. In this episode, we chat with Kate Bradley Chernis, CEO of Lately.ai to learn what she thinks about life, music, innovation, and how her company is reinventing social marketing with artificial intelligence.
APIs are the backbone of digital transformation, and they are essential for business innovation. With APIs, you can securely share data and functionality with developers both inside and outside of your organizational boundaries, letting you build applications faster, seamlessly connect and interact with partners, and drive new business revenue. APIs are a force, that surrounds us daily in everything we do. In this episode, Warren Chuei shares with us insights on building a culture of open innovation and the importance of looking from the outside-in so innovation can have a massive impact on strategic objectives for your business.
One thing is clear, the world is more connected and agile than ever before. A company’s ability to quickly pivot their spend management has become the new benchmark for digital enterprises. While IT expenditure is often regarded as a cost, firms built on a digital core are able to continuously deliver customer value through disruptions. Google Cloud’s value zone provides answers with a rapid assessment that categorizes current investment approaches, recommending high-level strategies to move to an optimal financial case for the business. In this episode, We'll discuss strategies to produce value for customers and how organizations can accelerate this journey by leveraging agile technology economics to support the speed, scale, and stability of their business in the cloud.
In today’s world, it is more critical than ever for enterprises to ensure that their systems and services are as adaptable and profitable as possible. As the data economy begins to grow, what has become apparent is that APIs are key to build new business models, innovate their digital strategies, and grow partnerships. As companies begin to invest more heavily in their data, the question remains: how do companies actually drive revenue using APIs? In this episode, we are joined by APM Terminals a 20+ year old international marine terminal business managing key shipping data all over the world. We chat with David Francis, Head of Digital Products, and Paul Dunn, API Product Manager from APM Terminals to learn how companies can build new business models and grow revenue directly through the productization and monetization of data and APIs.
Business begins with value creation and leading companies prioritize transformation with their customers, partners and employees to generate value. In this episode, Eric Ranta shares with us four dimensions of value creation, and we discuss how organizations can develop perpetual business value through digital strategies that start with the enterprise’s culture and are fueled by their Cloud and IT investments.
For enterprises, the phrase digital transformation has become synonymous with a desire for change. And although at times the term is overused, in most cases it's fairly easy for the enterprise to say what they want to transform. What is more challenging for them to explain, is why. Lafayette Howell, Head of Cloud Value Advisory from Google Cloud joins the show this week to break down how enterprises tackle complex digital challenges, and why it is critical to understand customer needs to reduce value gaps with your investments in the cloud.
APIs are the backbone of digital transformation, and drive organizations to navigate today’s challenging landscape. In this episode we reflect on the past 10 years of Apigee's growth and success helping enterprises transform, and we predict what the next 10 years will look like for API management. Happy Birthday Apigee, and welcome to the next generation of APIs.
Institutions of higher education are now under pressure both from technological and safety/security changes due to the pandemic. Remote learning is creating new challenges across provisioning online content, modernizing the student online experience and tracking student success through analytics and artificial intelligence. Today’s students are well-versed technologically and they expect high-end experiences at the universities they attend. In this episode we explore why it is essential that university IT departments develop solutions for their students, faculty, and administrators as demands grow and campuses digitally evolve.
In 2020, virtually all industries, from retail and manufacturing to finance and hospitality, shifted how they do business. The uniting trait across all of them? A sharpened, more urgent focus on digital maturity. In fact, according to our new report, 75% of companies continued focusing on their digital transformation initiatives, despite all the disruptions, and almost two-thirds of those companies actually increased their investments and efforts. The State of API Economy 2021 report explains why APIs are central to organizations’ needs and digital transformation efforts. This report is based on Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management Platform usage data, customer case studies, and analysis of several third-party surveys conducted with technology leaders from enterprises with 1,500 or more employees, across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Healthcare is a rapidly evolving industry. There is an urgent need to bridge gaps and connect multiple data sources, transactions, data owners and data users to improve all parts of the heathcare system. APIs within an ecosystem help organizations take a patient-centered, outside-in approach towards development and productization of health services. In this episode, we are joined by a panel of experts to discuss how heathcare organizations can use APIs to build ecosystems and marketplaces that improve patient experiences while reducing the total cost to build new services.
APIs are everywhere. They are a differentiator and competitive advantage for several companies and are essential for creating innovative business models, building connected experiences, and meeting the expectations of digital consumers. Unfortunately, many business leaders typically discount APIs as part of their middleware, and too often are not considered an asset for generating business value. Strong businesses link every decision back to improving their value propositions, and APIs deliver the most value when designed from the outside-in. In this episode, we'll take a look at how APIs are not only helping organizations combine functionality into new digital experiences, but are also delivering huge value when served as an interface between a company and people.
Previously, workplace software and applications were exclusively built by expert coders on tools that took years to master. No-code development challenges this paradigm by lowering the barriers of entry to application development and laying the groundwork for the inevitable surge in citizen development. What is citizen development? Gartner defines citizen developers as employees who create 'new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT.' In this episode we'll take a look at how workplace innovators can build applications that help businesses save time, lower costs, reduce IT backlogs and solve long neglected problems.
