ON Semiconductor Corporation (ON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Next up, everyone knows and loves Lisa Nichols in the St. Louis area, CEO of Technology Partners. Lisa, welcome to the program.

Hi, Hunter, it's good to see you.

Always good to see you. Take it away.

All right. Well, I have got an amazing panel. And if you guys would all go ahead and turn on your videos, that would be great. We've got a lot to talk about today. We've got about 30 minutes, but we've got 5 of us, so we're going to go pretty quickly here. But here's who we have real quick. We've got Bhavani Amirthalingam from Ameren that's on with us, Eduard de Vries from SSM, we've got Craig Mackereth from Rimini Street, Sri Ramachandran from Mallinckrodt and Kevin Haskew from ON Semiconductor. So guys, thank you so much. And Hunter, I just have to tell you, thank you so much to you and your team, actually for making this possible. This is really our inaugural virtual summit, and I'm just so excited. It's been great so far. So let's go ahead, guys, and get into it. I am looking. Okay. So is everybody on? All right. Let's go ahead and get into it. Let's see, did I get some feedback there? I'm sorry.

Let's talk about real quickly. I mean while we would not have wished this pandemic on the world, we would not have ever done that because obviously, there's been really awful things. But if each of you could just take a minute and talk about like 1 or 2 bright spots that you've seen? And then we're going to move into some other things.

Hello, Lisa. Bhavani here. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Hi, Bhavani.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well.

Very good. Thanks for having me here today. I' m excited to share our experiences. Obviously, it's been unprecedented. But I'll tell you, it's -- the shift that we had to do within probably a week to 10 days from just being able to respond to the crisis was actually amazing to watch. And I think within a week, we shifted about 65% of our coworker base at Ameren. And so I think just that agility and decision-making and things that we did during that period of time, it was amazing to watch and something we want to continue to preserve. And now that we've been remote for several months, I think that some of the really positive things that we are seeing, and there are a number of challenges as well. But when I look at some of the positive side of things, I think it's a little contrary to what many might think. I think people are actually more connected now than they have been with respect to especially knowing your fellow coworkers at a more personal level, what's going on in their lives, because everyone's kind of home and work life has kind of integrated truly in that sense. And so I think there's a lot more appreciation and patience and acknowledgment for everyone's reality. So I think that's a huge positive. I do think a significant part of the organization, at least for us, has been extremely productive. Things have been really hectic and just the culture of the organization. No one wants anything to fall through the cracks, so it's just been -- everyone's kind of been rallying to it. So productivity has been amazing as well. So I think just being able to take these key things of how we work together, how we care for each other, how we are creative. We've been extremely creative and innovative. And that whole flexibility, agility, keeping that in our DNA long term, I think will do everyone...

So that's something you're definitely going to carry forward, Bhavani, right? I say there are some things that we're going to leave behind that we want to leave behind, but then there are some things that we want to carry forward, and that's one of them. So it sounds like it really has not hurt productivity at Ameren or employee engagement. In fact, maybe you're a little bit more connected.

Yes. Absolutely. Our engagement has been fantastic. Productivity has been fantastic.

Very good. Can I hear from somebody else? Shri, you want to speak up?

Oh, yes. Thank you for having me in this wonderful dialogue. And I think just building upon what Bhavani just said, I think from an individual as well as an enterprise perspective, I see 3 things, which are sort of the bright spot in all of these things. First of all, I do want to acknowledge and recognize there's been a lot of not-so-good things, unfortunately, here that have happened, and we all recognize that we have a lot of sympathy and empathy for everything that's happened and my heart goes to every one of them, and I sincerely hope that this will end very, very soon. On the bright side, if you look at this personal side and the enterprise side, I think there are 3 things. One is, there is a heightened level of empathy through all of these things, I think, that. You know what, there's -- an acceptance level of that is very different now. Even when simple things like when people get on the -- on a video call or a conference call like this, and if a child is crying behind or if your kid comes in or if your daughter comes in, it's all accepted. Even if it's a serious interview, it's kind of accepted. It feels a little more personal. People see the other side, like Bhavani said, people see the other side of individuals in their homes and in their environment outside of home, and I think that gives a different level of connectivity and a connection and a higher level of empathy. I think that's one of the things. The second thing is, I think both people and the enterprise, this is a forced time of creativity, creative thinking, because they're forced to do certain things, even companies that were somewhat apprehensive in being too remote or something, now they are forced to do that. How do we find creative ways to get the things done that you had to do without really having to be in contact? And I think a lot of people have come up with some really brilliant ideas whether it's just a retail industry, whether it is the actual serious business, or whether it is hospitals, all these telemedicine and everything, it's all this creativity that's come up. Now some of it will stick, some of it will not, which kind of leads me to the third point, which is, the entrepreneurship thinking has come. And I always believe in that adage there, necessity is the mother of invention, because now you are forced to think differently, think about ways you can do your business differently, maybe even better, and there are opportunities now. So you start looking at different things. And you try some things and the level of risk-taking has increased because and the acceptance level on the other side and the customer level has been more favorable. So people are trying some new things, different things. And it's almost like one of those rubber band things when you stretch, at some point, yes, you'll realize that, well, I can't stretch it this much. These are things that won't work. These are some things that will work, it will come back. But hopefully, it doesn't go back to the original because there are some things that are so good now in terms of creative ways of doing business and connecting better. I think those should stick. So I'm looking at those 3 points: more empathy, more creativity and more sort of entrepreneurial thinking that will be better for everybody going forward.

