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Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be.

Scott Lewton and Kevin L.

Jackson with you here on supply chain now.

Welcome to today's show.

Kevin, how are you doing today?

Oh, man, I'm doing great.

You know, me and one of our guests are kindred spirits, if you know what I mean.

I do.

And we'll let the cat out of the bag, uh, as we start to introduce our guests in just a second.

Hint has something to do with cardinals, but we'll.

We'll solve that puzzle in just a second, folks.

We got a great conversation, uh, coming up here today as we're talking with a few business leaders on lots of interesting topics, I think, including supply chain and business observations, especially including insights on the intriguing energy sector, some of the leadership and technology approaches that are helping companies and teams find more success.

And just where the heck does AI fit into the business leadership playbook, especially with practical applications and real outcomes?

All this and a whole bunch more.

So stay tuned for a great conversation here today.

Kevin, should be a great show, huh?

Absolutely.

When you're talking about energy and sustainability and you blend that with AI, there's tons, tons to learn and share.

Completely agree.

All right, so today's episode, we should add, is presented in partnership with our friends at Microsoft, who's doing some pretty cool things in industry, helping to move us all forward successfully.

And more on that a bit later.

So, Kevin, let me introduce our esteemed panelists here today, starting with Amy Dale, who served as vice president, SAP, America's practice for Capgemini.

She leverages some 30 plus years of supply chain industry and leadership experience in a wide range of sectors to include oil and gas, utilities, chemicals and consumer products, and many others.

Also, a little fun fact, she's an alum of the University of the Louisville.

The Cardinals.

That's right.

And a rabid basketball fan.

Very successful program.

Amy, how are you doing?

Welcome in.

Well, hi, Scott.

Hi, Kevin.

I'm thrilled to be here to talk about the energy sector and how Capgemini has been thinking about the capabilities bringing together the Microsoft, the Azure with the SAP.

So my specialty is SAP, and it's in the industry energy sector.

So we'll be talking about the supply chain impacts as well.

So excited to be here thank you.

And Kevin, love the fact that your son was a cheerleader for the Cardinals.

That's right.

Absolutely.

Lance.

The one and only Lance Jackson.

All right, so joining Amy is her colleague John Swike, who serves as managing enterprise architect slash Microsoft CCOe.

We're gonna find out what that is with Capgemini.

Now, his technical career has been a special focus on software engineering, architecture and platforming engineering.

But at the end of the day, John helps business leaders convert their ones and zeros into measurable customer outcomes by.

I love this.

Helping people do things smarter, cheaper, and faster.

Now, also, little fun fact, John is a lifelong Lego enthusiast, aka fall.

That's right, adult fan of Legos.

John, welcome in.

How you doing?

Thank you, Scott.

Kevin, happy to be here.

So a little bit about me.

So, as you mentioned, I have a background in platform and software engineering, particularly in the Microsoft space.

I've been there for a long time, kind of gone on journeys with various types of organizations, small, medium, and large.

I've seen a lot of people move a lot of big workloads to azure and other clouds, and I'm sort of here to help tell some of the platform side of the story and how we can help make it awesome.

I can't wait.

Making it awesome every day.

John and Amy.

Kevin.

I'll tell you, Kevin, we got quite the duo here today, huh?

Big conversation coming up.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And when it comes to leveraging SAP on Azure, I mean, that's sort of like a team from heaven.

And if you have cap gemini there to orchestrate, it's like, geez, we can't lose.

So heavenly.

Divine intervention at play, saving global supply chains everywhere love it.

So let's do this.

Amy and John, we shared a little bit about both of you all a second ago as we were introducing.

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I want to kind of double down because you all have got a.

They'll bring a lot of expertise and experience to the table.

So, Amy, would you also shed a little bit more light on your professional background?

That'll be helpful context for folks out there.

All right, thank you, Scott.

So, professionally, I've been working with SAP since 1995 with global implementations across pharmaceutical, the consumer products, even copper mining.

And what's interesting about doing an implementation of SAP with copper mining, it's in locations where you have to have your own reliance on your ability to produce power for that mine site, the ability to have the communication and the connectivity to be presenting maintenance schedules, the mine planning, logistics, outbound materials, you've got container ships, cargo of the mining product out into the processing around the world.

So I think that implementation I did with Freeport McMoran over a three year period was the most insightful about how important SAP can be with a global program in supply chain that's so heavily reliant on our energy sources.

And thinking now how energy sources, I've been working more with the wind, the solar, geothermal, and it's really bringing in a new way of thinking about how we can manage.

Those report on them have the sustainability and the benefit of the fossil fuels being replaced by these renewables.

So it's a great time to be in this energy space.

Fascinating.

Kevin we've done thousands of episodes.

When you think of podcasts, webinars, live streams, special events, Amy is the first that I know of that's ever dealt with a three year big old implementation in the copper mining sector.

I can't wait to learn more about some of her takeaways and experiences.

Interesting, isn't it?

Kevin yeah, some of the things she said.

I can just imagine the reliance on real time data as you are trying to develop and expand and work these mines in remote areas.

Amy I didn't do well in science, but copper, technically, I guess that's a precious mineral.

Is that in the precious mineral category?

Does that sound right?

Amy yeah, iron copper.

And you want to use it for your automotive, right?

It's a big usage in your electric vehicles.

It's going to be used in your hospitals because of its properties for protection.

So it's copper's everywhere.

Imagine 1% of that is potentially copper in that stone.

So you have to retrieve a significant amount of the mountain to have the copper that we need in our businesses.

So we literally, not figuratively, we literally have to move mountains to meet the copper demand.

So fascinating stuff.

Now, John, as I was hesitant to ask Amy that question because in my mind, the periodic table that tortured me throughout high school and college, you have.

The periodic table in your mind.

I'm shocked.

But John, if you would just like Amy laid out there, tell us more about your professional journey too.

John sure.

Absolutely.

So I've done a stint in a variety of different sized organizations, but where I started my career was actually in the business in a company called Logistics Information Systems.

