Adobe Summit, Musk’s Chatbot, Software Strategies and More – Digital CxO Podcast EP 67

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm excited to be here again this week with you all and with Mike Vizard. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, but um, I'm more interested in how you're doing. You've been traveling, you're out in Las Vegas last week for the, uh, Adobe conference, and it seems like that was a lot of AI chatter, but AI equals digital transformation in a lot of regards. So what was your sense of what was going on out there?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. AI seems to be one of the biggest tools that everyone's focusing on in the digital transformation efforts. So yes, there was a lot around, um, bringing in some generative AI into the Adobe tools.

And so I, you know, I wrote some notes down 'cause there was so much information from that event, but the biggest one is they wanna, um, hit every aspect of the content supply chain. Um, that being from creation and production, workflow and planning data, realtime data reporting, um, all of it reporting and insights. So with that, they, um, they had some generative announcements within their firefly.

They had some generative a announcements, um, within their, um, Adobe Experience Cloud. And that brings up another one, which was a big partnership with Microsoft. Um, as far as the Adobe Experience Cloud goes, um, it's gonna share their workflows and data to the Microsoft copilot, and they wanted to continue and expand on all these partnerships with them and IBM and Google and, um, continue to innovate, uh, in these areas, uh, to provide wonderful services to all of their clients and consumers.

Um, but what fascinated me was some of the use case examples. So they brought in, um, Pfizer and, um, they talked about how the Super Bowl ad took them only three weeks to create an entire Super Bowl ad and brought them outstanding results. Millions of people came to their beat cancer, um, campaign site within that week of, of that Super Bowl ad playing.

And to me that was mind blowing because thinking about what used to be, um, you know, the process to create a Super Bowl ad months and to dwindle that down to three weeks was really impressive. Um, they also showed how it could create entire ad um, uh, marketing campaigns for all media platforms within minutes. Uh, so mind boggling the use cases around the generative ai, which we've, uh, been speaking about for quite some time.

But seeing those in play was really cool. Um, and, uh, so that's, that's just a small part of it. Um, I had a, uh, interestingly enough, the, uh, I did speak with Fred Faulkner who was, uh, strategic marketing for Bounties and you know, some of the other vendors I like to go around talking to all the vendors too and, um, the partners.

And he was surprised they didn't talk about commerce and it's like the only area they didn't hit on was the commerce area. Maybe that's strategic as well, but, um, it's kind of the one area where they, they didn't touch on at this summit. Mm-Hmm.

Something seems to be afoot here where we've moved from being amazed by the fact that an LLM can, uh, generate content to now trying to figure out how to orchestrate tasks using these LLMs. And that requires a fair amount of automation, but it, the reasoning engine in the LLM is getting smarter and as it gets smarter, it's able to take on more of these tasks and process them in, in the right order that we want something to happen. So when we can say, please create a marketing campaign for me, that then I can then tweak or create the entire website for that matter.

It's still early days, but, um, is it your sense that it might soon become less expensive and frankly simpler just to launch a digital transformation initiative? Well, I, I mean, just from seeing the use case examples at this summit and, and from talking to some of the, the company leaders a across the summit, I would say Yes, absolutely. I mean, the more, the more this is integrated, um, you know, and the faster everything gets and the less people are needed.

Yes. All. So what was your sense of what are we gonna be doing with all those people that quote unquote may not be as needed?

Or can we uplevel our game entirely? You know, at this point, uh, you know, a lot of business leaders are saying, look, there are some jobs, um, that are not gonna be needed. Or not that they're not needed, it's just there's gonna be less people needed for the exact jobs, uh, since they'll have the tools assisting them, but there's also gonna be a lot of new job creation that's gonna be required.

Um, and so some will shift, but the general consensus is everybody needs to be able to, um, upskill and adapt into potentially different positions and be willing and able to do that, uh, or, um, be at a point, you know, if if they don't, where they're ready to step out. Yeah. Well also there's a lot of smaller companies that never had these kinds of capabilities and they might be able to compete more effectively.

I think there's a running joke somewhere in the venture capital land about when will the first single employee billion dollar valuation company emerge because of ai? Because, you know, you can do everything yourself kind of thing. And so maybe we'll all just gonna evolve into many conglomerates and a small number of us will be able to do an amazing thing.

Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see how the future unfolds. It's, it's certainly an exciting and fast moving time at the moment. Um, elsewhere, I saw that, uh, LAN Musk has things to say about AI as they pertain to digital transformation.