Very good. Thank you, Shri. Eduard, can we hear from you?

Absolutely. Thank you for having us here. And as a mission-based health system, obviously, we had to pivot as well, and there was quite a bit of search capacity we had to build for. So we've really been intentional focusing on 3 areas within the IT group, which is like Bhavani and Shri said, focus on the employee engagement, increase it. So we communicate frequently and rapidly. Then secondly, as we get new information and we see new data, we really rapidly prioritize. So we were able to, in an agile way, really make decisions and scale across the enterprise. And then thirdly, we really focused on nurturing productivity. Our teams had to deliver against those priorities to get the business outcomes we needed because for us, we had patients and caregivers' life depending on it. So the good thing coming out of this is that I'm incredibly proud how our organization, not just IT, but in general, the organization has stepped up to the challenge and how we've been able to impact our communities. So there's a lot of -- in this situation, there's a lot of good things we want to keep for the future. Like Shri said, like Bhavani said, I don't think we ever want to go back to the old way of doing things because there is more value here, and there's more impact we can have in our community, which is what we're all about.

Very good. Thank you so much. Kevin Haskew, can we hear from you? And what do you believe?

Yes, you can. Again, thank you for having us. It's interesting listening to everybody else's stories. We're maybe the same in somewhere in some respects. Now we've got about 40,000 people around the world, and it's truly global. So one of our problems when we send people remotely was the ability to make sure we could connect. We actually saw about a 4x increase in remote users. And so obviously, we weren't just sized to do that immediately. So we actually did have to react a little bit and add some extra service capacity and even licenses. Good thing is over the last few years, we've been working on the program and standardization, and so that really helped. But I also think some of our key vendors that we actually call partners, and it really is a true partnership, that we're very forgiving and understanding and they helped us very quickly. And we talk in a matter of hours, not days, where we were able to actually change some of our, say, licensing. And then within a week, we had 16,000 consecutive and concurrent VPN clients coming, which is, for us, exceptional. The challenge we have is, apart from being manufacturing, we've got sites that we wanted to keep open. We also have design engineers, which are working on some high-value stuff for the future and we have to send them home, and there's 4,000 of them. And so the question was, how the heck do you have these design engineers with the high-powered computers working remotely? Can we do that? We've never done it before. So we had a couple of weeks of just trying to finagle some of the solutions and capacity around the world. But once we got through that, the CTO is actually amazed that we could: one, do it; and two, he is now seeing some benefits of that going forward. So again, you have to react. You have some -- you have some issues, but you learn from it. And I think from that going forward, we can really build on this. And I think it's definitely brought people closer together as well.

Very good. Craig, can we hear from you?

Hi, Lisa, yes. So it's been very interesting hearing all these stories. We've had a little less upheaval at Rimini Street because we were always kind of engineered for the remote work. About 80% of my team are in 17 different countries have always been remote, so that interaction has been key to our success. We have done this because regional events can't knock us out. So we've dealt with hurricanes in the past and other localized disasters. We have to keep supporting our clients and many of whom have been on the front lines in the fight against COVID. But you asked about the bright spots. Recently, we've seen some more human elements to the always on kind of communication of our engineers. So that's some global teams doing some superhero for a day events. We've had more family participation, most unintentional, some intentional in video conferencing. Sharing a story, we had one of the ladies that swapped in her daughter in a video conference and didn't tell anyone to see if they notice, that was a real funny thing to do. And it's just -- you're seeing people coping in different ways. I think it has opened up a lot more of that human-to-human interaction. Even though we've always been working remotely, you kind of see that, especially with people having very changed home lives as well. So it's been very interesting to see that pivot for us too.

It certainly has. Well, I'm just thinking, so many of you -- we all had to pivot in some way, but I was thinking about the acceleration. And Eduard, I don't want to misquote you, but I think you told us that telehealth visits have gone up. Is it 3500%? Am I correct in that?

