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Hey it change Makers, and welcome to the Deck Show
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with Tom mc grath. Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers,
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Welcome back to the Deck Show. You know, one of
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my favorite things on the show is is getting a
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next thinker on the show that we've never had before, because,
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as I'm sure you've heard me say before, we live
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in a truly inexhaustibly interesting company or a company with
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an inexhaustible resource of interesting people to talk to, and
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I've to say illustrative at this point. It's not only
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that we've got a brand new guest today from Next Thing,
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but we have a next thinker. In all my seven
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years here, I've never had a chance to properly speak
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to before. He's Brian Hunter. I'm consulting senior manager at
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Professional Services. How you doing, Brian, I'm doing real again.
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I'm excited to be here.
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Excellent, excellent, And I was just saying to Brian before
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we started recording, I was we haven't actually met before.
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How have we not met though, Brian? How has that
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not happened? How has that not happened? How long have
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you been in Next Thing? Maybe it's just a.
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Little over two years. It's been a whirlwind time too.
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I joined June of two thousand and four.
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Four goodness, my mask might not be up to it's
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a little longer than I and I thought. Where are
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you based, Brian?
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I'm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US. My office
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is out of the Boston office.
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Though. Nice, Well, we probably both you slightly more often
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than me occasionally passed through the Boston office.
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Man, But I think I've done it like once.
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Okay, I did it a few times a year, so
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I might might I see you out there? Maybe maybe?
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Maybe not? Maybe not? But what were you doing before
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you came to the Next Thing, Brian?
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To a background, I actually worked for Next Think customer,
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So I was working for one of the Fortune one
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hundred companies for twenty two years prior to coming to
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the Next Think. I did a lot of things over there,
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from end user all the way up to I ended
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up running their Next Think for their organization for seven years.
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As actually how I found out about the company gotcha.
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Like many such cases, like my previous co host in Flower,
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you know, people come out of come out from being
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customers to full time Next thinkers, and you do you
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do encounter them in professional services? Most of well, it
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think it is interesting you have had Next Thinkers from
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Professional Services join us before, but I thought, look, I
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thought we could focus in a little bit on this
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sometimes under sometimes it's undersung, you know, heroes of Next
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Think the PS team is there known around here. Maybe
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you could begin, Brian, just give people a little bit,
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a little bit of the lay of the land of
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what it is that professional services do and why indeed
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there's such sort of such value partners by customers and
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Next Thinkers are like.
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Absolutely so professional services as a whole. We offer paid
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for and also annual services to customers that help them
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actually realize their goals with the platform. Next thing is
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a very capable platform. It has a lot of different
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moving parts to it, and it can be very complicated
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for people to take on. So that's where professional services
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thankfully is there for customers. We help them understand how
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they can translate the ideas or the use cases or
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the value they're trying to receive into reality and then
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present that information back to their stakeholders. So it really
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is where the rubber hits the road, and we help
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bridge that gap for a lot of customers.
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One hundred percent. And it's actually something that correct me
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if I'm wrong. If it's been singled out by Gartner
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in more one Magic Quadra and as a kind of
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one of the kind of distinguishing strength of nexte software.
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I believe you're correct. You'll have to check and validate for.
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We're just going to make it. We're going to make
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that assumption together. Gotten half my number, They've got my
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number if I need to correct for record, and I
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will correct it internalisten as I'm sure, but I'm pretty
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sure that's the case. But what But certainly we live,
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we live in an era where that kind of operationalization layer,
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as it were, is increasingly sought after, talked about important
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to customer.
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I can actually give you, I can give you a
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real life example. My last organization I was with, they
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had next Think We like I said, I managed it
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for seven years with them, from the time period I
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took over until the time period that we had at
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fully operational and we were on a regular cadience realizing
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regular value from the product was about four years.
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Wow, that's crazy.
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Yeah. And then when I joined professional services, having a
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some of the customers I was with one of them,
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we realized the same degree in movement in about seven months.
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It is because we have the experience of what's come along,
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what works, what doesn't work, how to bridge those gaps
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inside your organization, and so we can definitely help accelerate
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that path to value for customers.
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Guys, they are extremely interesting statistics and you hear the
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same over time. People will recognize the same story from
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We have a lot of customers come on the show
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and they say, oh, actually our background next with Decks
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goes back a lot further than this successful kind of
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project or you know, but first time around, you know,
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we didn't do it right, you know, and it took
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this approach with more guidance on that sort of dex
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shops layer to be successful. And of course the professional
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services you're in quite a privileged position in being so
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embedded inevitably with custom and those but also very close
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to the technology and the people who are building it. Right,
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you're you're right between the two. What do you think
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you take from that privileged position that would be difficult
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for the rest for company to learn by itself.
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Yeah, so it's actually interesting because you do see how
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different organizations operate. So, like I said, next Thing has
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a lot of capabilities and a lot of complex interactions,
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and every other customer is different and so what might
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work for one definitely doesn't work for everyone else. And
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so from the professional services side, you have to learn
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to think on your toes and you learn how you
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can almost bend the platform to meet what your customers
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are looking for. And so I think that would be
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something even if you go like talking to the product team.
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There's been many times where I've talked to them and
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they're like, I never thought of how you guys use that,
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and like, well, we have to because we have to,
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like I said earlier, make the rubber meet their own
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and help drive that value to our customer. So we
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have to bridge that gap for them.
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And how how often then does an engagement start as
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can you can you help us to do this and
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actually results in something next thing does or builds differently
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as a consequence.
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I don't have exact metrics, but like the anecdotal point
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of view all the time, there's many customers who are
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putting forth like ideas that we help them bridge up.
