Everpure, Inc. (P) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Hi, and welcome to courageous leadership in times of global crisis and uncertainty, an HMG Live! Virtual Briefing covering what matters most to drive a winning agenda and make the future a better place. A warm welcome to today's host, lead principal and CEO of HMG Strategy, Hunter Muller.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2020 Detroit CIO Virtual Summit. I'm Hunter Muller, Lead Principal and CEO of HMG. My team and I are delighted to be here with you today. And what we all know is unprecedented times, unprecedented global economic pressures, social pressures and leadership pressures leading under crisis, how to be an effective leader in a crisis today. Our topic is remanaging the business and the future of work. What you need to know now. Excited to be here with you today, and I think you'll -- hopefully, you all enjoy the program. Please follow us on social media. We spent a lot of time and effort with our marketing of the various summits in our whole social media platform, some 1 million impressions now a week worldwide, both of our research as well as our social media platforms. And upcoming virtual summits. We've been real busy. Next week, we'll be in the U.K., Charlotte and St. Louis, along with upcoming webinars with partners Darktrace, Ivanti and Okta. A big thank you to our partners today. The summit today is powered by Illumio, Adobe, Pure Storage and Zoom. And a big thanks to our association partner, the Detroit SIM Chapter and Chuck Williams, the President of the Detroit SIM Chapter and a Senior Vice President of IT, Penske Corporation. Chuck, welcome to the program.

Good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining the webinar tonight. Special shout out to our SIM members who are in the audience. As Hunter said, my name is Chuck Williams. I'm the President of [Cindy Trade]. Just take a minute to tell you a little bit about who we are. Detroit Chapter since been around for over 20 years, and it's comprised of people like myself, who hold IT leadership positions in Southeast Michigan. There are members of educational institutions and service providers, too. This mix of IT leadership really provides an excellent environment for you to build your business network. In addition to the networking we focus on providing our members the opportunity to learn. We do this through monthly meetings. We include guest speakers, and we cover, obviously, IT, relevant IT and professional development topics. We also make our mission to give back to the community. And we do that through the advancement of STEM-based education and other philanthropic pursuits. And then finally, we like to have fun. So we do that. We have several hosts, social events like an Annual Golf Outing at Open Hills, a special event at the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix and the holiday party at the end of the year. SIM is actually a national organization. There's thousands of members and offers of additional benefits like a top-notch program to help high potential employees improve their leadership skills and the yearly conference, just to name a few items. So if you're interested in becoming a member, please visit our website, [cindytrade.com].

Excellent, Chuck. Thanks so much. Appreciate your coming on the program. Well, SIM has been a great partner now for over 14 years with HMG Strategy. Next up, Sangy Vatsa. Sangy is the founder of Digital Lakes as well as the EVP and CIO of Comerica Bank. Sangy, welcome to the program.

Hi, Hunter. Thank you, and very glad to be here. To me, it's been an awesome team work. I'm simply one of the [notes] in the Digital Lakes, a number of people have partnered with. So I'd like to thank people like George and John and Rania, Jeff. And we just had just a number of people who have been actively contributing to those cause. In fact, we started this kind of an initiative in 2018, we embarked on this idea, and it evolved into a Digital Lake, started as Silicon Lakes, evolved into Digital Lakes. And HMG was right there with us in 2018, when we actually promoted this idea in the marketplace. It actually got founded in 2019. And essentially, Digital Lakes it's a collaborative cross-industry initiative focused on elevating the digital dexterity of the Michigan region and establishing Michigan as a digital destination of choice. And it's for basically companies, it's for talent, it's for communities at large. And I'm glad to share that we are now over 100 institutions strong. And I would welcome you to go to digital-lakes.org to join this exciting movement. I would also like to invite you to an exciting webinar coming up next week on Wednesday, June 17, where the Global CIO of Ford Motor Company, Jeff Lemmer, will share Ford's, I would say a very comprehensive approach to safe return to work and how to help reboot the global economy. So we are glad to be partnering with HMG as part of Digital Lakes. And there are a number of things we have been talking about, including HMG ventures, level of collaboration. So Hunter, back to you.

Excellent, Sangy. I really appreciate it. We'll talk more about the ventures during the panel. Thank you. Next up, Mamatha Chamarthi. Mamatha, how are you?

I'm doing really great, Hunter.

Yes, brief word to why the -- why you're engaged with the network? And why you enjoy the summits in your kind of point of view and leadership right now during the crisis?

As you mentioned at the beginning, this is like unprecedented times, both socially, of economically and from every aspect. And now is the time that we get together as leaders to drive purpose-driven companies, and also to learn from each other to accelerate, on one side, in our current roles as IT leaders and as digital leaders accelerate the digital transformation. And what I mean is in the auto industry alone -- when the tech industry looks at auto, they think, oh, my goodness Dinosaurs. We were, for example, able to switch to digital retail. And now digital retail has become the retail practice in our industry. It would have taken us months, if not years, to go through this change in the mindset from the dealers and to go through this transformation, and we did that in just a couple of weeks. And we switched from manufacturing cars to making masks and ventilators within a few days. So that is the unprecedented agility that we are seeing in industries, which are perceived as Dinosaurs. And I think this needs enormous dexterity, leadership dexterity, as Sangy had mentioned. And that dexterity also comes when we all get together and help each other, learn from each other and accelerate this digital transformation. My request to everyone, to all of the leaders on this call and beyond is to have an open dialogue with your teams and create a safe space to express concerns so they don't express these views and why they're leaving your companies in the exit interview. And you don't lose talent. We don't lose talent. We all need a lot of leadership courage to be vulnerable and okay to discuss sensitive topics. And it's risky if you think that we have this discussion, but it's even more risky not to have the conversations. And when we get together, we can also share those best practices on how to be vulnerable.

Excellent.

Back to you, Hunter.

Mamatha, thanks so much. We love to have you on the kick off the program. Thank you for being here. And please stay with us till the end. Mamatha leads securing the future work panel as well as a little mixed or a happy hour, we're going to do a little socializing with everyone. So next up is Vijay Sankaran, CIO of TD Ameritrade. Vijay has got an amazing background over 20 years of IT experience, 12 years at the Ford Motor Corporation. Vijay leads a team responsible for technology strategy, innovation of all aspects of operations at TD Ameritrade. Vijay, great to see you again.

Yes. Good afternoon, Hunter. How you are doing?

Awesome. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

So look, you guys have some news. You're in the news, TD Ameritrade recently is being acquired by Charles Schwab. Give us an update.