I spent six years working on a problem around material resource planning and finish, good planning, distribution, solving the classic traveling salesman problem of how do you move raw materials to a finished goods material plant for process and discrete manufacturing?

And how do you do it with the cheapest least impact to fuel consumption and energy consumption and distribution costs and material costs.

And all of that is kind of a proxy for a big data problem.

How do you move and solve for moving the right materials to the right places, to the right production plants and doing it at the cheapest prices?

And along my journey, I've done various types of incarnations of helping organizations solve some of these large data problems and these big centers of data gravity.

What I bring to the table and what we're talking about here, about helping companies solve for solving energy problems and maximizing further energy consumptions, really gets into that classic dig data problem and helping them get insights from the noise and really sift signal to noise in their journeys.

Oh, man.

John, Kevin, we're assembling the start of a supply chain hall of justice here between Amy and John, of course.

Kevin.

Solving big data problems and a whole bunch of other problems.

Kevin, would you hear there from John?

I don't know if he meant to do this, but I also heard a background in sustainability.

That's exactly right.

I did.

Is that right?

Yes.

Whole dimension of network strategy and solving for least cost and sustainability.

Absolutely love it.

And of course, we're living through the sustainability imperative.

And for organizations that solve that successfully, there's all sorts of opportunities and demand there.

So good stuff there.

John and Amy and Kevin, let's keep setting the table a bit more.

So, Amy, I'm going to switch over to you here.

What are some of your observations as to the current energy landscape, especially with a tip of the hat towards the global supply chain management industry?

Your thoughts are?

Amy, it's an interesting time because we're in this energy transition, and you think about the world is trying to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy sources.

With Capgemini, we've been looking at the projected peak of the fossil fuels is actually around 2030.

So we have this opportunity right now where the regulatory and the policies and the reporting are starting to permeate across more of the world.

You're going to see more of the sustainability, the investments into the renewables, as well as then the shift away from those fossil fuels and thinking about how do we make it accessible?

How do we, through that supply chain, enable the capability of the wind turbines and the materials that go into those wind turbines?

I was actually in Scotland and saw where they had been staging the blades for the completion of wind turbines.

And I think in the back of my mind, where did those blades start?

Who was manufacturing them?

How were they then transporting those and then allowing them to be in the right location to then have the solar and the wind power that we need for the world.

And so imagine the Shetland islands, and they're trying to put a wind turbine in the Shetland islands.

It's fascinating to think it is.

And the scale.

You know, I haven't been to Scotland, but, Kevin, when I'm flying from Atlanta to out west somewhere, and we're flying over the midwest to peer down and look at those big wind turbine farms, it is just fascinating.

And the size of it, you can't really appreciate it.

You come up close.

And that also, Amy takes me back to the manufacturing component, too.

And, of course, getting them where they got to go to get them assembled and getting them contributing renewable energy to the grid.

Kevin, your quick thoughts on what we heard from Amy.

Yeah, I know in the North Atlantic there, they're not only leveraging wind, but wave power.

I saw a recent show about how they're harnessing the waves in order to create energy.

In the end, it's all about the all of the above options when it comes to energy and being able to balance all of the sources in a renewable, sustainable way, that harmony, the equilibrium.

That you're speaking to.

All right, so, John, also, some of your observations when it comes to the current energy landscape, especially maybe where energy and supply chain intersect.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, as I alluded to when I opened, a lot of companies are dealing with a big data problem.

And itd be easy to think that big equals volume, eg, size.

But big data is actually more complicated than that.

Its volume variety and velocity, the speed of data that is coming at you.

So for a lot of energy companies, one of the dimensions theyre dealing with thats very unique to them is all of the devices are becoming IoT devices, which means that every single one of those devices is emitting data.

We need to do something with that data.

Either capture it, consume it, process it, protect it, secure it, archive it, a variety of different reasons, be business intelligence, or it could be for operational types of warehouses and things like that.

When I started my career in process and discrete manufacturing, it was very common to have historians that would sit on production lines and SCADA controllers, and they would do weekly data dumps or monthly data dumps.

That's unheard of today in manufacturing.

Now it's microseconds for that data to be transmitted to wherever those ultimate data stores are.

That's the expectation.

And for energy producers, for energy suppliers, for those that are protecting the energy infrastructure grid, it's critically important that they have a handle on all of these different IoT devices.

And that means being able to rationalize and look at this vast variety of data sources.

And then how are they looking at it in that entire fleet management size from both the volume variety and velocity dimensions of that big data problem.

John I love that volume variety of velocity, the triple v.

And then the second thing, Kevin, that as John was sharing that all those millions, if not billions, of IoT devices is, of course, the ever evolving cybersecurity challenges that we have.

Right.

Kevin, your thoughts?

What we heard there from John well.

First of all, the volume of data is indeed a challenge, especially as you bring all of the Iot of Schmidt's online.

But I think one of the biggest challenges is actually classifying that data and linking the data to the specific business processes so that you know why that data is important.

And this is really the power of cloud computing, because you can actually connect these sensors, the IoT devices, in real time, to deliver data, classified data, and then understand the impact of the change of that data to your business processes.

And that's really where a lot of the advancement in business models in reducing waste when it comes to creating products and services come in.

Yep.

So we got to add a fourth v then.

John, Amy and Kevin at value.

Amy, both you and John both kind of already spoke to this in some of your responses thus far, but I'm going to double dip here.

When you meet with work with the operators out there across the energy sector, what do you find to be some of their, both their common and their unique challenges or concerns out there?

Amy so I think, let me start with the common challenges that we're seeing.

Top of mind, regulatory and policy uncertainty.

That is something that is the operators face this due to the fluctuating regulatory and the policy, whether in the US, you're dealing with the state of California or you're dealing with the federal government, it's common for everybody to have to be dealing with those.

Another one, this goes to John.

The technology integration is a common how do we bring in that cyber security?

How do we bring in the protection of the grid?

How do we ensure that the ransomware and the threats from the cybersecurity are addressed?

