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Rajasekar Sukumar

Senior Vice President & Head, Europe

Persistent Systems

Simon Ingram

Senior Vice President | Technology (CIO)

Onclusive

Onclusive partners with Persistent Systems to navigate technological and organizational transformation

In the technology industry today, one of the biggest conversations taking place is how to continue to be agile and scale while also continuing business growth under any circumstances.That type of example is illustrated well when it comes to Onclusive Inc., which is both a carve-out and a roll-up that was originally incepted out of Kantar Group and needed to be set up as an independent company, according to Simon Ingram (pictured, left), senior vice president of technology at Onclusive.“We had transitional service agreements with the parent company, 18 different agreements for different services, but we really had to stand on our own feet,” he said

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Rajasekar Sukumar | Persistent Systems & Simon Ingram | Onclusive

Rajasekar Sukumar

Senior Vice President & Head, Europe Persistent Systems

Simon Ingram

Senior Vice President | Technology (CIO) Onclusive

(bright music)

>> Hi everyone. Welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here in Palo Alto, California. We got two great guests coming in from London, England talking about business transformation and Persistent Systems. Here, Raj Sukumar, senior vice president head of Europe with Persistent, and Simon Ingram, senior vice president of technology at Onclusive. Great transaction happening here. Great technology transformation, business transformation extension. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on this CUBE conversation.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you for having us, John.

>> So, Raj, congratulations on your recent news at Avis at London Summit. Saw the big news there, a lot of action in cloud. One of the biggest conversations we're having in the industry today is how to continue and be agile and scale and also continue the business growth under any circumstances, from growth to repositioning and growth. Your partner here at Onclusive has a great use case. It really kind of illustrates the agility challenge. Simon, take a minute to explain what you guys do and the transaction you're involved in and what that's caused and from an opportunity standpoint.

>> Yeah, thanks John. So the business is a carve both a carve out and a roll up. Originally incepted out of Kantar, which in turn was part of WPP conglomerate and on first of Jan 22 the business was sold and we were really into a complete, you know, new standup situation then. We no longer had, well we had transitional service agreements with the parent company, 18 different agreements for different services but we really had to stand on our own feet. It's like a divorce where, you know, you have to move out of the house, you have to get your own, get new friends, your new suppliers. And obviously one of our great friends here were Persistent who were the like the golden thread partner in helping us stand up the business post the transaction.

>> Raj, this is a classic case of they need help. They're flying this airplane at 35,000 feet. They got to make transform, they got to make all these changes without disruption and it's a challenge. How did you get involved? How has the engagement work? Take us through your role and what are some of the key things that you guys are working on as they come to you to make this transaction, you know, simple, easy, smooth yet positioned for growth.

>> Yeah, absolutely, John. So, you know, businesses like Onclusive are really at the forefront of driving disruptive change in their domains, right? And in order to do that, they really have to keep focus on their core objectives and business processes. There are a lot of complexities involved in a carve out, setting up a new company. There's so many moving parts and it's also a private equity landscape. So it's important to force the right partnerships, bring in partners like us with the right cultural fit to be able to navigate the waters, right? There are several things involved here and we have a good foundation in digital engineering and that's our primary focus that really allows us to be, you know, ahead of the technology trends and stay closer to our customers. And that's what we bring to the table, right? Sometimes you need somebody to orchestrate all the moving parts, you know, and bring harmony into the whole ecosystem, right? That's how we got involved. It's a great partnership. Super proud of it. And the real value here is 18 different service agreements. You know, you need to manage all of them. You can't do it alone. You need somebody to dance with you. And that's what we really bring to the table.

>> Simon, what's the psychology on your side and then the tactics that you have to move into place immediately once the ball starts rolling, what's the playbook? What do you do? Just call 'em up, say, hey, we got to get going. It's got to let the structure, I mean it's so much you got to get on. What's the, what do you attack first? What's the low hanging fruit you go after and how do you tackle the problem?