Yes. What a year? Our merger gets announced in 2019. We go into 2020, COVID strikes. And now we have all the unrest that's going on societally. So it's been quite a year or so. We're in the merger process, and we expect the merger with Charles Schwab to close in the second half of 2020. But it's been quite a journey because just the event of our merger, as I'm sure many of my colleagues have been part of -- creates anxiety, especially when you are the acquired company in terms of job futures and prospects and now with COVID and everybody being at home that creates additional uncertainty. So there's just been a lot of anxiety in the environment. So I think one of the important roles that we all are playing as leaders is that of just really being there for our teams. And shutting in and making sure we are brokers are creating new opportunities in the new company, which is what I'm doing with Schwab for my team. But I think really, you have to really create the outlets. As Mamatha talked about earlier, just in terms of how you communicate with your team, how you're checking in. I do a weekly ask-me-anything on Slack with my team, where they can literally ask me anything. We're all post pictures of myself from the neighborhood walks and pictures of my kids, a little dance that I did on a Thursday night after COVID started in my kitchen. So just really sharing everything that's going on in my life so that people can feel connected and the organization and environment feel safe.

This process of working from home and remotely, how do you stay connected to your team beyond these touch bases?

Yes. So we do a lot of different things. I mean we use video extensively, but we do a lot of fun things. We've been using Kahoot! quite a bit to do virtual trivia across the organization. As I mentioned, we do different themes, like, the Slack ask-me-anything, where people wear different shirts. We have a Slack channel called tales from work-for-home, where people are able to take pictures of things going on in their yard or with their tad jumping on top of their computer just to stay connected in a very humorous way. But personally, in terms of my leadership team, we talk probably more than we even did when we were physically together because I feel like it's so important to check in on a regular basis and just see what's going on with them. We save more time together to talk about how they feel about the things that are going on right now, things with their families. It's so important to stay connected during this time. And we've got everybody home within a week of the announcements of the COVID cases were spiking up. And once we did that and we got everybody productive at home, really building those social connections are going to be critically important. Because who knows what the new norm is going to be. And I know we're going to have an opportunity to talk about that a little bit later, but it's certainly not going to be what the old norm was.

Hey, Vijay. I'm so happy you came up to our program. Say one comment on joining a powerhouse like Schwab, that's a top standard in the whole industry, right?

Yes. Well, it's a fantastic company, fantastic reputation. Obviously, Chuck is still very much involved in the company itself. So having been at another family company in my past and us joining with another family-owned company now with demerging Charles Schwab. I actually think it brings the best of 2 worlds together in the investment business. We're the leaders in trading. We have the most advanced and most resilient trading platforms. They're the leaders in investing traditional retail investing with different kinds of low-cost funds. So you put those 2 together, and I think with the scale of these 2 companies, you have the makings of a real client-focused, scalable organization, which I think will benefit clients and advisers for decades to come.

Excellent, Vijay. Thanks so much for coming on the program. We look forward to seeing you on the panel here in a few minutes.

Yes. Thank you, Hunter.

Great. Next up, Ani Nayak, Head of Business Process Transformation, Document Cloud of Adobe. Ani welcome to the program.

Hey, Hunter. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

You got a really interesting background. An enthusiastic researcher and passionate about the intersect and possibilities of people and technology and you possess a creative part in a growth mindset, love the bio.

Thanks.

What does that mean for your customers? What does it mean for your clients? You help them make money?

Yes. That's not really the goal. I think that's a byproduct typically. What I really like to do is add a human touch to a variety of initiatives that they could be focused on. It's really important. And some of that's been echoed already today, but it's really important to always focus decision-making around the crux of empathy. And what that could really mean for any customer's constituents and their base that they're focused on working with. And so a lot of what I do is centered heavily around not just the technology and the spend around it, but actually looking at the impact and what that means kind of moving forward. So it's heavily focused on a culmination of research-based process as well as interviewing and really understanding what are the true mission-critical goals? And why are those goals, the goals? And what can we do to really help customers achieve those priorities?

Adobe is an amazing company. It seems almost ideally positioned from this new virtual touchless, frictionless world that we're in right now. I watch you guys migrate from the Box, when we used to get software in a box to a virtual cloud company and a SaaS company. How are you helping your clients build out better experiences and better frictionless experiences and better digital strategies?

Yes. If you look at Adobe, I mean, we are really trying to introduce new technologies that democratize creativity and shape the next-generation of storytelling and ultimately, inspire different categories of business. And so what that means is we're a partner heavily focused on the customer journey and the success of business outcomes. And so if I look at the story of where we kind of come from to what you're talking about, a lot of it is -- our roots are sort of centered in -- from the early '80s, we we were the progenitor of this desktop publishing postscript and printers, right? And then we went to market with laser printing from another partner, which was a dramatic advance in the quality and flexibility of typography. But postscript became the standard throughout the publishing industry. And that enabled us to introduce desktop software, which we're now kind of traditionally known for Photoshop, Acrobat, and also develop this really great file format as a standard, which is the PDF. And then 2012 kind of rolled around, and that's when we implemented our strategy to move towards the cloud, and that sort of started with our digital media software when we really, really publicized our footprint in the subscription economy as the leader of digital experience solutions. So if you look at sort of our history and during these pivotal moments in our company, what were the macroeconomic happenings during these different moments of product introduction and go-to-market execution? 2012 was a big shining moment for us, and that was only 4 years after the great recession of '08, right? And so execution on a move from Box to subscription that sort of effort doesn't just happen overnight. And in fact, our leadership were simply moving forward on a plan that was multiple years in the making. And so the key for that sort of execution is to keep the plan in motion constantly innovating, while being cognizant of what's happening around us, the macroeconomics, the uncertainties at play, understanding the timing. And I actually try to categorize that success story, that is Adobe into 6 key areas that I try to take to our customers, especially during this last year with the unprecedented situation that we've all been up against. One is don't rush the market, don't rush to marketing create chaos for your customers. Secondly, make sure you prioritize stakeholder and shareholder communication constantly, be very open about what you're trying to do, be very responsive. Thirdly, be very responsive to feedback, but stay true and be steadfast in your commitment to your technology plan and your overall business plan. 4, be ready for a change management in any capacity. That's something -- change is the only constant, right? 5, solve challenges through to value creation rather than just being responsive. And finally, 6, always be ready to continually rechart your path. Stay true to the course, but -- and the destination, but be ready to plot different points on the map to get there. And so looking at those sort of mantras, that's sort of how we -- when we approach working with our customers, that's really what we're focused on trying to do is establish the right governance, the right centers of excellence with our customers that they could leverage and take those best practices and put them to actually to good use.

It's really a great framework there, Ani. Isn't it all about creativity and innovation in action? And if you look at the tech leaders in general, it's an area really of growth and opportunity to be more creative, more, I guess, right brain and combined with technical strategy to help the business, reimagine and reinvent the business models and the whole notion of work.