And I think then the third one is also the skills gap, right?

We're looking at talent, the war for talent, and how do we bring individuals into this energy space ecosystem and see that the career opportunities when it may not have the glamour of some of the other industries now with the big data and the technology.

So those are three of the top common ones.

When I think about what are some of the unique, the customer expectations and how the consumers are becoming more involved.

And you now have prosumers as well as consumers in this energy space.

It's a new mindset that says, how am I, as now the individual going to be part of this ecosystem, of our energy landscape?

And then another unique opportunity is where are you going to make your investments?

Where do you want to be spending your money as that operator?

You've got your immediate cost, but you also have that need for the future and that investment that you want to make in technology, which may have longer term benefits.

And I know we'll talk about this later, but think about Genai and where does AI fit into all this and how are you going to invest in it?

So those are some of the unique challenges, I'd say.

Oh, man.

Kevin, I don't know where to begin.

That was a great list of common and unique challenges.

What did you hear there?

Kevin?

Yeah, you know, I'm going to probably hone in on the cybersecurity issues.

When we were talking earlier with John about the data, I'd mentioned the need to classify the data quickly and accurately.

Well, if you don't classify it appropriately, then you don't know how to protect it.

So that really complicates the cybersecurity aspects of any data dependent process.

And cybersecurity is an arms race, right?

The bad guys are going to get more capabilities like artificial intelligence, and then the dead guys are going to have to figure out how to protect themselves against that new capability.

So it's ever changing landscape, and the operators are required by law and regulation more and more to protect that data.

And recent european laws on artificial intelligence is a point of fact.

That's right.

Oh, man.

Kevin, the shifting landscapes, man.

Goodness gracious.

I'm not sure if any of you all are a fan of Mad magazine back in the day, but it's like that spy versus spy.

They constantly kind of found new ways of getting one up on the other way back in the day, Jon, Amy and Kevin both have really painted quite a challenging and risk filled picture here.

What would you add in terms of these operators, energy sector, both common and unique challenges?

Yeah, so I'll riff on, I think, a few points that Amy made that were particularly salient and just add to those that in addition to kind of specialized industry skill sets of, we also have a shrinking and aging workforce that is introducing some interesting challenges for a lot of energy companies that are just emerging into cloud platforms.

Because it's more than just changing your center of compute cloud is not just another place to do compute.

It's also an operating model.

And that means people in process change has to come along for the ride.

And some of those skill sets are not just changing how you do things just a little differently.

It's a fundamental way of changing.

In addition to that, you know, we talked about threats, but we didn't talk about the threat velocity.

How quickly are threats coming at my organization?

That's an important distinguisher.

Cause if I've lived in my corporate cocoon, my on premise cocoon for a while, and I'm now just stepping into the cloud world, some of these threat actors are coming at you so quickly, you don't have time to do processes in the way that you did them before on premises.

You have to change the way you think about solving those problems.

And so for all of those reasons, this is a journey.

And cloud is not necessarily a destination.

It's very much a product that has to be living and breathing.

And for that reason, that's where partners and others can really help on not only getting to the journey, but also sustaining the journey along the ride.

That's really important.

That, and harnessing all of that data that is emergent, too, from what we've already talked about with IoT and big data and all that.

So, Kevin, that living and breathing is a great phrase to kind of wrap that response on, because it, you almost got to be in the moment as things are constantly evolving.

Threats, the bad actors that John's mentioned, for that matter, your customer needs and demands and expectations, talk about ever shifting and more demanding parts of business.

The other thing he called out, that threat velocity.

Kevin, you know, when Amy was talking about technology integration, one of the topics that jumped in my brain was interoperability, right?

All these different platforms and resources and tools, but they gotta work together in a protected environment in that sandbox and that talk about things are shifting by the hour.

Kevin, your thoughts on what John just shared, how he, what he added to our long list that we already started with.

Amy, when it comes to common and unique challenges.

Yes, yes, yes.

And I'm going to say dependency and trust.

You need to leverage cloud computing because of the, you know, the volume of data, the changing business models.

You are dependent on that cloud service provider to protect you, to stay on top of these changing threats.

And you have to have trust in your cloud service provider to do the same, to understand your business model, to understand how your customers, what your customers needs are.

This is why operating in the cloud is really a much different operating model than the on premise it that people may have been used to.

So selecting the right cloud service provider is a critical aspect of moving forward with these advanced technologies and advanced business models.

If I could add to that real quick, one additional, additional point to that is not just the cloud service provider, but the right cloud service model.

In addition to that, the right mix of platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and software as a service, that makes a big difference of how your business can transform.

And that should be a key ingredient in kind of aligning your strategy as well.

Yeah, and I'll have to say these are different skill sets than traditional it.

So it's important to understand, you know, it's not about a specific cloud service provider, but it's about understanding this new model.

Cloud computing is not a form of doing information technology.

It's really the only sustainable and dynamic form of doing information technology for a modern business.

Outstanding.

And I love the trust comes up.

That's a common theme in all these conversations we're having.

Technology, operational, the workforce, you name it.

It's a really universal theme.

All right, so, folks, we've got the smartest, boldest audience out there.

So despite our best efforts of creating some fear and anxiety, look, y'all been there, you live it every, every day.

But still, that's a pretty challenging picture that we just painted between what John and Amy was talking about, and of course, Kevin's perspective as well.

But now there's good news, because we've got leadership approaches and technology plays that are certainly helping address and mitigate all those risks and plenty others, enabling real organizational outcomes and success.

Tangible, tangible success.

So, first, I want to start at a, at a higher level, and especially from a leadership perspective here.

And John, this is for you kind of broader across sectors.

What are you seeing leaders do to drive transformation and find success in what we and many others call this endless Vuca environment.

Right.

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.

Goodness gracious, John, what are you seeing there?

Where were folks finding success?

Well, I'll start with patterns and anti patterns, because we all love those.

Right?

So one of the anti patterns is to go it alone.