>> Yeah, I mean that's, we only have 15 minutes, right? Look, you know, I think, you know, we had to do so many things. Number one was establish new brand, you know, and we had to move five offices in the first six months in different parts of Europe. We had to create, you know, separate networks and isolate ourselves security wise from the previous company. So it's, the challenges are relentless. They come thick and fast and they come at you from all angles. You are also dealing with, you know, big changes for our staff and our other suppliers. You know, change is always disruptive to a business. So you have to, you know, have to manage the way through that. And you need a supplier who is, you know, in it for the long game. They're not a, you know, some of our suppliers are very transactional. You know, they do a, you know, they come in, they're hired guns, they do a piece of work, they get paid, they leave. It's a completely different sort of relationship with Persistent because yes there's certain standup activities but that then leads into, you know, running 24 hour a day, seven days a week service desks for us that can support, you know, we're a follow the sun business now with offices from California through to Singapore. And you know, we just need somebody who's got the ability to grow with us and who, you know, understands that, you know, in all honesty, the runbook evolves, you know, the runbook is things are moving so quickly and you have to have guiding principles that you work to, and and of course you that you try and work to sort of standard processes and methodologies. But, you know, we were rolling up, you know, six or seven different businesses with different cultures, different ways of working, different go-to markets, different supplier stacks. And you can have a target operating model in mind but it's the journey to the target operating model where we really need Persistence.

>> It's the hardest problem to have. You've got people, process, technology and all areas are completely radically changing. You know, it's not like a venture capital is giving us startups some capital. Oh yeah, go build a company. The private equity ownership piece, you know, they move fast. There's a lot going on at super speed here, private equity. They're not going to sit around and wait for you guys. Oh yeah, I'll take 12 months. No, they want action. So, Raj, what does this mean for the CTO office? Because, you know, you got speed, you got, they want to make money, they got to make some changes and move fast. It's be agile, move fast but you have a lot to work with. What's the challenge for the CTO office?

>> So the way we see it, you know, we need to be a true extension of Onclusive CTO office right? And there are three broad challenges or complexities involved in this. The first one is really the complexity of transition. So we talked about the TSA, there's a carve out, it's time-bound, significant risks on cost and operations and the private equity activity, which never stops. So you need a well-defined playbook and significant prior experience to be able to execute this at scale and at pace. The second one is the complexity of choice. You have so many platforms and tools and technologies together and when you bring in multiple companies together you bring people together as well from different backgrounds, different cultures. So the choice is unlimited there. So how do you bring it together? How do you set up the right model? What's your IT strategy? For example, multicloud with AWS Azure, how does it work? And then finally it is the complexity of orchestration. So how do you bring the whole dance together, right? It's about people, the platforms, the required customization for the business. So this really needs specialist skillsets and a very, very strong partner ecosystem to be able to bring it together. So the single most important thing for the CTO office here is to forge the right partnerships. That's the important thing here. Now, with partnerships in the right place then you'll be able to navigate this together rather than doing it on your own. And which significantly, if you were to do it it'll distract you from your core objectives, right? That's really the idea here.

>> Simon, talk about the KPIs that you're under right now 'cause you got a business, you're running, you have, you know the carve out and you're doing rollups which by the way adds more complexity. You're bolting on more, more companies. But your business model though, you also have partnerships for the business side. I'm sure there's some connected tissue there. So you got a lot going on. What are some of the KPIs that you're operating under on the success plan for this? 'Cause you're, again, you're moving a lot of stuff fast in real time while the business is running.

>> Yeah, look, there, the KPIs, first and foremost KPIs are around time, time and quality. So, you know, it's about getting progress made. You know, don't be late. It's the sort of mantra I have in my head from the conversations I have with the private equity partners. Now, of course that comes with responsibilities and you know you have to really respect the heritage of the business and transform in an orderly way. But, you know, it's so important that you know, you're hitting regular milestones and demonstrating that change is happening. Because again, coming back to the sort of carve out and roll up and, you know, we're talking, you know all of the major European countries with different cultures and languages and you know, if you don't keep moving you get stuck. And if you get stuck, you have a problem. So, you know, that's really where I'm looking at. I mean the earlier KPIs would've been around, you know getting off the TSAs in an orderly manner, you know and standing up the other suppliers there. But we're moving into the next stage which is much more of a transformational stage for the business. And

>> Go ahead, continue. Sorry, I interrupted you.