Very much so. Some of the priorities we're actually seeing this year, it's certainly a combination of industry-specific challenges to overcome. I think every sort of vertical has its own way of kind of dealing with what's happening right now. But then you have to couple with that with this sort of general need to support a more digital workforce and look at the digital workplace solutions that you need to start rolling out and executing on. So really, each vertical, whether it's business to business sort of situation or a consumer-facing has had to sort of reprioritize, if you will. And in many cases, accelerate technology investments into collaboration and productivity tools, which support a global remote workforce as well as digital experience solutions to support customer demand. What's really exciting and relatively reassuring is that technology and digital leaders, I've been talking with aren't just looking at this time, it's unprecedented time as an obstacle, which needs to be overcome, but rather an opportunity to reassess strategic priorities and maybe even pull forward certain investments that may have been farther out in the road map. And then that's sort of been the key takeaway so far for our customers and our partners that this opportunity is just about staying afloat, but it's about continuing to sail the ship through recharting that course, perhaps one that is on a more aggressive path. So tactically, what does that mean, right? Looking at technology consolidation, redundancy, elimination areas that you can reduce friction and subsequently improve efficiencies, but also process optimization and how digital that underlined bold italicized word digital can create more efficient and intelligent means of interaction. It's very important to realize that from a consumer standpoint, a lot of what this pandemic has done is just increase the expectation of immediate ratification. We need to have our essentials now. And so naturally, digital commerce and web-based experiences have boomed. But with that level of demand comes the need to have a tightened up application ecosystem and an underlying data model and basic processes like filling out a form online or getting an approval or signing a document, should not only be electronic and secure and compliant, but also should support the digital experience that, that process is enabling. Otherwise, all you end up really doing is for your business is kind of plugging in a bunch of holes in the ship, right, rather than continuing to say look forward.

Really solid points, Ani. Any help we follow-up with you and the folks at Adobe to learn more?

Yes. You can reach me at my e-mail, [email protected]. Check out our website. We were always announcing the latest and greatest, and I'd be happy to help facilitate any discussions.

Excellent. Thanks for coming on the program. And thanks for supporting the HMG going live program.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Great. Next up, Ashwani Uppal. He's the CEO, U.S. operations of Agrati. Ashwani, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Hunter. I hope you can hear me, see me?

Yes, we can. We can hear you and see you perfectly.

And actually, I tried to also change the background. I don't know if that happened or not.

Yes.

I'm not a techy guy, but I try to get some Detroit on there. So Agrati, Inc., actually, we are the nut and bolt makers. So we produce fasteners, mostly for the automotive industry and a little bit for industrial. So the fittings that go on to the hoses that are on the fire engines are also provided by us. So it's really interesting, 80% business, automotive; 20% on the industrial side. So with this pandemic, we had to adjust to continue to make those essential parts, while automotive really shut down for a while. And having parent company from Milan, Italy. So we were not only getting impacted here, but we were getting quite a bit of the information from our headquarters. And they -- because our Chinese operation shut down early and started early, they were able to send us a lot of PPE that was left over in China way before it got essential in North America. So that helped a lot. So that gives you a little bit of a background of who I am.

Tell us a little bit about -- in this transition of working remotely and virtual meetings, how effective have they been for you in driving change in communication across a global company?

Yes, it's quite interesting. So we were supposed to be in Italy, all of us in beginning of May, 46 of us, 5 from United States, 3 from China and rest the Italian and the French colleagues, and we had to convert all of that to a virtual meeting. So to communicate the data is a little bit easier, but to communicate the emotions is harder, right? So how mad is the CEO is not that easy to tell on the virtual meeting, but the data transmission is getting really, really good. So -- then you had to send us information and we had to fill out the live survey and then have the data show up and then the colleagues starting to argue, is it going to be a V recovery, L Recovery, U recovery, W. And that became then more interesting because now you were having the data, bring the emotions out on a screen. So quite challenging, yet interesting how the things are coming about.

So Ashwani, you noticed that increased productivity. Are people are actually working harder now?

Harder is a different question, but longer for sure, right? [Technical Difficult] the start and stop issues, right? You don't have somebody sitting at the office and say, "Oh, I got to beat that traffic jam over there around Chicago." So I got to pass the loop. And I had some people coming in at 3 in the morning, so they can beat the Chicago traffic and leave at 2:30 in the afternoon. Now you don't -- you just go upstairs, downstairs, towards the side room to actually get to work. So productivity came as a function of that time not being spent on the road, it's being spent in front of the screen.

Right. The biggest challenge in this -- I'm sorry, this new environment.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear that, Hunter.

Your biggest challenges?

Challenges is actually people -- the data communication, right? If the data is partly used by one sector to the other sector and how that transition happened. When people could walk into the office and somebody could explain it. Now it sometimes does take 2 or 3 spreadsheets back and forth compared to you could have that dialogue. But the speed of getting that spreadsheet is now faster. So it's a different kind of challenge to bring people, talk about the issues. And the thing I do miss, I produce physical parts. I have not been to my office in 2.5 months. So I live in Michigan, but my office is in Chicago area. And the first time I went 2 weeks ago, my production manager had totally read on the factory floor to optimize it. So that physicality, you do miss. But in terms of the virtual data and office -- back-office work is much, much faster and yes, more productive.

Are you seeing now an increase in demand for your products?

Yes, we are. We're very thankful that the OEMs are coming back. I think May 18 was the first day they started to produce. And production will go up. And we're hoping the consumer would come back, right? Mamatha talked about virtual selling. So we did not hit almost to 0, like they did in Europe. Our sales in the United States continued partly in some regions because they stayed open. But partly because of this virtual selling dealers, bringing you the [card] to your home, dropping off the key, touchless delivery and that truly help with the virtual sales and touchless delivery, the sales continued. Now we need to get people back into the showroom as well because I don't think 100% virtual would work, but we do hope that the numbers continue to go up.

Thank you so much for coming on the program today, Ashwani.

Yes. Thank you.

Great to see you. Next up, Gary Sorrentino, Deputy CIO -- Deputy Global CIO. Gary, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Hunter. How are you? Good evening, I should say.

Thank you. What's that, sorry?

Good evening, I should say.

Right. Hey, Gary, about 7 months with Zoom, what a ride, right? And then previously, working with Jamie Dimon JPMorgan Chase on -- as the Global Head of External Client Cyber Awareness and Training, that must have been interesting traveling on that circuit?

Yes, it was. But Zoom has been interesting, right, so at the right time also.

Awesome. So tell us, what are you seeing out there with your clients? And how are you helping them to work through on this digital platform, the Zoom platform to work more effectively in the whole work remotely work-from-home environment?