If there’s one thing the healthcare and life sciences field isn’t lacking, it’s data. What it could use more of, though, are easy-to-use and cost-effective ways to analyze, and make sense—and use—of it all. In this episode we are joined by Google Cloud's Carol Crowe - Healthcare lead for API Programs, and a panel of experts to take a look at the three key pillars the healthcare industry is leveraging to help organizations enable data interoperability and provide value based care.
APIs power the digital marketing channels and the applications we use today. They are a window to your company’s digital assets, exposing them so that developers and partners can build mobile apps and become an extension of your innovation engine. APIs are the technology that brings the CIO and the CMO together. In this episode, we are joined by Eve Psalti, Head of Strategic Platforms and Google Cloud, and Kellyn Christmas, Global Auto Retail Lead at Google, to discuss how APIs are being used for marketing and transforming the automotive industry.
Delivering delightful experiences with personalized content is not an option for companies in the media and entertainment industry — it’s a mandate. Customer growth and retention are increasingly determined by two things: 1) maintaining a constant flow of compelling content, and 2) the ability to seamlessly deliver that content across a wide range of consumer devices. In this episode, we are joined by Joe Barker, API Digital Strategy Lead for Google Cloud, and John Peters, Media and Entertainment Lead at Accenture, to discuss these items as we look towards the digital future of movies, television and gaming.
To drive modernization and innovation, enterprises are increasingly adopting API-first approaches to connecting services across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. APIs and Clouds are everywhere today and hybrid API management gives you the flexibility to deploy your API runtimes anywhere that meets your business needs. In this episode, we are joined by Parna Bhattacharya, Head of Customer Success in APAC and Bala Kasiviswanathan, Director of Product Management, to discuss how enterprises are increasingly adopting an API-First strategy that connects services across hybrid and multi-cloud environments to help develop consumer experiences faster.
APIs are meant to enable transactional business activity without prior restraint, and they are major tools for innovation and experimentation. APIs save businesses money and provide new levels of business agility through reusability and consistency. These very characteristics ultimately make the task of governance easier. This should come as welcome news to those in charge of governance and compliance who are concerned with the proliferation of partners, apps, and devices common in today’s enterprise. In this episode, the show welcomes Rob Parker-Cole and Andy Withers, Digital Transformation Leads from Google London, to discuss how enterprises can reach market faster through API governance.
In our digital-first world, companies require immediate access to cost-effective, customizable apps. Throwing vast amounts of resources into custom software production doesn’t always yield positive results. As an alternative option, many companies are embracing no-code development, a methodology that enables software creation that does not require coding. No-code development fuels lean projects with faster times to market, improved productivity, and tremendous cost savings. In this episode, Praveen Seshadri from AppSheet and Vikas Anand, Head of Product Management for No-Code at Google Cloud share how a no-code platform can help organizations enable innovation everywhere.
Healthcare providers' access to real-time, unified healthcare data is critical—and every second matters. As the industry is pushed to its limits in light of COVID-19, the need for increased data interoperability is more important than ever. In the last few months, the industry has laid the foundation for progress with final rules issued by CMS and ONC, implementing key provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act. Today, healthcare organizations are in dire need of easy-to-use technology that supports health information exchange. In this episode we are joined by Google Cloud's Carol Crowe - Healthcare lead for API Programs, Dharmesh Patel - Healthcare Solutions Manager, and Andy Crowne - Product Lead for Health Plan Data Interoperability, to discuss how the healthcare industry is navigating these changes, and how patients will soon benefit from new digital services.
API consumption metrics help enterprises align their workforces around digital best practices, understand changing user behavior, derive actionable intelligence, and drive business results. Because APIs are at the heart of digital business interactions, enterprises should embrace metrics rooted in API consumption patterns. Traditional enterprise ROI metrics assume certain conditions—e.g., long payback periods and predictable patterns around transaction volume and pricing strength. Digital business operates under different conditions, such as shorter opportunity windows and more fragmented customer segments, that require different metrics. In this episode, Google Cloud's Chris Vogel sits down with value advisors Warren Chuei and Alicia Paterson to discuss how to start tracking key performance indicators for APIs and the strategies businesses need to be aware of to grow business value.
Global digital transformation consultant Alicia Paterson joins the show today to discuss one of the largest areas companies miss in executing their digital vision. In this episode we look at the key roles your organization needs to build a successful API program, and how the API Product Owner helps your business understand customer demands, promotes an outside-in perspective, and navigates your continuously shifting market landscape. Who builds products for your organization today? Do you know the real expectations your customers have? How do you escape the API integration mindset? Listen to this episode to learn how your business and technology teams can come together to make the shift that unlocks the full power of your company's digital vision.
Worldwide, businesses are adapting to the new market conditions by transforming their current operating models to meet consumer demands and improve productivity, all while still focusing on achieving growth. In this new era, taking an outside-in approach to digital business ecosystems can help organizations harness their existing resources and relationships to drive new innovations and efficiency. In this episode, Chris Hood chats with Joe Barker and Michael Endler about the key strategies businesses must leverage to build vast digital ecosystems.
Businesses often struggle with breaking out of the mindset that APIs are solely meant for integrations. In this episode, Chris Hood chats with Raymond Peng, a Global Value Advisor at Google Cloud, to understand how businesses can leverage APIs to improve efficiencies, increase revenue, and navigate changing market demands.
In this first episode our host, Chris Hood, is joined by guests to discuss digital transformation from three perspectives; business, technology and how that has impacted our current digital world.