Uh, so in any business, in any industry, we're finding that the nuances, the, the number of tentacles into all of these different, you know, operations platforms and strategic platforms have become so complicated that it's very difficult for those organizations to do it themselves, and they need partners to help them get there.

I like to describe this sometimes to our clients as sort of been there, done that, bought the t shirt.

You know, we have some of that experience to help you along the ride, show you where the dragons are, show you where the landmines are buried.

And it isn't just about having a partner, it's also having a partner that can kind of highlight to you where some of those strategic opportunities might be as well.

It isn't just about avoiding problems, it's also about taking advantage of new business operating models.

And you know, with that comes kind of investments.

And I mentioned before choosing the right cloud service model.

So what can I get out of when it comes to moving from IaaS to PaaS?

That's a key element to a sustainability journey because we, you know, the data all shows that moving to platform as a service is substantially less carbon emitting than using infrastructure as a service and virtual machines as abstractions.

The other angle to that is where can I think about edge?

Edge computing comes up a lot, especially in the Azure space with Azure Stack hub and Azure Stack HCI, Azure stack edge.

Those capabilities are unique into different ecosystems and for every cloud provider there's equivalents.

But those are key capabilities that leaders are thinking about that can think about their cloud as a cloud of clouds and not just thinking about it as sort of a one time investment.

We've moved our center of compute.

We've washed our hands, now we're done with cloud.

No, it's an ongoing journey that requires care and feeding.

Those patterns are good ones for organizations and leaders to get into.

Framing it as a program, framing it as a long term journey, rather than framing it as a project that begins and ends.

Love that.

And I like, before I shift over to Amyde, Kevin, I love the patterns and anti patterns way that John framed it up.

It reminds me of what we've seen the last 20 years in cinema and on tv.

You got your heroes and you got your anti heroes like Walter White breaking Bad.

Right?

The rise of the anti heroes.

But Kevin, technology and leadership wise, what'd you hear there from John?

Well, he didn't say it, but everything he's talking about is a hyper converged infrastructure, right?

And this is really the way to have a dynamic platform that can change sense and respond to the needs of the business of the customers and the challenges that are presented by your competitors.

And he didn't say it.

I was looking for that.

That is a great addition to John's list of the patterns and anti patterns.

Amy, dialing in just a smidge, maybe we look at from a leadership perspective what energy leaders are doing to drive this transformation and find success in this VUCA world, we're all navigating through what comes to mind.

Nuclear energy is pivotal in achieving our global net zero targets.

And this is supported by the International Energy Agency, the IEA.

Let me talk about why it's important.

Think about smrs, the small modular reactors and what those can do for communities.

The ability to have a small modular reactor near a hospital, near supporting a university.

Being able to protect a community by having a source of nuclear energy.

And think of it differently than nuclear energy of the past.

We're still able to grow and benefit from that.

But there's new ways of the digital transformation that we can bring together in modernizing our nuclear reactors and our energy to really support that net zero target that we have globally.

So I do think transformation can come in doing things from the past, but in new ways in the future, leveraging digital and leveraging smaller capabilities to have a more targeted impact.

First, Amy, I agree with you, and I appreciate how you mentioned that that is provocative, because in some circles it is.

But I think where I look at it, I completely agree with you.

The challenges we have today are going to be 100th of the challenges we've got next month or next year.

And we've got to take when folks here with nuclear, and this is just my opinion, I think they think oftentimes of maybe, you know, sixties and seventies, some of the incidents, all this stuff.

But technology like we've seen everywhere else in global business has evolved so much and nuclear power offers so much benefit and power in a far safer way that it makes so much sense on so many different levels, including the SMR, the small modular reactors that present major tactical gains for infrastructure everywhere.

And we've got to, if we're not having these conversations and exploring these provocative ideas and revisiting some old technologies that have been transformed into the opportunities there are now, I think we're approaching it wrong.

That's just my opinion.

Kevin, when it comes to nuclear opportunities and what Amy shared there, what are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, I want to just highlight Amy said the magic word, digital transformation.

Okay.

And this is a dynamic thing that always changes.

And you have to always have your eyes open and your mind open so that you can accept the possibility of change.

You know, nuclear energy is part of that, all of the above strategy when it comes to energy.

So don't knock that out.

Yeah, you can't, you know, one, not to beat the dead horse here, but to our listeners and viewers out there, if you haven't, between the US and several handful of countries have all committed to reinvesting in big ways into exploring and delivering nuclear power to meet some of the immensely growing demands that we're going to have as it comes to the global energy needs.

Amy, anything else you want to add in terms of what you're seeing energy leaders use to navigate through this FUCA environment?

One interesting area is collecting of information that allows an organization to benefit from the investments governments, towns, cities, states are making in clean energy.

And so it's how can we help provide the ability to collect, have a dashboard and collaborate between a company and the local government for the betterment of solar or wind, where there are tax credits, or there's a opportunity for commercial investment into a community with the solar or wind.

And so grants, and the ability to request a grant to achieve and meet the requirements of a grant that might be out there for renewables is something that we all need to be thinking about.

How can we work together and collaborate across our communities to support and enable the benefit of the new technologies that we can bring into any part of the world?

Yes, Kevin, what I heard there from Amy, at least what I'm hearing is how can we plan, fund, operationalize and scale these collaboration strategies where really folks across the ecosystem, all the different parties get what they need.

What did you hear there, Kevin?

The importance of small and medium sized businesses.

Those are where the new ideas come from.

So it's important these national grants, industry grants that explore these new ideas so they can bring them to fruition and commercialize them.

This is critical to not just the energy industry, but every industry globally.

Yep, power of the SMBs.

Well said there, Kevin, Amy, John and Kevin, before we move on into touched on AI.

Amy, anything else you want to add in terms of what you're seeing leaders deploy across the energy sector?

First, anything else?

I think the only other one I'd add is that we're looking at new ways to use SAP to run companies more efficiently.