>> No, I was just going to cover the earlier question about how Onclusive and Persistent came together. Because although we had worked with Persistent, you know prior to this, within Kantar they were one of probably five or six viable companies we could have worked with. We ran a, you know, a fast but rigorous selection process. And I think where Persistent stood out was just they were walking towards the problem. They were very engaged in understanding the problem and explaining, you know how they would approach it and tackle it. So I just wanted to-

>> Raj, I was going to ask you that question. Same thing you guys, this is what you guys do, the balance between disruption 'cause they want to operate their business but also transformations happening at the same time. This is like, this is a very key part of how you guys do business. What are some of the KPIs you guys are focused on? What are some of the milestones? Take us through on your side of the street here. What's, what's going on there?

>> No, I think it really comes down to aligning to, you know Onclusive's objectives at the end of the day, right? So, you know, it's about understanding that at the get go and once you understand that and make it part of your problem when you work out models which are more risk sharing, and that gives comfort on both sides to operate, right? Walk the thin line. So I think the metrics are fairly simple. I think it's, in this case, it's all about time and it's all about, you know how you get to that goal faster. And I love a company like Onclusive to trade as one separate entity outside of all the service agreements and the day that happens everybody can go to bed peacefully but at the same time, you know the transformation piece which you're referring to that's not going to stop. You know, businesses don't wait for something to get sorted out to start transforming. It has to, you know, it has to run in parallel. So, we have a very large practice around working with private equity firms and their portfolio companies in their journey of value creation. So this is something that we've done at scale for several companies as well. And yes, we work for a lot of large global enterprises but at the same time we also work with new modern technology companies like Onclusive who really try to be at the forefront of their space which is PR and communications, right? So, that combined capability really gives us a unique knowledge of how to just navigate that. So it's usually almost always a factor of time and our ability to get them over the line in that timeframe, but at the same time put the right people in place, the solutions, the accelerators for driving transformation in parallel. So, that comes with alignment with the CTO office from the get go.

>> I like the partner strategy as well. That adds a lot to, there's a lot going on there. The infrastructure piece is interesting to me. I want to ask you guys, you mentioned multicloud. What's the unification strategy of the infrastructure? I can almost imagine that as we move into this next gen cloud the conversations that you guys might be having around platforms versus tools. What's the strategy? How do you guys look at the foundational elements of the infrastructure? You got some legacy, maybe put some modernization wrappers around that and containers and Kubernetes around the corner. You got cloud native applications. What's the strategy? What are you guys thinking around the infrastructure piece of it?

>> Yeah, look, and coming into this, you know, Jan 22 we had a hybrid model as a lot of companies do. We were running AWS cloud solutions we were also running as Azure cloud solutions and private data center hosting as well. So, you know, I'm not being controversial to say obviously we want to tidy that all up, you know, make it much simpler to support and much more scalable by consolidating. But we have to pick our battles. You know, you, you've got a business at its heart is over sort of 20 years old. There were, I think when we did the audit there was over 400 applications in the business. Now clearly that's happened over time and, you know, part of this transformation journey is the future facing part. It's the bit everybody's excited about where you rationalize the things that are, you know kind of outliers, not really needed, not really essential. And you really focus the future investments on, you know core platforms, but at the same time making sure that you're not building platforms that fulfill the processes and practices of yesterday. They are the forward facing side of it is the most important part there.

>> Raj, what's your strategy? You mentioned earlier complexity of choice. I think you mentioned complexity of choice, complexity of transition first and then choice. Partners, there's a lot of partner strategies that you could add into here. They have a partnership model on side. Talk about that further 'cause that adds into it because with APIs and cloud and multicloud you got a lot of opportunities to integrate.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, multicloud is not going away. That's, you know, it is what it is, you know simply because businesses are global today. They operate in different geographies, different markets, different nuances, their requirements are different. So you need to, you know, have a cloud strategy, you know which works for you and in many cases it'll be multicloud. So, and to add to that, it's also about, you know remediating while you're transforming because cloud as a strategy could be really, really great but it could also go out of control. So how do you put the right checks and balances in place to be able to operate effectively in that multicloud environment? So now for somebody like us, we are a partner, we are a service provider, so we have to work extremely close with our extended technology partner ecosystem, you know AWS or Microsoft Azure and any other technology provider, Salesforce, for example. You know, whatever makes sense for our customer's business to, you know, to be able to operate effectively. So we have to be at the forefront of our mindshare and we need to invest into that ecosystem proactively as well to be able to get that back from them. And once you bring those partnerships to bear, then it's about how you stitch that together in a meaningful way for the customers, right? So you can't obviously throw everything at the problem, but the ability to work with them, work alongside them to choose the right platforms and tools and also be agile and nimble enough to, you know, correct the course if something doesn't work, you know, plug it out, plug it in. To be able to have that sort of a microservices led architecture in place really helps the business to stay lean and agile, right? So, yeah, so us our alignment with partners like technology vendors is very, very important to driving transformation like this one for Onclusive.