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I'll give you a perfect example, the most recent one
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where they put in the binary usage data for like
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CPU and GPU usage and stuff like that that came
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from an engagement that I was with with the customer
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last year where we actually met with the PM team
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and we said, hey, this is something that's really useful.
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These are the breakdowns is where she come to and
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they put on their backlog and they implemented it this year.
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And going back a little further, Brian correct me if
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I'm wrong, But the deck score itself, you know, you
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know that was a belief I came out of a
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customer's request or suggestion back in the day.
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I'm gonna believe you on that one. That's a little
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bit before my time.
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We're just going to go an assumption here, Brian across
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the board. Okay, no fact check us today. I believe
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it's true. I'm pretty confident. And we look at maybe
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another example of this. We were going to talk a
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bit more about hardware refresh. We had a very successful
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episode with Scott Pope recently kind of delving into hardware
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Refreshed a little bit, and we're going to go into
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it in a little bit more detail and from a
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different angle here today. But before we do, Brian, is
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is the Hardware Refreshed kind of story an example of
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something's come out of customer engagement.
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Actually it is, so the one that we're going to
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talk about came about from one customer that I then
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worked with another customer on. So I worked actually between
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two customers to kind of build out a solutions framework
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that worked for them, and so far it is now
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being implemented in something close to fifty professional service customers environments.
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Because it's resonated so well with with the customers and
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their needs, that.
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Must be a really satisfying part of your role.
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It is, It's led to a lot of conversations, so
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I've talked almost every one of those fifty customers. But yeah,
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it's definitely satisfying to see, like the people recognizing value
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out of what you've built and what the capabilities are
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and even so much though it's like maly just customers,
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but internally I've shown the product team it and there's
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been a lot of people on the product team that
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have been very interested in what we did and how
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we did it.
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And so, I mean, you know, the basic story on
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hardware refreshed, as most listeners will know by now, is
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that you know, simply making refreshed decisions based on device age.
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It's an increasing the outloaded way of going about it.
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What do we feel we have to sort of add
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to that story? What nuances do we have to add
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to that in terms of you know, okay, if I
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guess if age isn't enough, what is what do you
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want to be measuring? What does a genuinely data back
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refreshed decision, Like what is it you were able to
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extrapolate to those of a fifty customers specific Yeah, it's
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it's experience.
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Experience really is the key differentiator. Like it doesn't matter
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how old a device is. If if I'm trying to
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sweat a device for five years but the experience is terrible,
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I'm not doing my company any good. I'm trying to
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save in one area, but I'm discounting in another. So
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being able to take both of those measurements together, take
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age and experience together in a way that the company
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agrees with, and then be able to put together a
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plan of action on how to build off of that
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is super important.
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And then to.
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Take a step further from that. What we've done really
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good from are what the platform currently does is we
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give them that disability experience, we give them visibility experience
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in like a moment in time. So we can say,
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here's the users are having a bad experience, you should
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refresh them now. And the problem is is from an
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enterprise organization, you get your actual like you get your
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funding for measurements or funding for replacements like six months
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or a year ahead of time. So you need to
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be able to forecast what that's going to look like,
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which is very, very difficult. And that's actually what led
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to the type of implementation and use case that I built.
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And was that with the custom scores that I've heard
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about Prime specific.
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It was a combination of custom scores, and since I
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was able to build custom scores, I knew how I
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was able to build it. I was then able to
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extrapulate out and then forecast into the future how many
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months it would be until a given device, if everything
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remained the same, would then hit the threshold be replaced.
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That's that's extremely cool, And I think we're going to
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touch predictive elopment a bit. But first of all, what
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is it you're measuring and how is it you're able
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to turn lots of those individual signals into something you
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can actually make a decision based upon.
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Yeah, so as you as you said earlier, next think
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has the deck score. The deck score is already a
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great aggregate of those individual signals, and so for the
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customers I've worked with, we've we work with each customer
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individual and figure out like which aspects of the duck
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score really sing to them, which one really make it work.
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And so from my original two customers, we just went
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with the endpoint deck score. That's a great aggregate of performance,
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it's a great aggregate git of reliability, and it kind
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of shows gives you a single number that you can
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base off of for your overall experience. I've had other
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customers who have only wanted to go with device performance
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or device reliability, or combination of the two. And so
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because we have all that data inside of the platform,
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it makes it really easy to be able to take
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it and then manipulate it for our needs. So given
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the case of what I did is I took the
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device age, which was pulled from when the device was
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purchased from the vendor, utilizing our already existing library remote
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actions to get warranty information remote action I took that,
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I took the deck score and for dexscore that exists
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in the platform, and I brought them together inside of
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a flow inside of a formula where I brought them in,
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took them in the consideration of device personas, which is
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another key area of what I built off of, and
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I think we're going to talk a little bit about
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that later, but and I basically formulated that out into
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a score that gives me a number between zero and one,
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and then based on that, if you hit over the threshold,
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which is completely configurable by the customer, the device gets
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tagged for replacement, or if it's too new of a device,
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because you definitely don't want to replace advice it's a
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year old. You have minimum and maximum device ages. You
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can then flag devices for investigations, so then you can
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automatically deliver those proactively to your support teams and have
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them investigate what's going on and help get those fixed
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so they don't end up being replacement, so you can
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then hold off on costs from that perspective.
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And tell us a bit about this concept purchase personas.
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What is one? First of all, I have a mention
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of it. I don't know what it is. And why
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does knowing who is using the device matter as much
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as knowing the condition of the device itself. When you make.
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Device personas is probably actually, I'll say phone in general
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is probably one of the most difficult conversations for a
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customer to be able to give, you, provide and answer.