And I guess one of the things I took away from this grok comment was that, well, he's arguing we need a more human centered approach to ai and therefore this, um, chat agent that he's advocating as a platform, um, is that approach. I don't, can't tell if that's just, you know, him thumbing his nose at OpenAI or not, but what is your sense of how, uh, human are all these bots that we're about to create? Well, um, you know, the chat bots still have some work, um, that's needed, but they are getting more and more personal.

I mean, that's the goal of, of most businesses trying to incorporate these chat bots is to really personalize them and help get that one-on-one help, um, that that's beneficial and can reduce some of the hours that humans have to put toward that. But I mean, there's still a lot of glitches and, and things that they simply can't answer and then it has to go to a human for help. But that is the goal.

So ultimately, um, are we all gonna get our own little digital buddies and kind of have somebody help us with our tasks and then our, my digital buddy will talk to your digital buddy to get something done or, and, you know, once they come to some point where they can't resolve it, they'll call us and hopefully we're both on a beach somewhere when that call comes in. I, I see that being the way of the future. I really do.

Uh, I think it'd be cool. I'd love to have my own little personal chat, chat bot assistant helping me with everything I could find, you know, the value to that. So it's not there yet though.

All right. We got a ways to go. I'm elsewhere on the site.

I was reading this article about the role ERP plays in our digital transformation initiatives. And it kind of pointed out a longstanding issue is that a lot of organizations become overly dependent upon these ERP platforms, whether they're from SAP or Oracle to run huge swats of their processes. And that in itself is not a bad thing because, well, we didn't have another approach before and we needed to automate theoretically at least a set of best practices.

But these things are fairly rigid and I guess we're starting to see SAP and Oracle and j some gen AI capabilities into these platforms, and maybe they'll become less rigid. But do you think we're kinda on the cusp of some sort of decomposing of these big monolithic ERP applications in the more smaller discreet processes that are easier to manage maybe and kind of stitch together and combine as needed? I mean, the ERP as we once knew it kind of devolve into something else.

Yeah, so that was the topic of, of this article, and it was saying that as more business leaders are looking to digitally transform and be more innovative, that they're finding, they don't wanna be tied down into one vendor controlling everything, um, across the entire process. So there might be certain softwares that they would like to use to solve certain problems, um, and their budgets, you know, maybe can't afford these vendors that they're working with. And they would like to kind of, uh, put together a puzzle of various, um, softwares or companies they're working with, uh, for the whole picture instead of just one controlling everything.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember, and a lot of organizations feel their entire IT strategy is wrapped around these platforms and they can't even consider any new technologies or new innovations until they manifest themselves in these platforms. And, and the problem has been the providers of these platforms don't really innovate all that quickly. They're getting better at it.

I'll give 'em points for that in terms of they move things to the cloud, but part of their approach has been, well, we're gonna move things to the cloud, but um, we're gonna make things, yeah, all the software we write you can touch. And then here's a separate application server for you to go write your own code if you feel like you should customize something, but then continue to insist that, uh, there's no need to customize these platforms and yet 90% of the customers continue to customize these platforms. So somebody's quite clearly not on the same page, and I might argue, and customer's always, right.

So clearly there's something afoot here, but, um, what's, you know, you've been talking to SAPI know not too long ago. What's your sense of the tension in this in the, in the ecosystem? Yeah, I think there, there definitely is some tension because at the end of the day, you're right, the customer is demanding more and expecting more and sometimes it can't be done with certain, um, software or, or vendors that they're working with.

So there has to be some collaboration. I mean, you know, let's just talk about what we were just speaking about at the Adobe Summit. There's tons of collaboration between Adobe and many other companies to provide all these different services and features.

Um, well we should think about that in, in, um, this way too. Uh, when companies are looking, they should be able to piece together different ones and they should all be able to interact and work together. Yeah, and to your point, it feels like the Adobes and the Microsofts in the world are trying to fill in the white space around these ERP platforms.

They're essentially the systems of record. And so if I'm just, you know, recording transactions and things and events that occurred in those systems, I think that's fine. But the systems of engagement wrap around those platforms and may not necessarily be from an SAP or from Oracle or whoever.