>> That's key to have that balance. You got to take care of business and set up for the future and get that next trajectory on the project. Simon, I want to wrap up here the next couple of minutes we have left on Onclusive and what's next for you guys? Where are you right now in the journey? It's a big project. Got to move fast. Lot on the line. It's a heavy lift as they say, but it's big, it's big business. Where are you now? Where are you in the journey and what's next?

>> Yeah, so we are through the sort of separation and standup phase of this and you know, we're private equity owned. It's about the growth now, you know, it's about the scaling of the business now that can come through inorganic or organic growth. We have a big investment internally in our innovation team, our engineering team who are producing the next gen core platform which is our intellectual property. That's the bit that, you know will differentiate us from our competitors. And we are bringing that to market in, you know starting in Q3 which is what, three weeks away, two weeks away. So, you know, there's, but it's, you know you have a big, you know a rollout plan around that affecting 15,000 clients. So this is going to be the main part of the business now is just getting all of the platforms harmonized and getting the support models harmonized and the vision is, you know, borderless company you know, it's, you know, you can provide services you know, anywhere in the world and have a support model that flexes and works anywhere in the world. So that's the next phase of the journey for us.

>> Scaling up the business. That's the next step. The private equities, they want to see the dollars, get that growth. Raj, Persistent, you guys have great experience with PE. Talk about what makes this different than a traditional deployment or engagement. What's different about the PE private equity space and how how we help these guys move fast? 'Cause I'm sure the power dynamic's a little bit different than some other classic enterprise or maybe it's the same, explain, talk about the relationship there.

>> Well, it's same in some ways but very different in many ways. So yeah, the rigor that comes within a private equity setup is very different and in a lot of ways it gives you a lot of discipline to work in an engagement. So, the what's unique about us in this space is that we saw this trend very early on about how private equity companies invest new dollars in the market, in new markets and how they go about trying to create value for businesses that they're trying to acquire. And at the same time for the shareholders and the broader, you know, surround around it, right? So, we caught that trend very early on. So we did set up a practice years ago and we've seen good success in there. So the magic source is really, you know understanding the nuances of the whole life cycle, right from when a PE firm is trying to acquire an asset, the due diligence process and what's the journey around that? And once the transaction happens how do you put the blueprint in place to execute, transform, drive operational efficiencies, do a carve out and then all the way down to the exit and you help them through the journey. So once you do this journey end to end several times over then it just becomes a repeatable template that we can leverage every now and then. So that's what we have done effectively and we've seen some great success. It's a really exciting time for us at Persistent. We've just hit a billion dollars in annual revenues as well. So, and a lot of the recent goals that we have seen is specifically in the private equity phase and we'll continue to invest in that.

>> Great. You guys totally understand the complexities and then you get the partners network and the ecosystem and the capabilities, that's great stuff. Congratulations. Simon, I'll give you the final word for the folks watching who are going to go through a process as complex and heavy lifting as yours and maintain that operation integrity. What advice would you have for them? What are your learnings? Can you share take a minute to explain your learnings, advice?

>> I'll do my best, but I think the first thing I would say is that every situation is going to be unique, but from my case, it's, you know, pick your battles, decide what really matters, give clear direction, be clear on your guiding principles and, you know, get the right flexible partner who can, you know ride the waves with you because it won't be a smooth journey. It's fun. It's a good ride, but it you know, you need the right partners.

>> A lot of speed, lot of energy there. Sounds super exciting. What a great project. I can only imagine how fun it must be and a little stressful, I can imagine. But great transformation, a big, big project. Congratulations, Simon, on your new path and looking forward to seeing what happens with scale and following up. And Raj, great to chat with you and congratulations on your success there too.

>> Thanks a lot, John.

>> Thanks very much.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Okay, this is a CUBE conversation here. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Business transformation, private equity, startups, enterprises all require the same thing, speed, agility, foundational services, building in security from day one. A lot more cloud native applications coming in the future, stabilized and scale. That's the theme here in theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (bright music)