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For a lot of times, when we think of personas,
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we think about the user who's using the device. Are
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you a road warrior? Are you a high performance user?
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And those sorts of things. But for a lot of customers,
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being able to convert on to real actual data has
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been very difficult. So in order to help bridge that
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gap and make it easier for the customers I've been
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working with, I just ask them a simple question. When
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you go to purchase a device, you don't purchase a
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single device for everybody, correct, And they said, yep, I
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go what decisions do you use to make when you
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purchase those devices? And then you figure out what those
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decisions are, those naturally become your device personas. So I'll
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give you example one of my customers, they purchased specific
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devices for their VIP users, They purchase pecific devices to
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their high performance users. They purchase specific devices for their
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shared devices or KIOSK devices or standard devices, and so
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you take all of those different persona device personas, and
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that's really where the suite sauce comes out of this
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because I may have a VIP user who I want
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to make sure they always have latest and greatest, so
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their devices will only last them three years. That doesn't
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mean I have to get rid of the device if
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that device is no longer meeting the needs of what
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is current usage is if one of my other personas
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could easily consume that device, I just move it to
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the other persona as long as the experience is good
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and it's still within the thresholds of that PERSONA. Congratulations,
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you've now been able to extend that device in your
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organization longer term.
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Can you give some real, real world examples of the
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kind of transitions between rules which have made this kind
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of efficiency viable concept easily?
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One Probably the most easy to understand ones are your
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design users. So design users need some very powerful machines.
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Those very powerful machines you need to run very powerful
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software like the Adobe Suites and things like that. Well,
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what happens if the device no longer meets what the
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newer software needs? Well, do you throw away the device? No,
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you replace the device to give them the ones that
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they need to fulfill their roles. But now that devices
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consider to be very powerful for a user who just
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does standard work. So you can then pass it on
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to that user, and now you're not you're not replacing
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the device for the second user. You've only paid for
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a place one device and you're extending the life of
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the original one.
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What about what about the line when it comes to
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extending useful device life you're getting more more value from
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them without eventually paying for it an employee experience. Where's
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the art in getting that balance right?
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Yeah, the art is really going to come down to
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the organization and the actual usage of the devices. So
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that was one of the other key things that we
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built into the solution is that every one of those
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purchase personas could have a different threshold, and so you
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figure out what matters for your team. Like if I
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talk about my high performance devices, to me, the performance
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of the device matters more so than the age of
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the device. So I may weight my uh weight my
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replacement on the performance of the device. But if I
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have a standard device or maybe a shared device, maybe
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the performance doesn't matter as much because it's only utilized
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in small bursts by certain people. So it's really going
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to come to understanding how the how those specific personas
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are used and then tweaking the threshold on an individual basis.
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That doesn't mean that you have to tweak the threshold
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to figure it out. You could just set up and
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run as default and then see what works and what
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doesn't work and adjust it. It's all about learning. So
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one of the things that I tend to follow through
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with is an agile methodology of you don't let your
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progress stop because you're trying to reach perfection. You start
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working on it, you start measuring, and then you start
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adjusting as as a management goes, and so then you
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continue to move the needle forward every time.
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Very cool. What do you reckon how much of how
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much of professional services is literally innovation? Like on a
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customer by customer basis? Is it is it ever wrote?
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You know? Is it almost always kind of require a
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degree of creative kind of engagement?
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It does if you're going to be like a successful
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person professional services. So if you if you're coming in
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expecting that you're just going to be able to follow
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some guides and then deliver it, you're not going to
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really like excel very very far. So what you want
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is to be able to really think through problems and
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come up with creative solutions, Because if all you're telling
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customers is like, oh, I'm sorry, the platform doesn't do that,
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how likely are they going to continue to continue to
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invest in next thing? If all they're being told is no,
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I can't do that. But if you can think of
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a creative way to solve their problem that helps solve
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them and then you can help take that back to
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the platform and help build the platform up, They're going
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to love that. They're going to love us, and they're
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gonna stick with us as long as as long as
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they can because they know that regardless of what comes
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out of what the platform does, we'll find solution that
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helps at least meet the need of what they're looking for.
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We hear it a lot. We hear it a lot.
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You guys do amazing work. Any other areas of work
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which you are really exciting at the moment you collaborate
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with customers on you're able to highlight them a little bit. Uh.
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Yeah, we're working on all sorts of things. I'm not
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going to call it for me, I'm a call for
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one of my other consultants. They actually built a solution
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that utilizes Adobe's webportal to pull in all of the
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licensing information for all the Adobe products and maps it
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across all the users in an instance, so you can
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identify what is being used and what isn't being used
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based on what they're licensed for versus what we typically
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do for Mexinc. Which is what's installed. Because sometimes you
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may be license for software and you may not actually
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have it ever have it installed on anything. So being
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able to map that out has been incredibly useful and
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I think one of those customers he has also I
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think has assigned it in two different customers. One of
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them is saving about ten thousand a months in Adobe
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licensing and the other one saving about fifty thousand a
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month in Adobe licensing.
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It's like the sam Ho grail, isn't it?
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This is a huge basically, it's it's been a huge thing.
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And again this is another creative way of using it,
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and he's utilizing multiple capabilities inside of next Ink. In particular,
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Flow has enabled a lot of these unique UH capabilities
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to happen because we can do these creative ideas inside
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of the sandbox type environment where we're not worrying about
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setting off credentials, we're not worrying about risking things. We're
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just building everything and then reaching the data inside. Next
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with next.
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Think crazy, you guys come up with amazing, amazing stuff.
