Unknown Speaker 0:00:13.0: 

Okay. So I'm excited to introduce Ian Zhao from Zoom, who is the Enterprise Planning Leader, and who's going to be doing a fireside chat with our very own VP of Engineering for RPM Applications, Guillaume Arnaud. The two of them have known each other for a long time and I think this is going to be a very dynamic and fun, and interesting conversation. We're going to open up time for Q&A so just be thinking about any questions you might have for both of them. I'm just going to leave the intro at that because we're so short on time, but I'm just really excited to be in the audience and listen to this one myself. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:00:46.5: 

All right. So it's a fireside chat. Where's the fire? The fire is within our heart! 

 

Unknown Speaker 0:00:50.1: 

Ian's the fire. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:01:00.6: 

We're going to have to share the mic my friend. All right. Thank you for being here. Sorry we are in between now and the happy hour. So we're going to make it as fun as possible. We'll see. So first of all, Ian, my dear friend, we've known each other for, what, 13 years, 10, 12 years maybe, or 10 something. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:01:22.8: 

It's shorter than that.  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:01:26.9: 

It feels more than that, right?! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:01:27.8: 

Yes!  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:01:29.2: 

So tell me about your experience as a famous Enterprise Planning Leader that you are, like you are one of the famous Planning Leads of the Bay Area, and maybe in the world. So how does it feel? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:01:51.9: 

I feel the same, and I feel nothing! The fame really doesn't - but I would love to share my stories, and I hope that I click with someone and then I'll be able to just get more questions and help your career, help your development. That's why I'm here. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:02:13.2: 

So over time - so you've been with VMware before and now you're at Zoom, right, for the last year. Oh by the way, this is Ian's Zoom anniversary today, so a round of applause. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:02:29.5: 

I don't see the candle and a cake but thank you! 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:02:32.9: 

So tell us, across your career, how has Anaplan helped you progress and deliver value to the company you've been working with? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:02:45.6: 

So I'm with Anaplan for ten years, and what I see is that the enterprise planning with Anaplan can go much faster. Originally it started with just like, what do they call it, an Excel file on steroid, and right now you have a workflow, you have connected data, and now you have AI, and I see that the progression of the connected planning, the enterprise planning, is accelerating. The skillset required - right, it's not only just for developers to be able to develop an agile model, it's getting far faster, but for the leaders, for any kind of Anaplan connective planning leaders, you get to reach out to higher level. Like in VMware, and I'm working with VP level, and Zoom I can work with the C-Suite, not at a CEO but one level below, and be able to have the idea to bounce different ideas, to coordinate the work between let's say finance, FP&A verses Human Resource verses the GTM, the Chief Sales Officer. I think that's phenomenal. This is where we're talking about a career path instead of just doing one level, same thing, over and over again for ten years. I like it. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:04:21.1: 

So we can say Anaplan has boosted your career. Do you feel that way? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:04:27.2: 

I think... 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:04:30.2: 

By Anaplan. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:04:30.6: 

You can use the stock market model, right. Anaplan is more like a support level. Anyone here at Silicon Valley has to go through the ups and downs, right, do a different merger. VMware merged with Broadcom, and then so I will have to go to these now, and for different companies, but Anaplan is here. It's constantly given me the support, because they know how well I can build a model and orchestrate an idea, and sell that idea to different leaders, and they see the value of me. Going forward, I think that's how I land a job. Also, because of Anaplan I get to know, have the connection. That helped me. And Zoom exactly, because I did well at VMware for Anaplan. Then a senior director for IT, and the Chief Technology Officer at Zoom recognized my role and so hired me for the Connecter Planning Lead. So I appreciate that. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:05:40.6: 

Yes. That's beautiful. I actually remember at VMware how we started in 2014 with a complex territory management, and towards the end it was deployed to every region. We had roadshows towards the different entities of VMware, Singapore, London, and I could see how much appreciation you got from the users there. So I could witness the value of Anaplan for those people, so that was a fantastic experience. So I'm really not surprised that whatever you're doing at Zoom today is a continuous progression from what you started at VMware at that scale, because the scale of the deployment was remarkable. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:06:36.8: 

Thank you. I think I stumbled upon it, right, and then - if I want to summarize it, it's that basically I can see what businesses need, and then I can translate it into what can be programmed in Anaplan. That is level number one, and level two is how you can sell the different ideas to the different leaders - the same idea with different versions of different leaders. That's the second part. But I will say that it was serendipitous. VMware started with Anaplan in 2014, and I joined in 2015, 2016, and on my first day as an account territory planning COE lead - [?Jatinder] - currently he's my boss - he said, 'Hey, congratulations on the job! By the way, you're also let in on the project that is failing, it's called Anaplan.' I was like, 'Okay. Tell me about it more.' Then he said, 'Okay, this is the territory planning.' Then I looked at the model. It's like it's pretty good. I think about it - and then with a model you can have such great dimension and be able to do the planning. I mean, does anyone know about the plan economy in the Soviet Union? So I mean this isn't my model. Probably you guys don't know about it, but in the Soviet Union they use more than 10,000 variables to plan out.  