And so we are spending a lot of time, whether it's a small utility company, a large utility company, an energy and oil and gas, how can SAP, where it has evolved in the S four HAna code base, working with the likes of Microsoft and Azure, with rise that there are benefits.

And so I'm seeing more business cases that we're putting together of why a utility company, why an energy company should be investing now in their enterprise SAP backbone for the benefit of their users and their shareholders.

So definitely seeing an uptick in that.

Okay.

And we're going to shed a little more light on that towards the end of today's conversation.

So I appreciate you mentioning that.

It is on our radar for sure, and in a very powerful way out across industry.

Okay, artificial intelligence, folks, you can't have a conversation these days without talking about AI.

And I'm kind of halfway kidding, but kind of halfway not kidding.

It's amazing.

I love the scene.

Almost every day I see a new use case.

For what?

AI.

The benefits and innovations and outcomes that AI can provide out there when used.

I think my take, when we know what we're trying to do and we know that that's the right tool to do it with.

So with specific regard to AI, could you share an example or two as to how energy companies are leveraging AI to fuel productivity, profitability, and, of course, empowering the human element?

Amy, your thoughts there.

Well, one of the most prevalent use case with the AI is for inspections.

And if you think about whether it's a line inspection, a tank inspection, you know how to have.

And this is where John will be kind of jumping in, is the data and the visual imaging.

But there's also what we call synthetic data, that there are times where you lack enough real data, but you need to build a model, you need to do the programming.

And so there's the visual or the real data, learning, teaching, and then also creating the synthetic data.

And then you have to have a really strong partner ecosystem because it takes a lot of compute power, a lot of the analysis and the analytics.

But the energy companies really have an opportunity to improve operations efficiency, improve safety, reduce risk of environmental concern or issues, and then for the people to be able to have the cost effective, to try to lower the cost of providing that utility or that energy to their community.

So to me, the AI, I've got a number of other cases besides the inspection.

One recent one with a oil and gas company was rail cars and how much that they have to move rail cars in the rail yard.

And AI was able to come in and help optimize the movement of those rail cars so that you were able to have the efficiency and also the safety of moving something that has a corrosive or hazardous material in the tanker, in the car.

So it was interesting to see that even AI can help you optimize your rail yard.

Amy, I love that example.

A lot of folks may not think about the rail industry, despite the massive role it plays in global supply chain and the complexity when it comes to building a transportation plan with the constraints you find in the rail industry.

You can't exactly hop off I 20 and on the I 85 with your rail card.

If there's some defined constraints.

I love hearing AI making games there, making that easier, and opening up some efficiency gains there.

John.

Actually, Kevin, I'll get your comment first.

Switch over to John and get his thoughts on AI use cases.

What'd you hear there, Kevin, from Amy?

Well, you know, as we go into this conversation about artificial intelligence, I want to make a point that AI is essentially a sustainable and reusable model for human intelligence.

Right.

AI starts from human intelligence, and when you're using AI, you are actually reusing human intelligence that may have been lost in the database somewhere.

You're looking at decisions that have been made by humans that have been proven successful.

So artificial intelligence, you should not be as scared of artificial intelligence.

It is a tool.

It's a tool to access, efficiently access human intelligence.

And I think these are replicated in the use cases that Amy is relaying to us.

Agreed, Kevin, that's one of your go to themes.

Don't be scared, folks.

Lean into the opportunity.

I love it.

I love it.

All right, so, John, Amy shared a couple between the inspections and the rail car application.

Love that.

Touched on synthetic data.

What else do you point to when you see really cool use cases where AI is bringing productivity, profitability and empowering the human element to the table?

Sure.

So we talked about AI kind of being a broad field, being classic machine learning, to generative technologies, to predictive analytics, predictive maintenance.

But I'll pivot back to a conversation earlier and then bring it back, which is around.

As organizations are moving on their cloud journeys to various cloud platforms, sometimes they'll get their cloud bill and they'll say, oh, wow, that's pretty expensive.

We should implement some kind of a financial operation solution to minimize our cloud cost.

Well, as they go on that journey, it turns out that the same meters that are used for measuring their cloud costs, and more broadly cloud economics, are also meters that impact sustainability and operating your ecosystem and your estate in a sustainable way.

And one of the places where AI is emerging is a very interesting way of dog fooding.

Your own AI is, where can I trim waste?

Where can I get rid of waste?

And that comes in various forms from obvious shutting down machines.

But more interestingly, where are there constraints in my platform?

Where do I need to give the platform more resources?

Because it's constrained.

And it's not just necessarily about cost reduction, it's about optimizing the broader estate for the various types of use cases.

I think AI has not only the potential to, and actually is right now, helping with problems around, you know, the predictive analytics, the predictive maintenance.

But it also has some very interesting angles in running my business operations as efficiently as possible by really removing the cost of waste out of the system, be it from manufacturing facilities, but also into kind of the IT transformation model that we talked a lot about.

Kevin, John brought several thoughts in my mind.

One of them, though, I got to ask you, John, you used a phrase that was new to me.

You said dog food in your own AI.

What does that mean?

John.

It means using your own technology to prove the value.

So when you're dog fooding the AI, you're kind of saying, all right, it, we're going to apply AI to it first to see if we can reduce some of our costs before we go deploy these things onto some of the business operations.

And there's a variety of different machine learning models that you could bring to bear to, to kind of solve for some of those problems in various domain specific applications.

But hopefully that makes sense.

That makes sense to me.

I appreciate you breaking that down.

And then secondly, Kevin, kidding aside, what John touched on there, we've had a lot of great conversations as part of the series, including a manufacturing leader, technology leader with Georgia Pacific, who was using AI in such a targeted, practical way of really connecting with his team members on the factory for to figure out, okay, what can we do?

What problems are you solving?

And then we're going to apply the right tool, oftentimes AI in that conversation and making their days easier and safer and more productive.

That is like music to my ears.

But, Kevin, what did you hear there from John?

Well, you know, it's important also to note that artificial intelligence gives you visibility into your business process by providing data so that you can make informed decisions about your business processes.