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Anything else, anything else, Brian, I was trying to think
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of if.
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There was anything else, like really cool.
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How about how about? How about how about AI specifically?
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Like where where well, unnecessarily where you're you're you're pulling
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innovations out of a product that's not necessarily but in
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terms of insight, you're able to share on like real
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well customer concerns, priorities, experiences with AI that the DECKS
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is able to kind of really make a difference at
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at the moment.
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Yeah, I mean, you're almost like painting a picture for
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AI tools capability where we can give them the visibility
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of the utilization of AI as well as the governance.
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But then we're gonna take another lever, another layer for it.
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Because in the US, Spark is becoming very very popular
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amongst our customers, and so we have a lot of
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ongoing Spark engagements where we're learning all the different ways
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that customers are looking to have their users engage with
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our tooling for Spark, and so we're figuring out working
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with the product team to help ensure that that is
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the best possible experience for our customers. I can tell
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you right now, Like in the US, agent agent is
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a very popular choice. They're trying to look at from
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a Spark perspective.
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Yeah, yeah, it's incredible amount a buzz around spark at
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the moment, right it just remarkable. I've got some bad
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news for you, Brian. You have a you have a
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guinea pig for a brand new feature. So we're gonna
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we're going to be trialing today. You know, look, Fewture
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guests at least if they listen to your episode, will
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will be pre appraised of this, will be forewarned of
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this new feature. It's a quick fire around, Brian, nothing
435
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too controversial, nothing to put you too much on the spot.
436
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But I think you're going to thrive. I think you're
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gonna do a great job of it. Five quick fire
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around questions and then one more before we let you leave.
439
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Starting now, Brian, what's the one workplace technology frustration you
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would love to eliminate forever? Obviously you've got that background
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as a customer and that you see trenches to draw
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from it.
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For me, it would actually probably be the performance impact
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of collaboration tools. Collaboration tools, especially in a remote workforce,
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has become so integral to everything that even from the
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next perspective that we do and all the collaboration tools
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literally destroy computers that they're running on. So if you're
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trying to share your screens like that, it definitely can
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block and knock the experience down quite a lot. For
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I'm a Thomas Circlear from a next Thnker perspective, we
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see it all the time on our own machines.
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Do no do best piece of career advice you've ever received.
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Never be happy with where you are?
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Oh oh, never be content. I don't know. In fact,
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it might be good career advice, might not be good
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spiritual advice prior.
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Yeah, I mean from from a yeah, from a career perspective.
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If if I was content with where I was, I
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would not be where I am today. I'm never never
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happy with just being in the same old, same old.
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I'm always looking for what the next opportunity.
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Is not treading water, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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I feel that what emerging technology inside of inside the
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decks are you most excited about right now?
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I mean AI of course, like uh, even beyond like
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just what next thank has from AI. AI gives our
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users the ability to understand data that's been very difficult
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for them to do in the past. A lot of
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what we've done in the past from a professional services
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of view is build dashboards, build queries, build things to
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help people interpret that data. Now that we have AI
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from like a workspace perspective, from your admins, or from
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a user perspective with Spark, it really helps bridge that gap.
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They don't have to know all the ins and outs
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have to do it. They just let the AI interpret
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it for them.
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On a personal note, Brian, what app or tool can't
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you get through the working day with that?
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Probably Nexus? I use it quite often. There's I don't
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know if I'm one of the most, but I'm probably
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one of the most prolific users of that tool. I've
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created like four or five different bots that the professional
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services team uses and a use on a daily basis.
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Amazing final, well, final quick fire around question. Then one
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more before you go, Brian, when you're not solving customer challenges,
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what's your preferred way to switch off?
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And it's a combination, so I if I'm doing anything
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in computer wise, actually like when I said AI is
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very useful for me. I'm building my own AI workspace myself.
490
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I have AI servers in my house that I'm running
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localized AI solutions on. But when I'm not doing anything
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with computers, playing disc golf. It's one of my favorite
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pastimes to just go out there and play a little
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bit of rounds of disc golf.
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Nice. Nice. This is a question we haven't asked anyone
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for a couple of months, but I'm bringing it back, Brian.
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It's not a quick fire, quick fire round question. You
498
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don't have to be as snappy in your response. But
499
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what's your favorite thing about being a Next Thinker?
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I mean, truly, it's gonna be This is gonna be
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a twofold question or twofold answer as well. First off,
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being able to be there and help shape the experiences
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of our customers, it's like no other I've been on
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the customer side, being able to help other customers get
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there has been superwarrying for me. But then on the
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other side, just the other Next thinkers you get to
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work with on a daily basis. Being able to meet
508
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and talk to people from all around the world and
509
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see everyone's different perspectives, it's not necessarily something you get
510
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to see in every company. So I really enjoy that.
511
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What I said at the top of the conversation, Brian,
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it's not can it's true inexhaustible source of interesting people
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to talk to of this company, Brian. If people are
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listening and they're you know, they they're having the kind
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of experiences you've described of, you know, struggling with that
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operationalization layer. What can they do? Who can they reach
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out to, how can they make a quick difference.
518
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So if they're having trouble struggling operational approvisational there, I mean,
519
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obviously look into the next thing. Professional services.
520
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There you get to help you.
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Yeah, but if truly, the deck slops framework and our
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Navigator framework have been incredibly helpful for customers being able
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to translate ideas into actions.
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So true, Brian, thanks for coming on the show, and
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thanks to your whole team for a great work they do.
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We really appreciate it, love it. That's it for this
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week's Deck Show. We'll be back next week, and if
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you don't already, be sure to follow the show so
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you don't miss an episode until next time.