Across multiple health systems, we see numbers between 3,000% and 4,000%, yes.

Which is just crazy. And we were all talking about that, and some of us have experienced the telehealth and we kind of like it, all right? So I definitely think there's some good things. So -- and Bhavani, I know that you -- we're talking about your field technicians and how you've kind of had to retrain them or train them. So many of the studies are saying that the future is going to be owned by those technical athletes, if you will, those people that are able to be more agile. How have you guys in your different organizations, and I know, Craig, that you guys have been there for a long time, but how are you future-proofing your people going forward?

Yes. Yes, great question, Lisa. I've talked about this before with you. We've got a number of transformations underway from what we're doing with our customer care centers to what we're doing with our field workflows, our back office functions, finance, supply chain, HR. So a big part of it is how do you bring the future operating models and integrate it into your future work process and technology. So it's kind of bringing in all of those aspects, right? And so that has been a huge focus as we are making these huge investments in our technology footprint. It's looking at it in the context of the future of work in those areas. And so COVID times has made it interesting for us. We've got a number of initiatives underway. And we're really thrilled about the investments we've made over the last 2 years. We couldn't have shifted as rapidly as we did if we didn't make those investments. So it is something that we will continue to keep our foot on the gas on in terms of just accelerating what we've already started. We've had to like get creative. I forget who said it, but we've had to get really creative about how we train our field. We're going through this major multi-year journey on transforming how our field does work as it relates to how we do work management scheduling, how we do asset management, asset tracking. And so it's really important that we look at -- we're used to like having large training groups all in one place, face-to-face. So we are really having to pivot and get creative about how we use technology to do that. And at the same time, where it's needed, you have to have the face-to-face interaction to be able to drive the change management. But I think this whole space of training coworkers is going to go through a huge evolution as well from that standpoint. So yes, I think every organization, the running joke is, who accelerated the digital transformation, the CEO or the CDO, or COVID. And a lot of folks are like, "it's COVID." So we -- I think the adoption curve has just gone up. And we also see that with customers. Interesting enough, all our customers have had to go digital in their own lives. And it's -- everyone has had to. And so you just have more folks that are ready to engage from that standpoint.

Yes. There's no time to be comfortable, right? We've all had to stretch. I love the rubber band analogy there, Shri, that you talked about. We've all had to stretch. There's no doubt about that. Kevin Haskew, you and I had talked a lot about this, and you were talking about your strategic plan. And you said the strategic plan is absolutely essential. But your strategic plan today doesn't quite look like it did maybe 4 months ago, right? Can you talk a little about that?

Yes. Yes. And I'll tie into Bhavani's point there as well. And it's this whole thing with -- particularly with IT, you have to have good strategic plans. And a lot of people still don't like to do that. But the beauty of strategic planning is once you start the plan, it's out to date, something's is going to happen. So this is where you do need to be flexible and agile, and it's not -- it's something not to be afraid of. So we had -- I thought we had a great plan beforehand. And with that, we actually had some good investments that gave us some modern equipment, and that helped us during this crisis. But now we have to do some lessons learned and look at our strategic plan and see what changes or tweaks do we need to make going forward. I think 2 big streams that have come out of this for us is, one is the need for more collaboration. And as the users are starting to obviously enjoy working remotely, they're all asking for more and saying, what's the plan. And that's -- to me, that makes sense. But the other ways, we still have a lot of legacy applications and the only way we can actually make that more available is through virtualization, and the old idea of VDI or thin client, which we actually had on the plan, but we were sort of slow walking. We now need to accelerate that and put that down as a sort of next step -- next year type project. And to Bhavani's point, what I like with this is, I actually think IT has got some great credibility now, having gone through and still survive through this crisis, where people, before there was maybe a reluctance to accept the need for IT. But now, they actually understand how critical it is to an organization, reconnect everybody. And the organization doesn't work unless IT is functioning. So I think if we come back with an updated strategic plan that builds on our foundation but actually addresses the capabilities that people are now looking for, I think the next few years for IT is going to be fantastic. But it all comes down to then, you would have a good strategic plan and then you need to execute flawlessly to that.

Great points. Great points. Well, let's talk about this a little bit. They're really -- okay. So Craig, let me ask you a question. So we all were talking about what is the lessons learned, and we're all having to reimagine for the future, right? And of course, nobody has a crystal ball, but we all have to rumble with this a little bit. So reimagining what is customer service going to look like in the future. We have internal customers and external customers. So can you talk to that a little bit, Craig?