Yes. I think I went -- I ended up with Zoom at a great time because when, unfortunately, we had the pandemic, and here's what happened. We needed a way that when we sent everybody home to stay connected. And I think Zoom is a great platform for that, very, very easy to use. People are using it for many things. And in a lot of the presentations we talk about, we now finally took the at-home type of applications, the personal apps and the business apps and we're using the same app. I'm using Zoom to talk to you. We're using Zoom too to host this type of webinar, but I'm also using the same product with my 90-year old mother, who's using it to contact me. And so what I think is, as people figured out that once they were home, okay, maybe one week. When it got to the second week, we needed contact. We needed to collaborate. We needed to still innovate. Productivity was falling down. And so we've heard lots and lots of stories. First story was, hey, it's hard to work from home, right? And so video conference gave people the ability to see them. You see passion, empathy, anger, right, frustration. Those things were all coming through that sometime you miss through an audio call. And being able to share your screen, look, lots of teams have retooled themselves in the way they work. I have one set of clients that what they said was, look, for years, we've been sitting 4Qs together. Years. We know everything about each other. What we missed was at banter. So what they do every morning is they get up and the 4 of them get on a Zoom call, and they leave it in the corner of their desktop and they talk all day long as if they were to 4 cubes together. And when one says, hey, I'm going for a coffee, rather than all go into the corporate coffee room, they all go to their personal kitchens, and they all come back. And it was a way to connect people in a way like no other before. And I think without having -- Zoom is a great product. Without having any sort of video conferencing, at the end of the day, it would have been a lot harder. Because it's important for us to see families. One of the people I talked to said, social distancing, he goes, yes, because of Zoom, I now know what might employees significant others look like? How many kids they have? I saw the cat. I saw the dog. His bedroom is painted blue. Things I never would have saw before if it wasn't because of this. So I know we say we're social distance. But I'm really learning more about my employees than I ever knew before. And so I think it's connecting us in a way that we never even expected.

There's also this amazing productivity element that you can -- that I find you can achieve by a level of abstraction when you're managing directly on facts and outcomes versus getting really involved with the whole drama or the whole politics of things?

Yes. I think a couple of things are changing. Look, we know that middle managers used to manage while walking around. That was their style, tribal knowledge, they were the people. They keep the floor running. And now managers had to figure this out. Okay, now I'm managing virtual people, wait a second, I'm virtual too. And I think people had to change the way they measure productivity, they had to start measuring output. And I think we're at a place now 12 weeks in, depending on where you are in the United States, where people are getting to a settling. They're now working. They're figuring out, hey, the kids know that the tape line on the floor. If I'm on the left side of the tape line, daddy is working. But if I'm on the rig side of the tape line, Daddy's Daddy. And so the kids are now paying attention. I think even the pets are starting to pay attention. And so I think we've now gotten to a point where we're getting back to work. We're getting more productive where we are. I think the next big thing is and so I call it, we were working at work, and I'm going to steal a phrase from a friend of mine, we are now living at work. So productivity has gone up because our commute between meetings is leave meeting, start meeting. I mean, sometime, I'm sure you go through it, too. Sometime I look up and it's 6:00 at night, and I've been back-to-back meetings I've never left this desk.

That's right.

And things like that. And so I'm highly productive in one way. But I do agree as my colleagues were saying, but I'm sitting here at 7 because there's no commute, and I'm back here at 8 at night because there's no commute at the end of the day. So productivity has become a byproduct of, we've been doing this for so long, and we're spending so much -- I've never spent as much time personally in front of a terminal as if I was a programmer 40 years ago.

Interesting. Gary, a little bit on the Zoom culture. And Eric, he's a really unique individual, wasn't he?.

Yes. I mean, you can't believe when I first met him, it was about the clients and the employees. And I'm still not sure whether it's the clients come first or the employees come first, but there's lots of empathy for that. He was the first to say when this happened, how do we help people? It was -- it's been a pleasure working for a company that talks about how do we help our clients? How do we help our employees? How do we get things done first? Then we'll worry about everything else. And so as you know, I just converted to an employee. And so part of my challenge was, I've always looked for where I could find a family to work for, and I found a new family with home -- with Zoom. And at the end of the day, it's because of the way they care about their employees and they care about their clients.

Love it. And you guys had a few bumps there with the security a few months back?

We did. We did. And -- but I think that we did the right thing. I think we opened up. Eric does his once-a-week, Ask Eric Anything webinar. We decided to bring in some of our most influential clients. I chair their CISO counsel. And because it was security related, we brought in 35 or 40 of CISOs from some of the largest companies in the world and small companies because I wanted it to be a very diverse crowd, multiple industries. We discuss things with them. We go through our plans. We went -- he was on Wednesday, and he talked about some password changes that are going to happen. And we made sure that we talked about that with our clients and our CISOs. And the voice of the client has been very, very strong inside of Zoom. And the CISO council was built on the voice of the client. And you're going to see more of us going out, calling us the CISO roundtables and start bringing in CISOs from around the world and talking about our plans. We're definitely a security first. And so at the end of the day, that is going to be inbred in our DNA. And so constant contact with our clients and asking them different things that we think that they see in different [Audio Gap] and make us the state-of-the-art product.

So everyone wants to know how to instill a cultural passion and loving your clients and loving your customers and loving your employees, what's the secret sauce from your point of view there?

No, I think everybody internal treats everybody with respect. And everybody helps each other. And so it's not Gary helping the client, it's Zoom helping the client. And I have a team behind me. Okay? And so I think at every stage, we work together very well, and that really comes out in our culture. The culture starts from the top, right? But I think the other thing is this, they spend the time to understand. They embraced our core values and values have changed. Look, meaning, what do they call us baby boomers maybe.

Right.

But 6 months ago, when we talked about Gen Z and millennials, we said, oh, they want to work from home. They want to work -- they grew up on glass. Yes, but we changed, right? You can't look at baby boomers now and say they want to go back to the physical office because, in some cases, I'm okay doing this for a long, long time. And Zoom cares about its employees where now I don't think we're going back until maybe December because this is actually -- or January, this is actually working for us. So I think we instill that culture. And I think companies need to do that. They just need to embrace their employees' values. They need to figure out where they want to work and how they want to work. And then, of course, providing them with enabling technology like Zoom, really does help. Because it just makes it easier if the technology you use, embraces the way you want to work rather than fights the way you want to work. And I think that little -- those little 3 things about embracing, enabling and supporting makes us a better company. But I think if everybody was to follow that with their employees is we're going back to work. We're living at work now, but we're evolving into a new work model. And my colleague said it also before, listen to your employees. They are going to get their way, right? They are going to set the direction, you can fight them or you can embrace it and figure out how to go forward. And I think that's what we do well with Zoom.

Can we hear a little bit one minute on the new product road map, anything new that's coming down the pipe?

That's coming out soon. So we can't actually reveal that. Our 90-day journey will end at the end of June. And so look forward for a new product road map coming out really, really soon. I can't give you a preview on that yet.