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Hey it change Makers, and welcome to the Deck Show
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with Tom mc grath. Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers,
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Welcome back to the Deck Show. You know, one of
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my favorite things on the show is is getting a
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next thinker on the show that we've never had before, because,
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as I'm sure you've heard me say before, we live
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in a truly inexhaustibly interesting company or a company with
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an inexhaustible resource of interesting people to talk to, and
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I've to say illustrative at this point. It's not only
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that we've got a brand new guest today from Next Thing,
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but we have a next thinker. In all my seven
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years here, I've never had a chance to properly speak
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to before. He's Brian Hunter. I'm consulting senior manager at
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Professional Services. How you doing, Brian, I'm doing real again.
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I'm excited to be here.
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Excellent, excellent, And I was just saying to Brian before
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we started recording, I was we haven't actually met before.
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How have we not met though, Brian? How has that
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not happened? How has that not happened? How long have
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you been in Next Thing? Maybe it's just a.
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Little over two years. It's been a whirlwind time too.
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I joined June of two thousand and four.
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Four goodness, my mask might not be up to it's
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a little longer than I and I thought. Where are
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you based, Brian?
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I'm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US. My office
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is out of the Boston office.
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Though. Nice, Well, we probably both you slightly more often
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than me occasionally passed through the Boston office.
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Man, But I think I've done it like once.
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Okay, I did it a few times a year, so
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I might might I see you out there? Maybe maybe?
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Maybe not? Maybe not? But what were you doing before
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you came to the Next Thing, Brian?
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To a background, I actually worked for Next Think customer,
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So I was working for one of the Fortune one
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hundred companies for twenty two years prior to coming to
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the Next Think. I did a lot of things over there,
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from end user all the way up to I ended
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up running their Next Think for their organization for seven years.
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As actually how I found out about the company gotcha.
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Like many such cases, like my previous co host in Flower,
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you know, people come out of come out from being
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customers to full time Next thinkers, and you do you
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do encounter them in professional services? Most of well, it
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think it is interesting you have had Next Thinkers from
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Professional Services join us before, but I thought, look, I
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thought we could focus in a little bit on this
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sometimes under sometimes it's undersung, you know, heroes of Next
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Think the PS team is there known around here. Maybe
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you could begin, Brian, just give people a little bit,
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a little bit of the lay of the land of
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what it is that professional services do and why indeed
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there's such sort of such value partners by customers and
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Next Thinkers are like.
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Absolutely so professional services as a whole. We offer paid
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for and also annual services to customers that help them
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actually realize their goals with the platform. Next thing is
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a very capable platform. It has a lot of different
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moving parts to it, and it can be very complicated
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for people to take on. So that's where professional services
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thankfully is there for customers. We help them understand how
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they can translate the ideas or the use cases or
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the value they're trying to receive into reality and then
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present that information back to their stakeholders. So it really
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is where the rubber hits the road, and we help
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bridge that gap for a lot of customers.
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One hundred percent. And it's actually something that correct me
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if I'm wrong. If it's been singled out by Gartner
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in more one Magic Quadra and as a kind of
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one of the kind of distinguishing strength of nexte software.
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I believe you're correct. You'll have to check and validate for.
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We're just going to make it. We're going to make
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that assumption together. Gotten half my number, They've got my
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number if I need to correct for record, and I
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will correct it internalisten as I'm sure, but I'm pretty
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sure that's the case. But what But certainly we live,
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we live in an era where that kind of operationalization layer,
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as it were, is increasingly sought after, talked about important
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to customer.
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I can actually give you, I can give you a
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real life example. My last organization I was with, they
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had next Think We like I said, I managed it
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for seven years with them, from the time period I
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took over until the time period that we had at
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fully operational and we were on a regular cadience realizing
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regular value from the product was about four years.
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Wow, that's crazy.
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Yeah. And then when I joined professional services, having a
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some of the customers I was with one of them,
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we realized the same degree in movement in about seven months.
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It is because we have the experience of what's come along,
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what works, what doesn't work, how to bridge those gaps
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inside your organization, and so we can definitely help accelerate
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that path to value for customers.
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Guys, they are extremely interesting statistics and you hear the
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same over time. People will recognize the same story from
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We have a lot of customers come on the show
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and they say, oh, actually our background next with Decks
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goes back a lot further than this successful kind of
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project or you know, but first time around, you know,
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we didn't do it right, you know, and it took
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this approach with more guidance on that sort of dex
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shops layer to be successful. And of course the professional
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services you're in quite a privileged position in being so
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embedded inevitably with custom and those but also very close
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to the technology and the people who are building it. Right,
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you're you're right between the two. What do you think
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you take from that privileged position that would be difficult
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for the rest for company to learn by itself.
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Yeah, so it's actually interesting because you do see how
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different organizations operate. So, like I said, next Thing has
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a lot of capabilities and a lot of complex interactions,
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and every other customer is different and so what might
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work for one definitely doesn't work for everyone else. And
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so from the professional services side, you have to learn
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to think on your toes and you learn how you
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can almost bend the platform to meet what your customers
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are looking for. And so I think that would be
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something even if you go like talking to the product team.
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There's been many times where I've talked to them and
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they're like, I never thought of how you guys use that,
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and like, well, we have to because we have to,
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like I said earlier, make the rubber meet their own
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and help drive that value to our customer. So we
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have to bridge that gap for them.
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And how how often then does an engagement start as
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can you can you help us to do this and
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actually results in something next thing does or builds differently
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as a consequence.
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I don't have exact metrics, but like the anecdotal point
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of view all the time, there's many customers who are
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putting forth like ideas that we help them bridge up.