Yes, for sure. And I think this is an area where there was a direction before COVID that is actually just continuing now. So fascinating within the customer service community, go to all the conferences and the keyword there, which I had to learn, was deflection. So we've long seen companies try and deflect clients away to online knowledge bases and other sources of information, and we would call that self-service support. What we're seeing now is with the advent of AI and other new tech, it's just accelerating that. So we've seen, for example, demonstrations where there's human simulations of voice and chat box, and it's moving people further and further away from customer service. So my prediction, crystal ball time, is that I think that companies will be very tempted to take that direction and to cut costs around customer service. And so there'll be those companies, and then there'll be companies with really good customer service. Great client services is actually about bringing people closer. You've heard from the others on the panel here. It's about bringing people closer together. And so I think those companies across all sectors now, not just IT, but all sectors that can bring your employees and your customers closer together using technology are going to be the winners out of this. And I think as people become more and more familiar with telemedicine, with video conferencing, with working remotely, those companies will be the winners. So opportunities are bound for those that take that leap.

Very good. I could not agree with you more. So we've all talked about this, so digital transformation has already received a boost because of COVID. And many leaders are just hunkering down and they're playing it safe and just trying to keep the lights on, but then there are some that are not on the defensive side, they're going on the offensive, and they're looking at new innovations and that sort of thing. So we've already talked about the telehealth and Eduard, I really don't see that necessarily going away. I mean, I think that's going to be part of the modus operandi going forward. What other things in your particular organizations, and we've got probably time for this question, and then we're going to have to wrap it up, but in your particular organizations, what do you see around the bin in terms of innovations on the offensive side?

So I would say, in our area, I think you're starting to see a split between the transactional and the value-added part. So if you translate that to a doctor's visit, when you have to fill in the forms and those things, I'd love for the patients to do that digitally. They can do it in their own time. Because then when they set this for caregivers, there's the real presence, there's the real connection, human connection, which then allows us to give a better diagnosis and better treatment. If I take that same concept and apply it to the back office, think about a finance function. I would love to automate and minimize as many transactions as I can. So I can take my finance people, have them focus on the FP&A, so they can help grow the business and make us operate better. And I think this way of looking at things, you can apply across most of our functions and most business models.

Bhavani, do you have something to say?

No, I think they're -- well said across the board. I think the other piece I will say is just in terms of what are we -- just lessons learned, but what we can continue to rethink and pivot. We talked about how we think about the future of the workforce and how we leverage technology. I also think that is the aspect of the future of the workplace, which is really how is the physical setup of the workplace going to change, and especially if you have a hybrid virtual workforce, do you move more to shared space. And do you also think about -- you still want the social interaction, you need certain activities where there's engagement. You kind of -- what does that happy medium look like? I think as people are reimagining how we work, it's -- there's an element of that as well.

Right. No, that is an excellent point. And Craig, I know that we talked about that, and you said it's not work from home, it's going to be work from anywhere. And you guys are kind of looking at this as a possible attraction retention tool.

Absolutely. So the ability to work from home, we've always been in that space, but now it's work from anywhere. So if you want to work from where your parents are living, for example, the opportunity to do that is huge. One final comment on this. I think that a key thing people can be looking at is around return on investment. And Kevin made a great point about looking at virtualization, for example. If your return on investment in projects right now can be measured in a year or less, great projects to invest in. So if there's opportunities to do that as opposed to projects that don't really have a defined return on investment, you're not going to see something back in a year, just not seeing projects like that get any kind of traction. So that's kind of going on the offensive, focus on those where you know you're going to get a return. It's going to be within that 1-year period, and I think you'll see a lot of action in that space coming from IT.

Very good. Shri or Kevin, do you guys have any final thoughts?

Go ahead.

Yes. Just in closing, again, I think this actually is an opportunity for us to shine, and I think there's a couple of things we can learn from and take forward. And there's certainly 2 or 3 areas that we've seen that capitalize on and maybe get some more investments for. But I also then have to get centered back into reality and come back and make sure we keep this in perspective. A reality for us is we still have at least 20,000 people physically based on manufacturing sites where we're making physical products and they're being shipped. And they still need to -- they can't be ignored, they still need to be supported, and we've got to find out ways to make their lives as safe and as efficient as possible as well. And I think that's a different track, and we have to make sure we don't lose sight of that.

Very good. Shri, you get the final word.