Hey, Gary, great to have you on the program today. Thanks so much for your support, engagement, love of -- love Zoom and your product platform. So we'll see you soon.

Great, great. So thank you for having me.

Awesome.

See you.

Bye now. Next up, Mike Mastrole, he is the Senior Director, Sales Engineer of Illumio. Mike, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Hunter, for having me. Well said, Gary. I love your platform.

Over 20 years of product engineering and sales support, you really know what you're talking about?

Yes, I spent the bulk of my career up to the point where I got to Illumio, where I was helping customers by helping them implement reactive technologies, right? And what I've kind of seen and learned with that experience is that reactive technologies, a lot of security architects that I speak with are really overwhelmed with alerts, issues and intrusions, they have third parties in their networks that are basically saying, "Hey, our team that was on your network, our consulting team that was there, we had a breach, we want to let you know that, and that's something you need to be aware about," and FYI kind of thing, right?So that's kind of what they wrestle with on a daily basis.

Interesting. A little bit about Illumio for folks that might not know about the company?

Sure. So at Illumio, we do segmentation, right? So segmentation is the process of separating either an application like a crown-jewels application from the rest of the data center or an environment from the rest of the data center because the goal is we are assuming that there's going to be some lateral movement that will happen. It will come in via an Internet-connected HVAC system or something of the like an IP-connected camera. And when the lateral movement happens, they have to basically create a small blast radius so that, that can be contained, right? And if you think about segmentation, when my security architects that I speak with talk to me, they say to me that many of the customer -- or vendors that they speak with like someone like a McAfee, CrowdStrike, Symantec whoever the case may be, they will all say to them that, "We're not the silver bullet," right? And if they're not the silver bullet, then the only thing they have left to rest their laurels on is basically segmentation. If we have a virus, and there is no vaccine, the only thing we have left to rest ourselves on is containment. So that's the best kind of parallel I can kind of reference here in these current times that you have to assume breach and you have to segment your crown jewels.

Interesting. What are your clients saying to you in this whole new work-from-home environment? Where are you seeing the opportunities and really the vulnerabilities?

Well, if you think about what has happened, many of my companies that I speak with, they're kind of living in a world where maybe a percentage of their employees are working from home. And they got to a point where literally all of their employees are working from home. So they took an ethernet jack from the office and they extended that into everybody's home and that laptop that they gave them is now sitting next to their child's gaming computer, right? So if you think about what happens there, anything that, that child has downloaded, which may be ransomware or anything else, is scanning because Microsoft talks to Microsoft services, right, alongside that laptop, and if that laptop gets breached, it's now VPN back in the headquarters, right? So there's a tremendous amount of risk that has been pushed out to everybody's homes that they're now inheriting.

Interesting. And then the segmentation piece is key to really securing the enterprise?

Yes. So typically, the goal there is that you're assuming breach, what you want to do is when lateral movement begins, you want to reduce the blast radius too. I mean, imagine if you could say, we got hit by ransomware, right, and all 3 computers have essentially been restored versus 35,000 computers have been infected, there's no business continuity and things of that nature. If we could say that we've been hit by ransomware and all 3 machines have been basically isolated, that's a great outcome, and that's what segmentation buys you. It limits the blast radius.

Interesting. What is your sweet spot for companies? Is it large, mid, or small?

So what we've seen, my experience has been. So if I take a look at some of my large customers, right, as we have early customers like Morgan Stanley, the likes of Oracle NetSuite and companies like that, JPMorgan Chase, they have come to us and basically said that we assume breach, we want to segment some of our environment. So we've done that. And essentially, the assumption there is that if they can contain any kind of outbreak. What we're seeing now is the risk of people being in the -- at home and the segmentation that needs to be done there as well. So I don't want laptops talking to laptops. One thing I will say is that customers that came to us early on were basically financial services companies because they were highly regulated. They came to us and said that we have to segment our SWIFT environment or our digital payments environment. Then what we saw afterwards was the PCI consortium, PCI 3.2 DSS basically said you have to segment the payments application. So servers that contain credit card numbers, things like that, we have to basically establish a crown jewels kind of ring-fencing kind of environment around that, where if somebody got in, the security operations people can really focus on what really matters most because when they have to disclose a highly visible public breach is when the crown jewels gets infected, right? So if we can stop that from happening, we do that through segmentation, then we really derisk the business of my customers and their customers.

Interesting. Interesting. When you think about going in and doing an assessment, first step is what, when you go in and take a look at what the way folks are set up?

Yes. So customers come at us in 3 ways, right? There's 3 reasons why customers do segmentation. One is because they have regulatory compliance that could be PCI, that could be CBEST, SWIFT or whatever it is, but come in and say you have to segment your environment. The second is, somebody just wants to be a solid citizen, say, "You know what, I'm going to take a proactive approach to assume breach, secure my assets, so that if something gets in, I got a beachhead and something can't get into my crown jewels." And the third is, we were just recently breached, somebody at the Board level is saying, what are you going to do differently? And that's not a new antivirus software. That's not a new IPS. That's not the next-gen firewall. It's what is new differentiating and game-changer that you're going to do. And that typically is segmentation, right? We're going to take a proactive approach. The thing I find though which is interesting when I talk to customers like that because they lack the visibility that we provided them before we provided them the visibility. And essentially, what happens is, they're off by 10%, the compute that's in scope in they say to us, we want to secure our PCI environ and that's x number of servers. That scope is often wrong by 10% or more because the people that develop these applications may not work for the company anymore. And the second thing I always hear is that they came in our network via some sort of third-party application, Java code or some sort of appliance that we purchased.

What are you hearing since post COVID in terms of increased threats and nation, states taking an aggressive stance?

Yes. So what I've seen in my cybersecurity background is the same thing I saw in 2008 when the economy kind of went south, right? Once the economy goes south, cyber crime goes up, right? It always happens, right? So it starts out with someone trying to lure somebody by clicking on something at an e-mail, right? And then from there, they get some sort of access into some sort of compute that they own. We see -- I mean if you go to Shodan.io and you can basically take a look at -- you can put in a company, you could see what services are on the listed state on the Internet. It will tell you what the service is. And then from there, you can get yourself in if you can exploit that. So they try to get in on the network and then the lateral movement and the dwelling begins. And what I've seen is, if you go back about a couple of years, the lateral dwell time was somewhere around 160 days, now that number has reduced. It's reduced by threefold, right? Because the lateral dwell time to find the crown jewel asset is much, much quicker because the ability to scan and the ability to ascertain things is happening much more quickly.

It's fascinating, right, how fast things can move, right? In terms of increased threats in this crisis, what's the percentage jump have you seen?