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I'll give you a perfect example, the most recent one
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where they put in the binary usage data for like
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CPU and GPU usage and stuff like that that came
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from an engagement that I was with with the customer
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last year where we actually met with the PM team
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and we said, hey, this is something that's really useful.
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These are the breakdowns is where she come to and
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they put on their backlog and they implemented it this year.
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And going back a little further, Brian correct me if
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I'm wrong, But the deck score itself, you know, you
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know that was a belief I came out of a
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customer's request or suggestion back in the day.
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I'm gonna believe you on that one. That's a little
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bit before my time.
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We're just going to go an assumption here, Brian across
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the board. Okay, no fact check us today. I believe
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it's true. I'm pretty confident. And we look at maybe
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another example of this. We were going to talk a
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bit more about hardware refresh. We had a very successful
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episode with Scott Pope recently kind of delving into hardware
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Refreshed a little bit, and we're going to go into
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it in a little bit more detail and from a
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different angle here today. But before we do, Brian, is
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is the Hardware Refreshed kind of story an example of
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something's come out of customer engagement.
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Actually it is, so the one that we're going to
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talk about came about from one customer that I then
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worked with another customer on. So I worked actually between
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two customers to kind of build out a solutions framework
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that worked for them, and so far it is now
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being implemented in something close to fifty professional service customers environments.
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Because it's resonated so well with with the customers and
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their needs, that.
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Must be a really satisfying part of your role.
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It is, It's led to a lot of conversations, so
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I've talked almost every one of those fifty customers. But yeah,
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it's definitely satisfying to see, like the people recognizing value
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out of what you've built and what the capabilities are
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and even so much though it's like maly just customers,
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but internally I've shown the product team it and there's
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been a lot of people on the product team that
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have been very interested in what we did and how
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we did it.
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And so, I mean, you know, the basic story on
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hardware refreshed, as most listeners will know by now, is
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that you know, simply making refreshed decisions based on device age.
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It's an increasing the outloaded way of going about it.
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What do we feel we have to sort of add
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to that story? What nuances do we have to add
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to that in terms of you know, okay, if I
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guess if age isn't enough, what is what do you
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want to be measuring? What does a genuinely data back
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refreshed decision, Like what is it you were able to
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extrapolate to those of a fifty customers specific Yeah, it's
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it's experience.
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Experience really is the key differentiator. Like it doesn't matter
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how old a device is. If if I'm trying to
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sweat a device for five years but the experience is terrible,
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I'm not doing my company any good. I'm trying to
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save in one area, but I'm discounting in another. So
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being able to take both of those measurements together, take
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age and experience together in a way that the company
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agrees with, and then be able to put together a
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plan of action on how to build off of that
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is super important.
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And then to.
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Take a step further from that. What we've done really
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good from are what the platform currently does is we
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give them that disability experience, we give them visibility experience
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in like a moment in time. So we can say,
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here's the users are having a bad experience, you should
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refresh them now. And the problem is is from an
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enterprise organization, you get your actual like you get your
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funding for measurements or funding for replacements like six months
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or a year ahead of time. So you need to
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be able to forecast what that's going to look like,
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which is very, very difficult. And that's actually what led
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to the type of implementation and use case that I built.
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And was that with the custom scores that I've heard
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about Prime specific.
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It was a combination of custom scores, and since I
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was able to build custom scores, I knew how I
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was able to build it. I was then able to
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extrapulate out and then forecast into the future how many
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months it would be until a given device, if everything
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remained the same, would then hit the threshold be replaced.
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That's that's extremely cool, And I think we're going to
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touch predictive elopment a bit. But first of all, what
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is it you're measuring and how is it you're able
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to turn lots of those individual signals into something you
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can actually make a decision based upon.
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Yeah, so as you as you said earlier, next think
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has the deck score. The deck score is already a
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great aggregate of those individual signals, and so for the
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customers I've worked with, we've we work with each customer
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individual and figure out like which aspects of the duck
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score really sing to them, which one really make it work.
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And so from my original two customers, we just went
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with the endpoint deck score. That's a great aggregate of performance,
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it's a great aggregate git of reliability, and it kind
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of shows gives you a single number that you can
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base off of for your overall experience. I've had other
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customers who have only wanted to go with device performance
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or device reliability, or combination of the two. And so
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because we have all that data inside of the platform,
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it makes it really easy to be able to take
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it and then manipulate it for our needs. So given
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the case of what I did is I took the
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device age, which was pulled from when the device was
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purchased from the vendor, utilizing our already existing library remote
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actions to get warranty information remote action I took that,
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I took the deck score and for dexscore that exists
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in the platform, and I brought them together inside of
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a flow inside of a formula where I brought them in,
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took them in the consideration of device personas, which is
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another key area of what I built off of, and
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I think we're going to talk a little bit about
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that later, but and I basically formulated that out into
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a score that gives me a number between zero and one,
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and then based on that, if you hit over the threshold,
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which is completely configurable by the customer, the device gets
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tagged for replacement, or if it's too new of a device,
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because you definitely don't want to replace advice it's a
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year old. You have minimum and maximum device ages. You
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can then flag devices for investigations, so then you can
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automatically deliver those proactively to your support teams and have
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them investigate what's going on and help get those fixed
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so they don't end up being replacement, so you can
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then hold off on costs from that perspective.
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And tell us a bit about this concept purchase personas.
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What is one? First of all, I have a mention
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of it. I don't know what it is. And why
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does knowing who is using the device matter as much
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as knowing the condition of the device itself. When you make.
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Device personas is probably actually, I'll say phone in general
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is probably one of the most difficult conversations for a
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customer to be able to give, you, provide and answer.