And it's a, it's a little bit of a delicate dance, but I think, um, it leads to better innovation maybe if we have that approach. Of course, you know, you can't have too many vendors 'cause then you might have chaos altogether, but, um, are we trying to find some sort of digital balance? Yeah, and I mean I guess that is where, like you said, if you have too many and then you're dealing with this huge sprawl that you're having to keep track of, um, for everything.

So that can be, uh, another problem in itself. But I do feel like there's certain, um, compromises that have to be made in the name of innovation and digital transformation. Alright.

Um, I can't help but wonder though, I mean, we talk about monolithic AppSec versus microservices in the land of DevOps all the time, and this plays out as a set of discreet processes, hopefully within a, an environment. So if we want this world to be the way it is, I think we need to better align what exactly is a quote unquote microservice as a, as a discreet union as it relates to what a business process is. And we've been having this conversation about the lack of, uh, alignment between business and IT for three or four decades now.

But I wonder if we're at some tipping point now where we have to really think about managing the software in, in exactly the way it's aligned with the various tasks that we're trying to accomplish. Yeah, I think that's where it comes down to, to better communication among all the departments. And, and again, something we talk about regularly that still seems to be an issue, which is removing those silos to figure out what do all these different departments need?

What are they looking for? And then combine that into effective solutions. All right.

And then let's just jump over to our last story here. But, um, you mentioned silos, so it looks like we're creating another one. People are trying to create these, uh, chief sustainability officer titles.

What's your sense, uh, how real is this? Well, I I think that it, it's a very good argument, um, being made that it is a big focus and maybe a not, not enough focus is being put to it. So they are trying to, um, essentially make a position for this or department, um, to focus on it.

But I would hope that it doesn't become another silo. So the issue is anytime any new position or any new new department is formed, it, it has this risk of becoming a silo, which is what companies shouldn't be doing it. No, no team should become a silo.

We should all be collaborating and communicating well. Um, so, but as far as the position, I think it would help with, um, innovation, it would help with risk management, it would help with, um, environmental, you know, the environmental footprint these companies are making. Uh, and, and there is a lot of, um, concern about the environmental footprint and maybe not enough focus being put to it.

Yeah, I just wonder what the level of authority's gonna be because everybody who can actually affect the outcome of the process is a C level own something, right? It's either the CIO or it's the head of manufacturing or wherever it is. So, um, is the chief sustainability officer just gonna be, you know, filling out reports and sending memos to people and maybe not having enough authority?

So whoever, if, if they do create these positions, I, I think there are some that have created these positions and I think it's, uh, all about, um, they will need to be good at managing and, uh, and communicating, uh, because they need to do a little bit more than just, uh, paperwork and things like that. They, they need to be the ones effectively communicating change across each department and ensuring that it's getting done and it, that they all work together. I wonder, I mean, if I look at the regs that are required outside of Europe, they're still kind of shaky.

Um, so is, is this getting enough traction globally or is it pretty much limited to a particular region where we're gonna see more of this effort than others? 'cause frankly, uh, it's not clear to me that, you know, companies in the US are banging this drum as hard as they are in Europe and other places. That's a good question.

Well, we know Europe tends to, to get ahead of these things a little bit more, uh, and, uh, are first in line for a lot of those types of issues. But, um, I think here in America we're focusing more and more on it. It it's just a matter of focus versus action.

So, you know, and you know, which is where this whole conversation comes into play is acting. And, you know, as far as other countries, some are and some aren't. So, you know, if you look across the globe, um, I'm sure there's a percentage that really aren't focused on it at all.

So do you think AI might save us from ourselves here, or is AI part of the problem? Because we're consuming more energy than ever to drive all these large language models? It's a quandary because it can both help and harm.

And I think in, in a, uh, a podcast a few weeks ago, we were talking about how well maybe we could use the AI to eradicate the waste or use it in some other way. Um, so it, it's a quandary. I do know, um, some people are looking at AI to, um, instead of having all this technological waste, um, basically rewinding legacy stuff to pull as much information as they can from it and, and utilize it with ai.

So that'll be interesting to see how that plays out. All right. Any other final thoughts from your trips and adventures from the last week?

Oh my goodness. I'm just trying to recover from a whirlwind week with lots of information, but, um, stay tuned because there'll be more posted. You can see a little bit of it on our, uh, text strong AI LinkedIn site.

All Right, cool. Thank you all for listening to our latest podcast and we'll see you next time. Thank you.

And, uh, stay tuned for more information. Thanks, Mike.