Well, I mean, if you had a typical perimeter network, like I've spoken to banks that literally did not have laptops for many of their employees, right? So they come into work. They have a VDI terminal that they boot up and that compute never leaves the bank, right? Now they have to work from home. And I heard cases of some places where hundreds of thousands of laptops had to be basically burned and sent down to employees, which are now sitting in their homes that are next to their kids' gaming computers, right? They're sitting on nonsecured WiFi networks, right? So if you could pull a coworker in front of somebody's house and join the WiFi, you have access to that corporate asset. So it's really about -- it's almost the loss of control of the perimeter is what happens.

Fascinating stuff. A little bit about the culture at Illumio, what's the company like inside?

So the company, I think, we are a very diverse culture. We really embrace each others differences, which is really nice. We're very supportive of each other. One of the things I can speak about my sales engineering team is that, we were -- we are literally like our brother's keeper, right? I mean we rally around each other. And the entire company as a whole, one of the things that we really do well is we rally around the customer first. Period. All stop, right? So if a customer calls us and says, we have a problem, you can give me a prospect, we will move heaven and earth to help that customer. And it doesn't matter what your job title is at Illumio, we will rally the right resources, get you one whatever meeting that we're on, and we will do whatever we can for as long as we can to do what make that customer whole again.

Awesome. Hey, Mike, how can people get in touch with you or someone at the company?

Yes. So illumio.com, you see in the logo above your head there. My e-mail address is [email protected]. My message to people who are the C levels of the world, be proactive in segment, and you will be closer to being -- living in a world where you may not have to disclose a high-profile breach.

Excellent. Hey, Mike, great job. Thanks for coming on the program.

Thank you.

See you soon.

All righty.

Super. Next up, our executive panel, reimagining the business and the future of work. First up is John Hill, he is the CIO and Senior Vice President and Planning at Carhartt. John, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Hunter.

So I noticed the expanded role of CIO and planning. What -- tell us a little bit about that dual role and why it makes sense for you there, and what you like about it?

Well, I'm not sure why they picked me now. I'm just -- one of the things was that certainly technology impacts everything. And so when we needed a home for planning and when we talk about planning here, that's everything from figuring out our demand plan or revenue, what we're going to do, all the way back to supply chain. So what are we going to produce? My team makes decisions on inventory and so I'm just like any other member of the senior executive team, and we all wear multiple hats in a company like Carhartt. So besides the technology, I have planning and our transformation efforts.

How has the whole crisis affected you? And what's your new normal?

I think, first and foremost, if you look at Carhartt, we're as far away from a remote work culture when we started as you could be. We're 131 years old. We -- typically large projects involve bringing people in from all over the world, consultants and associates. And when this hit, we had to really take a step and say, "How are we going to handle it? Are we going to continue with our digital transformation?" And we had a daunting digital transformation agenda before COVID. So to give people a feel the size of that, that involved replacing both our retail and wholesale ERP, our point-of-sale system, our e-commerce platform, our planning system, change the year-end fiscal year and revamp our inventory management processes, all in parallel, and finishing that by May of next year. So we made the decision very quickly. We are continuing because that digital transformation was so important to the future competitiveness. And so I try to step back and say, well, what -- other than good execution, what's made the difference? I think first was just the confidence from the executive team. We didn't think twice about whether the team could do it. We said, yes, they can go and they can do this. That was really important. Nobody asked and said come up with different plans about how you're going to execute. We said you can do it. A little bit lucky that we had moved out of e-mail for a lot of these teams on to Teams. So they were already changing the way they work and using Teams. So when this hit and we sent everybody home, it was an easy transition to then start working video into that equation. The next one was communication. A couple of you will mention that walk by. I can just walk by somebody, ask a question. That all goes away. So everybody has to be so proactive at over communicating, connecting with people that you don't see. And then finally, we really stepped back and said that we have to be consequential on deliverables. And we have to protect the time line because this is hard to do. And if we fall behind, we're not going to catch up. So myself and the rest of the executive team, if there was things in our groups, we held people accountable to get it done and we'd step in. And then not related to this, it's just kind of interesting. I heard a couple of folks mention it. Part of my IT team had to really help folks work from home. I know it sounds simple, but there's a lot of folks in our organization that they don't know how their router work. They didn't know how anything works. So it wasn't like a simple solution. They had to work and go out and help everybody figure out how can they optimize their own home network so they can work.

Interesting. Interesting points. Regarding leadership style, what was different about this crisis and how you led into the -- leaned in and led into the crisis?

I think I tend to be the glass is half full kind of person anyway. So when I see something, my initial step is, "Hey, how can we do it, not why can't we do it, but what do we need to do it?" I have a fantastic leadership team, both on the technology side and the business side. So that, frankly, makes it a lot easier. We spent a lot of time just connecting with team members. So checking in with them as to what do you need. Are there -- is there anything you need from me to help you? My job is not to code. My job isn't to configure. My job is to help eliminate whatever's stopping you from getting there. So we just added a lot of those check-ins at the teams doing virtual happy hours, just trying to maintain that levity. We even had a meme contest, so people could post that. So how to do what they would have otherwise been doing kind of in the office there. And then I think the last thing from a leadership standpoint is to not forget that now it changes in terms of how you're getting feedback and how you're still continuing to develop your team. The same principles still have to occur. Just because it's video conference now, we still need to progress and provide that feedback. And I think it can be too easy to forget that aspect since you tend to focus on here's the pandemic, here's all the things that are getting in the way, but everybody wants to continue to learn and get better.

Thanks for being in the program, John. Stay with us. We'll circle back to you.

Thank you.

Next up, Jack Hogan, VP of Technology Strategy, Cloud Go-to-Market at Pure Storage. Jack, welcome to the program.

Hunter, good to be here today. Thanks for having us.

You have an interesting angle in your bio: An entrepreneurial technologist at your heart and core -- at your core and with your hands-on experience in helping technology companies grow. Tell us more about that?

Yes. Sure, Hunter. So I've been at Pure Storage for 2.5 years, but prior to that, I was actually CTO in a company that went through really 5 different transformations over time. Started in a manufacturing industry, ended up as a large data play within the health care space, recognizing that rapid evolution and change is, by nature, what happens within IT and within all businesses. So I look at the technology as what's coming, so that we within a company -- as a company, now at Pure in my role here, can take the learnings and the things that I've done and work with vendors that are transformational, like Pure, to really transform their own businesses and really leverage -- leverage the capabilities to get advantages with the data that they have. And with Pure Storage, our mission now is really to introduce what we call the modern data experience, that is really around company's most core assets, where most intellectual property for all companies now sit on their data platforms, recognizing that those are really the crown jewels as we've talked about, a couple of panelists and some of the speakers earlier talked about, recognizing that those -- that data is the core asset that many businesses fuel future growth. So providing fast access to that one aspect, but also really quick transformation, the ability to be agile with that is one of the core tenets of what we do at Pure.