And it's the visibility that drives sustainability, knowing where your waste is, knowing what part of your process is not contributing to the delivery of the product or delivery of the service.

That visibility is something that's key to any executive being successful in their industry.

That's right.

If you can't see it, you can't manage it, or at least it's really challenging to.

All right.

Hey, Amy and John, y'all brought it.

I loved y'all's ideas, and especially the practical examples of how some of the organizations in your ecosystem are leveraging AI in powerful ways.

Let's switch gears a bit here.

John, if you would shed a little bit light on Capgemini's longstanding partnership with our friends here at Microsoft.

Absolutely.

So, Capgemini and Microsoft have been partners for 25 plus years, but it's got to be longer than that.

We have been partners with Microsoft across every single business domain you can imagine, from cloud platform to dynamics 365 to Microsoft 365 to two teams and teams voice and all sorts of different avenues that we partner with Microsoft to bring capabilities to market.

One that I'll highlight is we just received and we're honored to receive a partner of the year award for our SAP to Azure migration.

Yeah, out of Capgemini, Japan.

So there was a large SAPR three landscape migration that took place.

We were honored with that award.

It was a very complicated migration that took many a moon to complete.

We were also finalists in a whole bunch of other categories, including some of the work that we do in apps and native app dev to some of the dynamics and dynamics 365 finance and operations and customer engagement spaces, as well as some of our industry focuses and financial services and security and so on.

So lots of experience in the Microsoft space.

We spend a lot of time on the phone with our Microsoft friends and we can't be happier.

One other thing I'll mention is we are an Azure expert MSP.

So we come to the table with not only just a lot of experience in years, but we also bring the creds and the people and the certifications and all the other good things that go into.

What that means is being an expert managed service provider for Azure and all the above.

All right, well, congrats on the biggest partner of the year distinction.

That is massive, massive accolade.

And secondly, if I'm hearing it correctly, seems like Capgemini Microsoft are kind of like peanut butter and jelly in terms of how, just how long their relationship has gone.

Is that right, John?

It absolutely is.

That's a perfect example.

And I'll just add you asked at the beginning, what does CCOE mean?

And it's the cloud center of excellence.

And we're proud to have a Microsoft cloud center of excellence representing the entire ecosystem and bringing some of our special sauce to the juicy, delicious lunch.

That is the combination.

I like how you took that food analogy and took it to a whole new level.

Well, and kidding aside, that's right.

We love talking food here.

But CCOE, the cloud center of Excellent, the Microsoft Cloud center of Excellence, I appreciate you sharing that.

We'd love to unpack our acronyms because we all love acronyms so much as an industry, for sure.

Kevin, before I shift, we're going to talk about SAP and Azure and that dynamic debt.

I dynamo in just a second but Kevin, anything to add on what John shared about Gemini and Microsoft doing big things together out in industry?

Well, you know, I can't help but believe that a lot of that is the power of s four Hana running on Azure cloud.

I mean, when you talk about peanut butter and jelly, I mean, she's having a powerful, a software platform like SAP to run your enterprise resources on top of the world leading Azure cloud.

You don't get much better than that, do you?

You will shoo in for partner of the year.

I'm sorry.

Hey, I'll take the three of y'all y'all's words for it when it comes to anything technology.

So that's high praise.

Okay, let's switch gears here.

Amy, earlier in our conversation, you were kind of talking about SAP and Azure getting together as a dynamic duo, powerful combination.

What are some of the benefits that you're seeing when those two forces come together?

Well, I think the first is the size and scale.

The powerhouse of SAP global company.

We've been working with them for over four decades.

You look at the Microsoft we've been working together and with our SAP practice, Capgemini is the fastest growing provider with them for the emerging talent and our ability to support in the s four HANA space.

And why is that important?

Well, one, it's to have people certified who understand the s four Hana.

S four Hana is a new code base taking, and it's simplifying how an organization runs across its financial, its supply chain, its people, and it's enabling a lower cost operating model, especially when you bring this on to Azure in the rise model where SAP is supporting, how the SAP is staying current with the code base.

And we're actually working very closely with some of the companies that want to use SAP public, which means there's less customizations, there's less enhancements that are needed for your business model.

We have energy companies, smaller ones, that are saying, I'm okay with using something that's more standard, less customizations.

And it's on that public version of the cloud with the Microsoft Azure, it's a viable, and people maybe three years ago really started saying, okay, SAP on rise.

There's a higher confidence now.

There's a trust.

And I love the work Kevin used earlier.

There's a lot of trust that has to come in when you're going to take your company and you're going to go and you're going to put it into this platform and you're going to put it on the cloud, you're going to be depending on the capgemini, the SAP and the Microsoft to make it successful so that you're able to operate efficiently, gain the benefits of, for your people so that they're, they're spending time on the important, not the unimportant tasks and activities.

Excellent call out.

And I love that.

I love you spiking the football on trust and enabling the people across the organization to spend their time in the most beneficial and fulfilling and powerful ways.

We have so many opportunities, Kevin, we talk about this in every show.

We have so many opportunities to automate the blocking and tackling, right.

And take that to a whole new level and kind of take a lot of that off our people's plates and give them more fulfilling work that leverages the human brain power.

Right.

And the creativity and the, all the other things that humans bring to the table.

And that's a really beautiful part of this, this moment in business history that we're in.

Kevin, your thoughts there.

Now I'm gonna circle back around and get John's thoughts on SAP and Azure getting together.

Well, you're bringing tears to my eyes because, I mean, one of my career highlights was my opportunity to go to Waldorf, Germany, to SAP headquarters, where I actually had the pleasure of teaching cloud security to one of the first s four Hana classes there at SAP headquarters.

So it's really good to see that my labor so many years ago turned out pretty good.

It was worth it.

You've been holding out on me.

You hadn't told me that.

I got to find out what else Kevin's been up to in his career.

All right, so, John, kidding aside, we were talking about the SAP and Azure getting together and doing big things out in the industry.