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For a lot of times, when we think of personas,
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we think about the user who's using the device. Are
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you a road warrior? Are you a high performance user?
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And those sorts of things. But for a lot of customers,
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being able to convert on to real actual data has
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been very difficult. So in order to help bridge that
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gap and make it easier for the customers I've been
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working with, I just ask them a simple question. When
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you go to purchase a device, you don't purchase a
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single device for everybody, correct, And they said, yep, I
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go what decisions do you use to make when you
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purchase those devices? And then you figure out what those
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decisions are, those naturally become your device personas. So I'll
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give you example one of my customers, they purchased specific
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devices for their VIP users, They purchase pecific devices to
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their high performance users. They purchase specific devices for their
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shared devices or KIOSK devices or standard devices, and so
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you take all of those different persona device personas, and
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that's really where the suite sauce comes out of this
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because I may have a VIP user who I want
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to make sure they always have latest and greatest, so
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their devices will only last them three years. That doesn't
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mean I have to get rid of the device if
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that device is no longer meeting the needs of what
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is current usage is if one of my other personas
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could easily consume that device, I just move it to
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the other persona as long as the experience is good
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and it's still within the thresholds of that PERSONA. Congratulations,
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you've now been able to extend that device in your
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organization longer term.
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Can you give some real, real world examples of the
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kind of transitions between rules which have made this kind
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of efficiency viable concept easily?
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One Probably the most easy to understand ones are your
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design users. So design users need some very powerful machines.
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Those very powerful machines you need to run very powerful
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software like the Adobe Suites and things like that. Well,
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what happens if the device no longer meets what the
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newer software needs? Well, do you throw away the device? No,
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you replace the device to give them the ones that
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they need to fulfill their roles. But now that devices
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consider to be very powerful for a user who just
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does standard work. So you can then pass it on
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to that user, and now you're not you're not replacing
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the device for the second user. You've only paid for
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a place one device and you're extending the life of
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the original one.
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What about what about the line when it comes to
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extending useful device life you're getting more more value from
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them without eventually paying for it an employee experience. Where's
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the art in getting that balance right?
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Yeah, the art is really going to come down to
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the organization and the actual usage of the devices. So
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that was one of the other key things that we
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built into the solution is that every one of those
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purchase personas could have a different threshold, and so you
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figure out what matters for your team. Like if I
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talk about my high performance devices, to me, the performance
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of the device matters more so than the age of
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the device. So I may weight my uh weight my
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replacement on the performance of the device. But if I
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have a standard device or maybe a shared device, maybe
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the performance doesn't matter as much because it's only utilized
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in small bursts by certain people. So it's really going
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to come to understanding how the how those specific personas
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are used and then tweaking the threshold on an individual basis.
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That doesn't mean that you have to tweak the threshold
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to figure it out. You could just set up and
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run as default and then see what works and what
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doesn't work and adjust it. It's all about learning. So
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one of the things that I tend to follow through
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with is an agile methodology of you don't let your
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progress stop because you're trying to reach perfection. You start
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working on it, you start measuring, and then you start
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adjusting as as a management goes, and so then you
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continue to move the needle forward every time.
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Very cool. What do you reckon how much of how
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much of professional services is literally innovation? Like on a
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customer by customer basis? Is it is it ever wrote?
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You know? Is it almost always kind of require a
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degree of creative kind of engagement?
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It does if you're going to be like a successful
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person professional services. So if you if you're coming in
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expecting that you're just going to be able to follow
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some guides and then deliver it, you're not going to
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really like excel very very far. So what you want
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is to be able to really think through problems and
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come up with creative solutions, Because if all you're telling
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customers is like, oh, I'm sorry, the platform doesn't do that,
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how likely are they going to continue to continue to
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invest in next thing? If all they're being told is no,
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I can't do that. But if you can think of
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a creative way to solve their problem that helps solve
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them and then you can help take that back to
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the platform and help build the platform up, They're going
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to love that. They're going to love us, and they're
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gonna stick with us as long as as long as
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they can because they know that regardless of what comes
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out of what the platform does, we'll find solution that
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helps at least meet the need of what they're looking for.
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We hear it a lot. We hear it a lot.
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You guys do amazing work. Any other areas of work
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which you are really exciting at the moment you collaborate
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with customers on you're able to highlight them a little bit. Uh.
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Yeah, we're working on all sorts of things. I'm not
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going to call it for me, I'm a call for
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one of my other consultants. They actually built a solution
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that utilizes Adobe's webportal to pull in all of the
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licensing information for all the Adobe products and maps it
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across all the users in an instance, so you can
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identify what is being used and what isn't being used
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based on what they're licensed for versus what we typically
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do for Mexinc. Which is what's installed. Because sometimes you
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may be license for software and you may not actually
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have it ever have it installed on anything. So being
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able to map that out has been incredibly useful and
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I think one of those customers he has also I
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think has assigned it in two different customers. One of
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them is saving about ten thousand a months in Adobe
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licensing and the other one saving about fifty thousand a
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month in Adobe licensing.
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It's like the sam Ho grail, isn't it?
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This is a huge basically, it's it's been a huge thing.
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And again this is another creative way of using it,
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and he's utilizing multiple capabilities inside of next Ink. In particular,
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Flow has enabled a lot of these unique UH capabilities
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to happen because we can do these creative ideas inside
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of the sandbox type environment where we're not worrying about
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setting off credentials, we're not worrying about risking things. We're
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just building everything and then reaching the data inside. Next
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with next.
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Think crazy, you guys come up with amazing, amazing stuff.
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Anything else, anything else, Brian, I was trying to think
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of if.