Yes. A little bit more just about Pure, what you're about in your space and how you help clients 1 more second on that?

Yes, sure, absolutely. So with Pure, we started out in the first decade. So we're approaching our 11th year now. In the first decade we were in business, we really transformed what it meant to have all-flash data center. So being able to put all of your information in -- on silicon chips rather than dealing with slow [ Sprinkles ] and slow discs, which really make things complicated. So with Pure Solutions, simplicity is at the core of what we really do. Our founders and all of our engineers that built the platforms that we now have expanded out to multiprotocol, both within data center and into hybrid and full cloud solutions, they came from -- not from the storage industry. They came at this from really looking at how can we solve these long-term vexing problems of data silos and challenges of how information's access, all the way down to how big storage systems are procured and purchased putting you into this continual 3- to 5-year cycle of reinvesting and having to repay for your data really every 3 to 5 years. So pure simplicity is one of the core assets that we bring to companies now and drive their ability to invoke change with their data and create really cloud-like experiences within the data center. So being able to then extend that into the public hyperscalers, into the big public clouds, but be able to have a seamless platform across both, so that you don't have to have a cloud team and a data center team being able to have your data accessed across all of that. And as we look at the 10 years that we've been in business, the most important aspect is that continual innovation and that subscription to innovation and really understanding that your data systems should really work for you rather than you having to work on them. So that ability to constantly improve the platform. Pure has got an 82 NPS score, delighting our customers. We are 100% a customer-first company in what we do and really introducing this modern data experience and taking that to really recognizing how businesses can transform what they do with their data and recognizing that having core access to that is really important.

Excellent. Jack, stay with us. We'll circle back to you on the panel. Thanks. Next up, Vijay Sankaran. Vijay, again, welcome back to the program.

Thanks, Hunter.

When you think of the role of the CIO post-COVID-19 and post pandemic, how is the role going to change? And why does the CIO matter more than ever?

Well, I mean, I think the CIO is going to be so integral in terms of figuring out the new norm equation in terms of digitizing, automating, understanding what the new norms are in terms of customer usage. At TD Ameritrade, we have seen just massive changes in behavior in investing over the last 3 to 4 months. So prior to COVID-19, there was less of an engagement amongst people in terms of trading activity, getting involved in capital markets. And just since January, everything has been a record. Record trading volumes, record net new accounts, record activity in the markets. And so I think this move to, what I would say is digitization on steroids is going to be really front and center of everything that a CIO has to help guide. I was having this conversation with somebody today. And in a lot of companies, business leaders are so very traditional. They don't understand a lot of how the technology really enables some of these new capabilities, like AI and client-facing personalization in wide scale and digitization of using AI is so important. And I think the CIO is really going to be integral in terms of really navigating a business through that -- those trades and taking on more and more responsibility in an organization going forward. The other thing I would say is that the workplace is going to change dramatically from this. And as technologists, we've been used to working with people all over the world for many, many years. We've had people in Europe, people in India, people all over the planet. And we weave together a global organization perhaps more so than anybody -- any other business leader. Now business leaders everywhere are going to be -- need to do that across all different disciplines. And I think our experiences are going to be incredibly important in helping shape and coach that kind of leadership.

When you think of the work-from-home environment, what's changed? And has the digital journey just accelerated since the pandemic?

Well, I think one thing that's really changed a lot that's interesting is, I think a lot of people who have been closely aligned with agile for the longest time said that a distributed workforce couldn't optimize productivity. They talked about this whole notion of the team being colocated. And even when you had teams split across different sites, they said it would compromise collaboration and productivity and things like that. I don't know how it is for the other folks in the panel, but productivity for us is actually at a high in terms of teams working together and being able to do virtual scrum boards and virtual stand-ups. We can do one-touch releases remotely. We can stand up infrastructure remotely. We are moving very quickly in terms of deployments. And we've been able to launch major products remotely. So one thing that's changed dramatically is that organizations have shown that they can be just as productive in terms of software engineering or more productive than they were prior to being in this work-from-home environment. The other thing is that the nature of this virtual leadership changes. I've also seen the organizations become much more efficient with its time. People show up to time on meetings, people end meetings on time. We do need to help people not burn out and build in more breaks in their day. But I do feel like the workforce has become far more efficient in this new period of work from home as well.

Vijay, don't you think it's also pride realizing that this is our time as a tech leader to really help everyone, the company, the CEO, the Board, the line of business, everyone in the company, our customers, our clients and the world, right?

Yes, absolutely. I mean we've always believed that tech is at the core of everything. Tech is at the core of every business. And I think, finally, the world has taken notice that tech is at the heart of everything. Because I can tell you 20 years ago -- what if this happened 20 years ago, we wouldn't be able to do what we did in terms of the continuity around business. And while there's been tremendous disruption to society and there's certainly -- no one wants a situation like this. What I would say is that the situation and people being able to be at home and being able to connect with families through Zoom, we do a daily family prayer with my in-laws and my sister via Zoom, those kinds of rituals that people would feel much more isolated, have largely been bridged by technology as well as having a highly productive distributed workforce that you still feel very connected to. That would not be possible 20 years ago. So I think -- and nothing else, this has shown that technology is at the core of everything that we do societally.

Thanks, Vijay. I do think this is the time for the technologists to take a victory lap or the heroes in helping the world stay connected together. Thank you very much for being involved on the program.

Yes. Thank you.

Next up, we have Sangy Vatsa. Sangy is the EVP and CIO of Comerica, of course founder of Digital Lakes. He has bank-wide responsibility for digital transformation and end-to-end of all tech, including a frequent presenter to the Board and the Risk Committee. Sangy, welcome to the program.

Hunter, glad to be here. For some reason, my video seems to be disabled. So I'm not sure if anybody has done that centrally or could help out with that. If you can hear me, I can at least go audio and...

Let's just go with audio. We got you. Oh, there you are. You're back.

Yes. All right.

The magic of technology really works. So how about let's springboard off of that idea, is this the best time for us in this crisis to demonstrate the muscle that we have, the success that we can deliver value to the enterprise, to the customers, the clients and to the organization?