From my perspective, I think it somewhat summarizes whatever we're saying, it's pretty consistent. I think we are at a pivotal point as a past where we've come from, which is a lot of focus on technical and just technology aspect of it, and it's kind of come to a point, whether it's forced or not, but due to this pandemic, it's kind of created a momentum. But there is that movement from just pure technology to what I would call an emotion involved in the technology. Because now you have to include those aspects that we're all talking about, which we feel, or at least we felt that there was no substitute to. For example, we said, well, there is no substitute to doing a hand -- shaking hands with somebody. There's no substitute to sitting in front of somebody and talking to. There's no substitute for really being there in person. But Craig just said, they've been working anywhere for a long time. We all have been doing some. And now even those who are skeptic have begun to accept it. But what will stick going forward is the success of how much emotion can you actually put into that technology and make it feel like you're -- actually it's a real substitute. It's not that bad. You are there, whether it is high level of definition in technology, whether it's better video, whether it's better audio, whether it's more simulatory things, whether it is even doing things like virtual things to put yourself in and seeing, all of that, I think, will take us further, and this is a great opportunity. But if we don't take this opportunity, I think it will be like the rubber and we'll stretch back and over a period of time, memory is shut. People will go back and say, well, keep flying, meet me here, no more video and stuff like that. So I think that this is a challenge for us as IT to IT professionals and a fantastic opportunity. And I think we should all take advantage of that. This is really the bright side of everything.

I could not agree with you more, and we need to hold one another accountable to that, Shri, to not just rubber banding back to the way we were before. All right. Well, we're going on to our next panel discussion. So Hunter, I welcome you back.

Hey, Lisa, awesome job.

There you go. Okay, guys.

Thanks, everyone. Lisa Nichols, Corporate Technology Partners. Thank you so much -- sorry, Technology Partners. Shri, great job. Craig, Kevin, Eduard and Bhavani, awesome. Thank you so much.

Next up is Don. Do you want to take it away?

Sure will. Thanks, Hunter, and welcome to the security panel on securing the future of work. Let me give you some of the sound bites that we heard today. Bhavani talked about in 7 to 10 days shifting 65% of their workers remote. Tony talked about tech saving companies. Maria talked about mobilization, Phil about enterprise risk. But here's -- and Kevin 4x increase in remote. But here's the one that really caught me. [indiscernible] said, the CISO owns the risk of the organization, and that's why all those faces in those pictures look so stern, right? So we're going to start out with this excellent panel with Erica Wilson. She's the VP and CISO at Cass Information Centers (sic) [ Systems ].

And Erica, can you start by giving us a little background on yourself and maybe a little on Cass Information Systems because we might be familiar with Cass Bank. And then how you manage that transition of your team, please?

Absolutely. So as -- Don, first, thank you for having me. And to all the participants of attendees today, thanks for joining us. I'm a cybersecurity leader who has a passion for promoting STEM education. And currently at Cass, I serve as the CISO. I also have responsibility for a few other functions within our technology organization. So I've had the opportunity to work in various industries, and the bulk of my experience is really directly in the cybersecurity space. At Cass, we're a service provider of payments and payment processing, and we've been around for over 100 years. We started as a bank. Cass Commercial Bank provides commercial banking services to small businesses, privately owned businesses as well as based organizations. And so at the core of what we do with payments processing, so a lot of our customers are in the manufacturing distribution and retail space, and we provide services around expense management for freight utilities, telecom and waste at Cass. To answer your question around how we did and what was important for us when we shifted to more of a work, a remote force and having staff working at home, we knew that the increase in that would result in immediately needing to create a sense of heightened awareness around security. Because as it was stated earlier, there's a lot of risk factors that come with being at home. And we knew also that the attack strategies and methods, we're not going to stop focusing on payment services and the payment industry. And at the end of it, the core is that human factor, right? A lot of phishing attempts and even attacks. That human element is what we even saw right of the gate early on with COVID and seeing a lot of phishing attempts, focusing on that human element. And so we shifted our awareness with some increased participations around different ideas that we wanted our employees to be aware of around being at home, being mindful of their own wireless setup and their networks at home. We wanted to make sure the conversations were really key on you're still connected to the business, keeping personal and business information separate, not sharing your device or using it for things that aren't approved and then also making sure they were aware of some of the phishing attempts that were really on the rise, so that they could be kind of on higher alert and guard. Because as I stated, that human element of security is still a very, very critical component to protecting the organization.

And Erica, you mentioned that you've been in security in most of your career. Was there a challenge in working with your counterpart on the CIO side of the organization? Or how did that work, especially remotely?

You know, not at all. The key to the success for us has really been engagement that then, you heard today in collaboration, leveraging the technology that we already had in place, very honestly, help with that. Even more frequent conversations around what's happening and how the business was responding and what they were seeing from our customers, what type of concerns were being raised. And so we were having those conversations on a more frequent basis than in the past, and that's what really helped us as well with the transition.

Perfect. Perfect. All right. Let's switch gears over to Marc Ashworth. Marc is the CISO at First Bank, and it's the bank that puts -- is your partner for the future. It's a really service-oriented bank. Marc, can you talk about your transition and maybe comment on the challenges that are specific to the banking regulations that might have thrown curve balls at you?