What else would you like to add there?

So everything that's been said is great, and I'll add a couple of additional thoughts.

So we talked about big data, and big data obviously brings lots of data, gravity, as people like to say.

And you can kind of imagine SAP sort of like a solar system.

You know, it's the sun that lots of things orbit around, and some of the things are quite big in and of themselves.

So as you move your workloads and your estate to Azure, there's a lot of things that happen with those additional workloads, with those satellites that bring some special capabilities that nobody else can bring.

And part of that is around that gradual journey of moving up the cloud service model to ones that are higher levels of cloud abstractions, moving analytics platforms, moving whatever, to get the most of the exhaust that is produced by these large platforms like SAP, that's particularly special.

But there's another angle that's special, and that is where can I bring SAP on Azure?

And it isn't just the public cloud, it's also sovereign clouds.

It's also cloud partitions like GovCloud and other places that a lot of others are not.

And it's also inclusive of edge places like Azure, Stack, HCI, and hub.

Those are capabilities of one logical cloud platform where I can bring my estate in whatever way I want to bring it, but get all of the magic chocolatey nougaty goodness that is management through Azure.

I'm writing that down.

Chocolately nougaty goodness.

It's chocolatey nougaty goodness.

And obviously with that, having a partner that's done that and can help you kind of fit for purpose what to bring, where and when along that journey.

It just makes it even more sweet.

I'm about to circle back to you both and get some examples, any kind of examples with results that you can offer up.

But Kevin, you're calling out the Kit Kat Twix Snickers component of John's response, making us all hungry.

What else did you hear there from Kevin in terms of the SAP and Azure getting together?

Well, actually, the experience, if you don't have that experience, you can't see that chocolatey nougat, the goodness and how to mix it all together to make it taste so good when it goes down.

That's right.

Well, and, you know, to continue this, this, I don't know if it's a metaphor or analogy, so, y'all, I'll let y'all determine, but it's about what it delivers, right?

You don't buy a Twix to keep it in your glove box, you buy it to enjoy it.

And in a business sense, it's got to bring results, right?

That's where we really have a bunch of decisions as business leaders out there in this explosion of technology to really make sure we know what we're trying to solve and then work backwards and figure out the right tools to do it with.

So, John, stay with you for a moment.

What examples come to mind of SAP and azure, especially driving home results in the energy space?

Absolutely.

I'll give you two examples, one in energy and one that is close to energy.

So one is our longstanding partnership with our friends at Chevron, Phillips Chemical, or CP Chemical.

We've helped their digital transformation journey, including large erps, simplify their operations and supply chain capabilities over the last couple of years.

That's one key example and another one is our friends at Panasonic Automotive.

We've helped them transform their SAP estate, including augmenting that with some unique capabilities in power platform on Azure to tackle their big data problem that we were talking about before.

And for those of you that are listening or watching, if youre interested, head out over to the Capgemini website and take a look at some of our client stories because both of these are featured out there and have some really interesting videos from leaders at both of these organizations talking about what makes the magical special sauce and sweetness in the combination that we talked about in all of these industries.

Head on over there and take a look because these are some fantastic stories worth taking a look at.

Also, we can't get enough simplification in this, in this world we live in.

And our teams deserve it.

Our business processes deserve it.

Oftentimes we can take successful simplification initiatives and it could deliver more for our customers out there and absolutely delight them.

So I love that.

Of course, you mentioned increasing capabilities as well, and that's also a big name of the game and it's ever evolving.

What have you done for us lately?

Environment that we're all in.

Amy, what would you add to that?

Some examples, especially in the energy space?

Well, I think one, John, thanks.

Those are two great examples.

Another one, and it's the Panasonic.

It's the, we just went live with the gigafactory for Panasonic.

And if you think about that, it's one of these leading providers that will be something within the renewables and are sustainable.

Is being able to support that gigafactory?

When I think about some of the benefits that come from working with us, it's about how to support standardizing the processes, whether it's a finance accounting and someone doing the accounts receivable, helping them to have standardized terms and conditions with their customers so that their collections are not challenged in the warehouse.

And the reducing your inventory and your manufacturing cost, how can you have improved forecasting to minimize the loss or the fulfillment challenges you might have in your supply chain?

So, Scott, I'm going to be tying into your supply chain.

That SAP is material in showing the improvements that you can have, reducing your waste, reducing scrap, improving your on time delivery, really comes from having that complete supply chain that SAP can bring in from the forecasting, the customer orders, the new product development, the tying it into the manufacturing, the supply chain for the logistics, the movement of product.

It's all part of any, whether it's energy, a utility, it's all material, and there's ways to improve the operations, even in it.

And analytics, you know, think about having improved it analytics, developing a dashboard, or I'm developing the business case, and I need to make sure we're tracking to that.

There's a value and a benefit from identifying and tracking your analytics of how you're using your SAP to support your outcomes at your company.

Ah, Amy, what a great laundry list of real valuable outcomes.

You know, don't sleep on T's and C's.

Standardizing those allow us to move faster and bake more trust into relationships.

Talk about trust.

Uh, inventory management, better forecasting, looking at your analytics and managing them in different ways.

And you touched on waste.

And Kevin, I'm gonna get your comment here, but I think it's so important.

This came up earlier, Kevin, I think you mentioned it, uh, about something along the lines of, you gotta be able to see it, right?

Waste.

When you folks, when you think of waste, if you're tuned in, listening or watching, it's not just scrap.

You got to really, really define and look at your organization, your enterprise, and look at all the different definitions of waste.

Movement, wasted talent, wasted transit, rework all the different ways.

And when you're able to look at waste differently, look at your organization differently, you'll be surprised what you can find and then eliminate that will create a more efficient organizations, probably typically easier for your team to put in position and be more successful.

So good stuff there.

Amy, you and John.

Kevin, what'd you hear?

John and Amy both gave us some examples of what they're doing and some of these technologies getting together and moving mountains out there, in a more figurative sense, not the copper mining example I found so fascinating on the front of the show that Amy was sharing.