Yes. I would absolutely agree with a lot of points that Vijay shared. And I would say, the technology has absolutely demonstrated its value across the globe and how passionately, how generally, how thoughtfully, how knowledgeably people have stepped up and really done things for people, for colleagues and for their customers. And so to me, I would say, I think it's been a great way to see this movie play over and over again in different companies across the globe. So I would say, for us, focus on people first really worked out very well. I'm talking about both colleagues and customers. And that level of focus, coupled with strong technology capabilities, it really helped us to run as seamlessly as possible our operations during this crisis. To me, it was a proud moment when we were able to kind of build a number of automations in a very short time frame for the support of this Small Business Act, Paycheck Protection Program. And it was very critical because it was needed to fund the loans for the small businesses in order to really jump-start the economy. And to be able to have a team that worked 3 shifts, built automation in record time, awesome collaboration across various stakeholders within our bank and to be able to ensure that 100% of eligible applicants who are able to actually get their loans approved in record time. I mean the number of loans that we approved in 2 weeks is typically the number of loans we approved in the entire year. So that's the kind of power [ I saw per se of ] people technology coming together. And as we are talking about people, it would be at least a miss on my side not to mention that in the trying times that we find ourselves in and kind of collectively drawing the support for the challenges that we see happening globally, it's a critical priority. We talk about people first. I believe this focus should stay pervasive, should stay there forever, not just during this crisis. And I do see hope. There is a very strong level of unifying support against any level of human injustice that we see. So I absolutely am there supporting it any possible way and I know my colleagues are as well.

We're there with you too 100%, Sangy. So thinking about the innovation agenda in the next 12 months as companies grow and globally, how important is the digital agenda?

Yes. I'll -- and this is a great point, and I'll maybe mention 2 sets of points on this one, Hunter. I would say the first thing that as I've been envisioning, what's beyond this crisis, there are basically 5 elements that I've been really reflecting on. And to me, experience is going to stay paramount. Kind of experimenting and delivering digital now, not tomorrow, not day after tomorrow, kind of keeping the focus on thinking remote first, not trying to kind of retrofit the work at office to kind of make it work at home. So thinking about remote first, making sure security is there all the time, security as a priority always. And then I would say last but not the least, very, very specific focus on continuing to invest in developing our talent. And so if anybody would be interested on those 5 elements, message me, I'll be glad to connect with you off-line and share my thoughts on examples that really elevate those 5 things. But to your point about innovation, I would say it's even more critical in the times we find ourselves in, that we should keep the focus on innovation very front and center. I mean innovation is not about just for technology, it's all the novel ways we are able to uplift the people's capability, the processes, the technology, the overall business capabilities, things about cultures that we are able to uplift. And in fact, to me, it's the culmination of experimentation and collaboration, that during these tough times, we were able to produce some very innovative capabilities in the last 10, 12 weeks. And I would say with very high velocity that a lot of companies thought was not even possible just maybe a couple of months ago. So that would be kind of -- my thought process on that would be keeping innovation very front and center. And if we really want to now think forward from here and to really drive a kind of a rich level of experience, capabilities that really mean and deliver value to our colleagues and to our customers, then keeping that continuous experimentation mindset would be very critical. And then for us, I would say, we did continue with that focus during this crisis and whether it was to be innovative for keeping our operations running as seamlessly as possible, or during this time, we actually continue with the plan to deliver programs that were more innovation oriented. For example, we delivered a new digital capability for retail account opening. And that was something we chose not to stall. Because it was something we felt if we stalled it now, it may take a while to pick it up again. So my thought would be keep it front and center.

Thank you, Sangy. Really good words to [ live by ]. I appreciate it. Stay with us. Next up, Chuck Williams, Senior Vice President of IT at Penske Corporation, also the current President of Detroit SIM Chapter, an executive leader with over 25 years of applying technology to solve business problems, results-oriented with a proven record of success. Welcome to the program, Chuck.

Thanks. Thanks so much, Hunter.

Good to see you. So what have your teams been doing to adjust to working remotely, and what practices have you adopted that were working that are successful?

Hunter, we -- like I think most people, we were really surprised by this, and we got the call one afternoon saying, "Hey, tomorrow morning, you're going to be -- you're going to be starting your day from home. So everybody basically collected up all their equipment and went home and set up their own personal offices. And I was just super pleased that next morning, right, we had our first stand-up using the technology that we've implemented over the last several months, and I was looking at their smiling faces just like I would have been if we were in the office. So a huge -- a huge credit to the team and not only the team that was actually on the video, but the infrastructure group that played such an important role in making that possible.

You guys have such an amazing operation at Penske, and you don't need to get into all the facets, but there must be core values and ethos within the organization that stand out and make a difference for you, your colleagues and how you serve your customers. Can you talk a little -- talk us through that, what that looks like?

Yes, absolutely. That really it ties back to Roger's passion for racing. And as I think you may know, right, Penske Racing or Team Penske is a very, very competitive organization on a number of racing circuits and the -- racing is in our blood, all employees, all 57,000 of us. The competitiveness, the need to move fast, the attention to detail that really is part of what makes us who we are every day.

Fascinating. Interesting. And obviously, that helps in delivering innovation and solutions to your clientele.

It does.

How -- what's shifted for you in the pandemic in terms of driving a digital innovation agenda?

Yes. I think it's really interesting. I was contemplating this, what I was going to say. And one of the things that just took out at me is like, I think good leaders when they're working in the office, a lot of the practices that they have and the things that are important to being a good leader in the office really apply when you're working from home or remotely. Like as was mentioned before, communication is so important. You got to be a good communicator, not only the corporation communicating to the employees, but the teams communicating internally within themselves. I think we use Zoom, and I think that was so critically important, right, actually seeing people every day. It just made such a huge difference because I think, as you know, certainly, I'm guilty of it, is like if you're on a conference call, sometimes you can check out and I don't know, look at multitask. So video really helped maintain that connection and also provided me and others on our leadership team the ability to check, make sure that everybody is doing okay. It's obviously a lot harder when you're looking at somebody on video as opposed to seeing them live. So you got to have your spidey senses turned up to 11, but without that, I think we would have been in a much worse spot. Andy mentioned it, too, I think empathy, right, being understanding of what these people are going through. I mean I think -- I mean it was literally, you're looking in their bedrooms, sometimes, right, because they're working from a desk in their bedroom. So we need to understand that their kid is going to come in and bother him, and that's okay, right? In fact, that's expected. In fact, there are a number of times where in the stand-ups, you expect to see a toddler sitting on somebody's lap and we embraced it. I mean it's -- there was no concern about that. I think that goes to the last point, which is really trust because they're exposing a private side to you, which they don't normally have to do when they're working in the office. And I think the trust that we had really made this work-from-home experiment so successful.

Chuck, thanks so much for coming on the program. This is really great. What a great panel. I'd invite all the panelists back to turn your cameras on and come back to the main screen. We're going to run a poll real quick folks of all the participants. HMG team, if you can launch that poll right now. Well, folks, have your priorities changed since the pandemic? Please select all that apply. We can see increased focus on supporting the CEO's agenda. That's always true.

Is there a select all button?

See, you can select all. That's right, Chuck. There you go. We'll get those results here in a minute. But I want to thank everyone for coming on the program. It was a great panel session. Thanks so much, Chuck, Sangy, Vijay, Jack and John. Really solid content. Totally dialed in.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Hunter.

Stay tuned with us. We're going to have a happy hour at the end of the program.