Yes. So thanks for having me today. And with the whole pandemic and everything, it was definitely an adjustment for us because we're a people bank. We want to be face-to-face with our customers. And so having to close lobbies and go into appointments and drive-throughs and then relying on technology to have that contact with the customers was different for us versus sitting face-to-face with people. So that was -- it's been a very interesting transition for us. And then on the back office side, we now have over half the company working from home so -- and been doing so since March. So that -- because of our technology that we put in prior years, it was an easy transition for us. We did have a spike of help desk calls, getting people used to setting up, and we were actually in progress of changing our MFA provider to another one. So we had to hold that project and bring licenses back up on the legacy system off of there. But other than that, that transition was really good. As far as regulation and everything, the big thing is the banking industry, like some of the others are very heavily under attack since the COVID-19 pandemic has started. And whether it's unemployment fraud or other types of fraud or the cyberattacks, they're up almost 240% since February. So there's a lot of due diligence that has to be done. Phishing attacks, ransomware attacks are all up industry-wide. So really sticking with those basics, those security layers, making sure you hit your asset management in place, cash management across all assets that you have, your vulnerability management, your user training on social engineering and red flags and phishing and making sure -- keeping people aware of what's going on is really the big key right now for everybody, not just banking.

Did you have any OMG moments as you went through the process this year?

Only when we had a circuit go down, that was about the only time that we really was like, "Oh, no," but other than that, everything that was a minor blip. And fortunately, it only affected a small portion of people. So...

All right. Good. Good. All right. Next, we're going to switch gears to Paolo Vallotti, who is the Global CISO for Mondelez. And I have to admit to you that I really wasn't familiar, and I don't know if you can see my picture, but you might be familiar with some of their brands such as RITZ, Wheat Thins, Oreos and Triscuit. And this stuff is sinful if you can see this can. So Paolo, can you feed us on the challenges related to the transition, especially for a global organization? And are there any unique situations being in the food products business?

Yes. Thanks, Don. Yes, actually, we have a large portfolio of products. And I joined Mondelez about 2 years ago after spending a long career between CTO and CISO role in the automotive business. So my son was kind of tired of me getting new cars every year and decide, okay, well, what about we switch for something more interesting for me. And snacking was the right thing to do. So all else, we wanted to stay with cookies, so that's great for him. But we set our profit in 150-plus countries. We have presence in more than 90 countries, so 410 locations, 80,000 people around the globe, so it's -- plus the partners. So we did a large initiative with business process outsourcing, and we rely on offshore people to run our core process on the business side. And when this COVID-19 pandemic hit, it was really about running the business, not only from a manufacturing perspective and making sure we could make our snacking products and still distribute and sell them, but at the same time, we had to run all the back end, the back office process in the same way. And we had to work with some of the vendors that contractually had some obligation from a business continuity perspective, but they were not prepared, anywhere close to be prepared for such a large issue. And when they shut down India basically in few days, they had to figure out how to keep their people with desktop, even bringing their desktop from the office to their home or the people who were assigned to our account. And on our side, it was all about, okay, so now what's going to happen? So besides being ready from an infrastructure perspective, maybe in VPN, our remote desktop infrastructure ready to host 10,000, 15,000 people on in a given day, there was about on the security side, how do we get ready for the next wave of attacks? And now we focus on -- we basically build additional controls on what we already have and focus on what was already a top priority for us to monitor, like business e-mail compromise, attack against VPN and Citrix, making sure fraud didn't happen with our customers and things like that. So it's still basic stuff, but having a focused view around COVID-19, phishing attacks and other type of attacks that may happen in this specific scenario was one of the key things we did. And then from a manufacturing perspective, the very interesting thing for us was -- or at least for me, was to see how quickly the manufacturing people adjust to the new situation. Social distancing in the plant wasn't easy to accomplish. But they came up with very creative solution to check temperature, to make sure they have plexiglass screen for the operators to be safe while still making our products.

And just -- can you give us an idea, how big your team is? And just -- I bet you're dealing with every time zone around the world. Is that true?

Yes, yes, yes. So the team is about 30 people. We are in the middle of a major security program transformation. And with an objective to grow to over 50%, but then we rely on specialized service provider to provide us with level 2, level 3 people threat Intel. We just acquired a bunch of feed for threat Intel. And we have our own developer for analytics or -- and other component that became critical to our business. But it is 24/7 business, so we really have coverage across the globe.

And based on where you're sitting on June 18, would you rather have been in automotive or in the food business the last 3 months?