What'd you hear there?

Kevin, so let's simplify.

This SAP gives you the data that provides the visibility across your supply mesh, and that's what you're doing, right?

Once you have that data, you get that visibility across what your partners are doing, your suppliers are doing, and what you are doing.

And that gives you the visibility needed to make the right decisions at the right time.

That's right.

And be more confident in them, which is important in the equation as well.

Beautiful simplicity.

Amy and John, what an ounce.

And Kevin, what an outstanding conversation here today.

I wish we had a couple more hours.

I find what you are doing fascinating, and I know we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg here, but let's make sure folks know how to connect with you both.

My hunch is that you'd welcome a post podcast discussion on some of the things you're doing out there.

So let's start with you, Amy.

How can folks connect with you in the Capgemini team?

I really look forward to connecting.

I love the opportunity to share and discuss thoughts with others.

So please find me on LinkedIn.

Amy Dale and I'm also very proud of being at capgemini and capgemini.com.

you can have access to a lot of the examples and the case studies that we're doing across SAP, AI, the utilities, the supply chain.

We're around the world definitely tap into us.

So I look forward to hearing from others and connecting.

Love that.

And I enjoy the content, the blogs and the studies y'all put out over at Capgemini.

So folks, check that out and make sure you connect.

Amy on LinkedIn.

John Sweich, how can folks connect with you?

Same thing.

Reach out on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com.

jon Cwiak and I and a whole contingent of Capgemini friends will also be making a cameo appearance at ignite this fall, coming up in November.

So Microsoft, ignite, so we will be physically live in person to come have conversations, be it technical or leadership or otherwise.

So we welcome you to come mingle, say hello, pick our brains, have deep conversations, do all the things that technologists and business leaders and everyone else that will be at ignite this year are going to be doing.

So we look forward to seeing all of our friends and family show up and say hi come November.

Something to be thankful for.

So there we go.

John, I love it.

So, folks, check if you're going to be at the ignite event.

Be sure to track John and the whole cap Gemini team down and take him up on the opportunity to talk, to talk business, to talk technology or talk legos.

There's some good stories there, too.

All right, so, Kevin, what a great conversation.

I've got about 16 pages of notes here today.

I want to ask you, though, another one of your key takeaways from the discussion.

You spoke about simplicity earlier, Microsoft.

Surly, we've talked about some of the cool things they're doing.

What do you find them doing in the energy industry that we should share with our audience as well?

Well, it's really important to understand that Microsoft is empowering the energy workforce, and this comes from the data that's provided, like platforms from SAP, and it can automate the workflows and improve AI enabled recruiting, learning and training so you can get seamless collaboration across your enterprise.

They operate for a new energy future that optimizes supply chains, secures assets, empowers energy systems with artificial intelligence to increase productivity.

And this drives and gives you the ability to achieve net zero commitments by transforming data to reduce emissions, scale carbon free energy and decarbonize the energy value chain so you can grow sustainably with an AI powered business that uses clear data insights to accelerate climate innovation, sustainability, progress and business growth.

This is a trifecta of Microsoft, SAP and Capgemini.

Love it.

Man.

I'm ready to run through the wall behind me as you lay all that out there and really painting a bold new way of doing business, right?

Yes.

To call out, Amy mentioned that I think 2030 was going to be the peak for current energy and you get on the other side of that demand is only going to grow of how we can solve our energy needs differently.

So, folks, what a great conversation here today.

I appreciate what Amy and John and Kevin are doing out in industry to help change how we do business and achieve new highs.

Kevin, really quick before we think, everybody, how can folks connect with you?

And the podcast is setting the world on fire.

Digital transformers with the one and only Kevin L.

Jackson.

Yes, thank you very much.

And I am on LinkedIn.

And also you can catch me on the big x at Kevin Jackson.

So thank you very much for the opportunity to enjoy this conversation about the future of energy in digital transformers.

We, I think, just recently released an exciting show on the use of digital assets.

So stay tuned and see digital transformers wherever you get your podcast.

That's right, hits keep coming.

Hit factory led by Kevin L.

Jackson and the team.

You'll check out digital transformers and supply chain.

Now, wherever you get your podcast from.

Big thanks.

All of our first off, most importantly, all of our listeners and our viewers, our community members across the globe, smartest in the business.

Hey, y'all.

Appreciate you and appreciate all the feedback you give us each and every day.

Also, big thanks to Amy Dale.

Amy, great to have you here.

Thank you.

Enjoyed your perspective, enjoyed your stories.

I can't wait to read the book that you're going to be publishing about your journey.

Really enjoy what you shared here today.

And also, John Swike, your colleague there at Capgemini.

John, thanks for being here.

You bet.

Thanks, Scott.

Thanks, Kevin.

And folks, big thanks again to our collaborative partners over at Microsoft as well, helping us to bring conversations like this and bold ideas, provocative ideas to our global audience.

A big thanks there, Kevin.

Always a pleasure to knock out these conversations with you.

Yeah.

Going Louisville.

That's right.

To all the Louisville fans out there across our global audience.

Hey, go Cardinals, for sure.

Hey, really appreciate everybody out there.

Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I have.

Be sure to find supply chain now and digital transformers wherever you get your podcast.

But you gotta.

Here's your homework.

You gotta take one thing.

Tell you, Amy and John and Kevin, as I mentioned, I got the 16, maybe 16 and a half pages of notes.

Lots of actionable insights.

Take one thing.

Go put it into action.

Deeds, not words.

Your team and your customers, your suppliers, your ecosystem is ready to change how business is done.

And we gotta take the first, if not the first, 17 steps.

But whatever you do on behalf of the entire team here at supply chain now, Scott Ludin, challenging you do good, give forward.

Be the change that's needed.

We'll see you next time.

Right back here at supply chain now.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for being a part of our supply chain now community.

Check out all of our programming@supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to supply chain now anywhere you listen to podcasts.

And follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

See you next time.

Time on supply chain now.