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There was anything else, like really cool.
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How about how about? How about how about AI specifically?
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Like where where well, unnecessarily where you're you're you're pulling
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innovations out of a product that's not necessarily but in
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terms of insight, you're able to share on like real
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well customer concerns, priorities, experiences with AI that the DECKS
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is able to kind of really make a difference at
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at the moment.
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Yeah, I mean, you're almost like painting a picture for
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AI tools capability where we can give them the visibility
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of the utilization of AI as well as the governance.
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But then we're gonna take another lever, another layer for it.
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Because in the US, Spark is becoming very very popular
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amongst our customers, and so we have a lot of
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ongoing Spark engagements where we're learning all the different ways
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that customers are looking to have their users engage with
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our tooling for Spark, and so we're figuring out working
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with the product team to help ensure that that is
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the best possible experience for our customers. I can tell
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you right now, Like in the US, agent agent is
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a very popular choice. They're trying to look at from
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a Spark perspective.
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Yeah, yeah, it's incredible amount a buzz around spark at
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the moment, right it just remarkable. I've got some bad
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news for you, Brian. You have a you have a
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guinea pig for a brand new feature. So we're gonna
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we're going to be trialing today. You know, look, Fewture
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guests at least if they listen to your episode, will
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will be pre appraised of this, will be forewarned of
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this new feature. It's a quick fire around, Brian, nothing
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too controversial, nothing to put you too much on the spot.
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But I think you're going to thrive. I think you're
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gonna do a great job of it. Five quick fire
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around questions and then one more before we let you leave.
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Starting now, Brian, what's the one workplace technology frustration you
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would love to eliminate forever? Obviously you've got that background
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as a customer and that you see trenches to draw
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from it.
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For me, it would actually probably be the performance impact
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of collaboration tools. Collaboration tools, especially in a remote workforce,
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has become so integral to everything that even from the
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next perspective that we do and all the collaboration tools
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literally destroy computers that they're running on. So if you're
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trying to share your screens like that, it definitely can
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block and knock the experience down quite a lot. For
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I'm a Thomas Circlear from a next Thnker perspective, we
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see it all the time on our own machines.
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Do no do best piece of career advice you've ever received.
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Never be happy with where you are?
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Oh oh, never be content. I don't know. In fact,
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it might be good career advice, might not be good
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spiritual advice prior.
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Yeah, I mean from from a yeah, from a career perspective.
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If if I was content with where I was, I
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would not be where I am today. I'm never never
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happy with just being in the same old, same old.
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I'm always looking for what the next opportunity.
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Is not treading water, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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I feel that what emerging technology inside of inside the
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decks are you most excited about right now?
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I mean AI of course, like uh, even beyond like
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just what next thank has from AI. AI gives our
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users the ability to understand data that's been very difficult
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for them to do in the past. A lot of
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what we've done in the past from a professional services
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of view is build dashboards, build queries, build things to
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help people interpret that data. Now that we have AI
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from like a workspace perspective, from your admins, or from
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a user perspective with Spark, it really helps bridge that gap.
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They don't have to know all the ins and outs
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have to do it. They just let the AI interpret
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it for them.
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On a personal note, Brian, what app or tool can't
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you get through the working day with that?
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Probably Nexus? I use it quite often. There's I don't
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know if I'm one of the most, but I'm probably
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one of the most prolific users of that tool. I've
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created like four or five different bots that the professional
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services team uses and a use on a daily basis.
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Amazing final, well, final quick fire around question. Then one
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more before you go, Brian, when you're not solving customer challenges,
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what's your preferred way to switch off?
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And it's a combination, so I if I'm doing anything
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in computer wise, actually like when I said AI is
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very useful for me. I'm building my own AI workspace myself.
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I have AI servers in my house that I'm running
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localized AI solutions on. But when I'm not doing anything
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with computers, playing disc golf. It's one of my favorite
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pastimes to just go out there and play a little
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bit of rounds of disc golf.
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Nice. Nice. This is a question we haven't asked anyone
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for a couple of months, but I'm bringing it back, Brian.
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It's not a quick fire, quick fire round question. You
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don't have to be as snappy in your response. But
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what's your favorite thing about being a Next Thinker?
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I mean, truly, it's gonna be This is gonna be
501
00:25:43.240 --> 00:25:46.240
a twofold question or twofold answer as well. First off,
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being able to be there and help shape the experiences
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of our customers, it's like no other I've been on
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the customer side, being able to help other customers get
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there has been superwarrying for me. But then on the
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other side, just the other Next thinkers you get to
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work with on a daily basis. Being able to meet
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and talk to people from all around the world and
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see everyone's different perspectives, it's not necessarily something you get
510
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to see in every company. So I really enjoy that.
511
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What I said at the top of the conversation, Brian,
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it's not can it's true inexhaustible source of interesting people
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to talk to of this company, Brian. If people are
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listening and they're you know, they they're having the kind
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of experiences you've described of, you know, struggling with that
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operationalization layer. What can they do? Who can they reach
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out to, how can they make a quick difference.
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00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.799
So if they're having trouble struggling operational approvisational there, I mean,
519
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obviously look into the next thing. Professional services.
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There you get to help you.
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Yeah, but if truly, the deck slops framework and our
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Navigator framework have been incredibly helpful for customers being able
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to translate ideas into actions.
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So true, Brian, thanks for coming on the show, and
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thanks to your whole team for a great work they do.
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We really appreciate it, love it. That's it for this
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week's Deck Show. We'll be back next week, and if
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00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:16.160
you don't already, be sure to follow the show so
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you don't miss an episode until next time.