Actually, yes, I would say food business is kind of good, especially snacking. People are -- actually, we had a very good quarter. Automotive, I would say, not so much. Actually, I'm very close to my former friend in Fiat in Italy, and they had a drop of over 90% of the sale. So yes, it's tough. It will come back, though.

All right. Good. Good. Well, last, but not least, is Tom Schunk, VP and CISO at Emerson. And I really love the fact that Tom has a long background at Emerson, 28 years, yes, 28, and has responsibility for Emerson's -- had responsibility for Emerson's network solutions organization and he has been in this cyber position for 10 years of that. So Tom, maybe, from a global perspective also, can you share your experience and transition? And especially since you know both sides of the coin there as well.

Yes, absolutely. It's been an interesting time. We have about 90,000 employees around the world. We're in 100-plus countries. And I do still own both the network and the cybersecurity infrastructure pieces. And this was very much both a network and a cybersecurity ramp that we went through. We had probably an average between 5,000 and 10,000 people that would work remotely at any given time around the world. We had to ramp this all the way up to support our workforce. And I really have to give a lot of credit to our partners. I mean going to the telcos that we utilize and the hardware providers that we utilize, and they were there for us, and I value the relationships that we have with and their long-term relationships, I think it would have been very difficult for us to pull this off in the time frame that we did. Over the period of about 2 weeks, we materially ramped up our bandwidth around the world. We ramped up our remote access and infrastructure around the world. And on the cyber side, I'm really happy to say, and I give my team just a ton of credit. We architected our cyber controls to be very portable, either on-premise for our teams or when people remote basically the same capabilities. And we ran into some challenges with regard to things like patching, right? So we hadn't considered patching at scale. We have around 60,000 of the 90,000 knowledge workers when everybody's remote. And when you talk about pushing patches across our remote access solutions, it's a little different. So we had to slow that down for a little bit as bandwidth ramped, but we cut right back up again. But we were able to think through a lot of those issues that we ran into. And again, the architectures that we developed over the last 5, 10 years really saved us with regard to that.

I think it's because you're [Technical Difficulty] quite honestly. Can you think back and was there a full call or an e-mail, and you just said, "Oh, my word, what are we going to do here?" Or, "This is big," that you had to wrestle with?

No. I mean we -- and again, I give my team a lot of credit. They've been here a long time, too. So as we started to realize just the scope and scale of the pandemic and what it would mean to us as far as working remotely, we were on calls right away, strategizing and thinking about it, and we jumped right into it and started executing. And I think by the time that we started getting calls and questions about it, we were well on our way in making sure that we had what we needed in place to be successful with it. There were a lot of those moments throughout that 2-week period where -- I'll give you an example. Somebody mentioned India earlier, right, and that was very quick, right? And a lot of the infrastructure, the last mile components in India are challenged, so we had to look at other remote access connectivity solutions for those folks. So we move more towards mobile than a typical ISP hardwired connection of those remote locations. We also ran into issues with ramping bandwidth in Asia. Just in the cost of it, I mean, for those of you who would operate a global organization, it's not immaterial. So we were able to take some of our traffic and route it to Europe to London. We have a hub location there. So it was a lot of the kind of real-time decisions that you have to make and the ability to kind of pivot and react. And I think it reflects well on the fact that we have a mature organization. We've got a lot of the capabilities in place to enable those rapid pivots, and we've got the expertise on the ground to help us think through it.

Great. I'm going to ask the next question and pick on you first -- because I love you so much. But think of an organization smaller than yours and the role is not split up into 2 people, and there's somebody wearing 2 hats, and they don't have quite the resources, how do they balance that workload? And how do they manage the 2 pieces and prioritize that?

Yes. So smaller organization, I mean, there's a couple of things. I can measure right with my team sometimes about I wish we were a little smaller because you can do a lot of things really quickly. If you don't have to worry about a global deployment, you don't have to worry about some of the challenges that come along with that. But I think it's having the relationships with those different teams and those different stakeholders in your organization, building trust, making sure they understand what you're trying to accomplish, being able to lean on those different stakeholders, partner relationships are key. Somebody mentioned outsourcing. I think for certain scale and size companies, that's an essential piece of it, right, being able to lean on somebody that has a depth of resources and capabilities that you may not have available to you in your organization is a key strategy for a lot of organizations to be able to quickly move and adapt and change. Cyber, in particular, it's interesting for me, managing the 2 different groups. The network areas, the life cycles are slower, right? So being able to implement a technology and live on it for a period of time is more than norm there. In the cyber area, because the threats change, it seems like weekly, we're constantly pivoting. We're constantly changing. We're constantly deploying new technologies. And it's a lot, again, when you think about the scale of the company and the kind of deployments that we have to do. So some of the smaller organizations, I think, benefit from that with regard to being nimble and being quick and being able to get those new things out there and stand in front of the threats.

Great. Great. Erica, again, being on the security side, like you said a lot of the time, what would you say to your friends out there who are CIOs? What -- and are responsible for both sides, what learnings have you had that you can share with folks out there? Did I lose you, Erica?

Sorry, I was muted there. I echo a lot of what Tom has shared. it's really about keeping the goals of the organization, top of mind, making sure any initiative or technology that you're looking in, invest in is in alignment with the business and their objectives. And also, just having the sense of how any decisions that you might make would impact people, whether they're internal to your organization or your external customers, you got to think about all of those things. And what I'd like to always say about our industry, and I kind of joke about it sometimes, like you're never done, right? You're never done. Technology shifts, new technologies come about, and there really is not a time when you can get lags, so you got to stay on your toes. But the thing about it is, you can't do everything at once. So you have to learn how to address priorities from a risk-based perspective and also just make sure you're able to convey those risks and rewards in support of any investment decisions so that it makes sense at the end of the day for the organization. And I agree, when you're in a small organization, oftentimes, you can move a little bit faster. You might be strapped for resources. But when it's time to deploy or push things out, it's not as much of what to do versus if you're in a larger international or global organization that has so many endpoints and end users. So those would be the things that I would offer.

And there's one other thing I wanted to ask you because out of 3 daughters, I've always watched out for my girls. And do you have a message for either women out in the audience or parents who have daughters who are interested in technology, what kind of things should they look for to get to the opportunities, the success that you've achieved in your life?

Oh, absolutely. That hits home for me. I'm really excited about women and girls and technology. Now what I'd say is, there's really not a career that you can choose today that won't have some form of technology tied to it. So why not be at the forefront and be a leader and be a part of that technology and how to drive that. There are so many opportunities. And I really think that tapping into what you have to bring to the table along with knowing that technology is going to be around to really consider exploring that. And even if you choose a different career within STEM or any other career path, still stay very present in understanding the possibilities of technology because you could probably get tapped on for a lot of special projects or initiatives when you're really in touch with where technology is going and where it's headed.

Beautiful. I love that. Marc, again, to our friends out there who have both hats on, CISO lessons that you might have can share with them, learnings, a big aha?

Yes. I think with this whole work from home, it's just doing the diligence of making sure that you have the foundations in place and being able to build off of that and then managing those gaps, those risks that you have in between there. I'm like Tom, I had networking and security. So to be able to switch hats to see, okay, how is the performance doing at one moment on the network and with all the remote users and then keeping up with all the security, it's a balance. And you have to just manage those risks and really just stay on those different tasks and make sure that you know which ones are going to be best for the organization at the time or which one is going to hurt the organization the most and address those as quickly as possible.

Do you have a secret on managing that balance of the network versus the security or just experience? Because you don't have any gray hair, Marc.

Yes. Yes. Not too bad. At least it's hiding in really good here on this video conferencing. So that's -- but now it's just kind of going with your gut and trying to just watch out and see which one is really the way that you need to go at the time. So...

Great. Great. Paolo, from maybe both on automotive and a food perspective, what are your lessons that we can share with the audience from your experience, please?

Yes. I think foundation needs to be there. So if you have the basis in place, the attacks you see where most of the people will fall, are fairly basic, business e-mail compromise, phishing. And the fact that we always look at phishing problem being just our own issue and we don't think about our customers sometimes, is something that could be addressed as part of this as an opportunity. So we look at fraud happening to our customers say, okay, what can we do more for them? But on our side, if I look at just protecting Mondelez or any company, once you have your endpoint in check, you have your asset inventory complete enough, not 100%, which is very unlikely you'll ever have, and then you have proper e-mail protection and a good strong authentication, then you probably avoided most of the basic attacks that you'll see on a daily basis. So take the noise out and focus on the very, very important thing, the complex, the persistent threat that you will see against your specific company. Those are the things that a security team should focus on, together with explaining why security is important to the business.

And just one more thing, Paolo. We haven't really talked that much about training. How do you handle training on such a global basis? How do you teach us knuckleheads not to click on the bazillion dollars we're going to get from the guy in Nigeria?

Well, yes, the Nigerian are very popular in terms of phishing nowadays. But yes, it's about awareness and training and making sure we have the right connection with the business. So we do phishing -- similar to phishing campaign on a periodic basis. We did one with the executives, just at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and then we do a recurring phishing simulation. And now we are going to launch a sponsorship champion and the ambassador program with the business people and the IT people around the world to make sure we embed cybersecurity within their function, and we have a connection directly with the business rather than delegating everything to me or my team.

Great. Great. I want to thank everybody. I want to thank Marc and Tom and Paolo and Erica for their input.