 

Ian Zhao 0:08:19.9: 

So for example if you want to make a concrete - you want to make steel, then you need to have charcoal, you have input of labor, and you have this - and then it's a gigantic table to plan out, okay, if you want to have these things happen, and then these are the prerequisites, and then you won't have the prerequisite. What is the prerequisite of the prerequisite, right? So this was my initial idea, what Anaplan can do, because there's a multi-dimensional, hyper-dimensional cube that you can build to do the planning, and I knew this was the right model, and just based on what I understand. Then we went on to find out any success stories, and at the time the HP, now the HPI, they implemented the sales territory model successfully, and then that gave me a tremendous confidence that okay, if HP can do that, VMware should be able to do that, and that's exactly what I did. Then on top of that - because I had some experience in sales consulting, and I have data experience, I think that these two things worked, because on the sales consulting side, I know what's important for sales leaders, on a data side I know how to change the cube - and I know how to swap the microphone - and use the different voice, talk to different leaders, and that actually worked. That was exactly the roadshow - Guillaume, you were part of it. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:10:06.1: 

Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:10:06.2: 

What we did after the success in America, we did a roadshow and we flew out to London and had a meeting on Monday and Tuesday. Immediately, and after the meeting we went to the airport and then flew to Singapore, so had the meeting on the Thursday and Friday and then we'd fly back. So you're talking about around the world in seven days, and we got both APAC and AMEA and plus America, all worldwide should interjoin and should be able to use the territory model. Because Guillaume is a great support for Anaplan, and any time with a technical issue, he can do that, and for me, I can translate some of the sales leaders' needs into the cube. I think it was very successful. To take a partnership between the software vendor and also someone a little bit geeky and also can talk in the business language, and I think until the end it was very successful. In Zoom it's pretty much the same thing, but I think it will be at one level higher, I hope. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:11:16.7: 

Yes. So we're going to talk about that, but the continuation between what we started at that time and what you're doing at Zoom, and where Anaplan is going now with the applications, a lot of the applications that we have today, the T&Q application, mostly the T&Q application, a lot of what is in the application has been built with ideas with business recommendation on how it works in real life by Ian when he was at VMware. That puts such confidence when we sell those applications, when we provide those applications to our customers, because we know it is based on real life problems that we have solved at those companies that you mentioned. So the continuity is a great asset we have, and the partnership that we were lucky to have with you is invaluable, and to me this is why I - I mean I, and we all at Anaplan believe so much in the applications story, it's because they are the results of strong partnerships with customers with large scale deployment. So now that you are at Zoom - let's talk about Zoom. Let's not talk about the past anymore, otherwise everybody will fall asleep. So let's talk about Zoom. So you're at Zoom. Everybody loves Zoom. I love Zoom. So what do you do with Anaplan at Zoom, and what is the business impact that Anaplan and you are making at Zoom that makes your boss and your boss's boss love you so much? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:13:04.6: 

So I actually want to add this question with the first part of the spiel about app, right. Why we want to sell app, because faster deployment, higher value, and then also the biggest part, you open the eyes of the customers, and this is exactly what I'm doing. When I'm talking about an app - and I'm actually asking Anaplan to do a demo to do a couple of apps to my leaders. Why do I want to do that? Because they have not seen what Anaplan can do. They know in Excel how they can do it, and probably in Tableau, and how beautiful it is, but they have not seen, if you changed a number, how the different things can change. This is what Anaplan - is good about it. Just like Henry Ford used to say - if you asked someone before the automobile age, 'What do you want for your horse and carriage?', people will say. 'A bigger horse,' or. 'A faster horse,' right? 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:14:12.4: 

Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:14:13.0: 

But once you have the app and then the app with all the best practice for the industry, immediately you open the eyes of, oh this is possible, then they started thinking. So the pitch itself is very helpful. Pitching app itself is very helpful. Then the second part is you shorten the implementation process, and this is what I'm doing right now. I want to make sure that we use the best practice. So for example, in a territory, use the territory score and then be able to optimize the territory for revenue instead of trying to level the playing field, every territory will have the same account potential. You try to equalilse the - how to say this? You equalize the workload and then you try to maximize the account potential for the entire sales organization. This is the key, so we use optimizers. Now, this is the first step. Then the second one is that, okay, you want to sell the idea to the sales leaders, who resist the change for some degree, especially for the larger organizations. What do you do? You give them the numbers. Okay, with the old way of doing it and this is your payoff. With the new way of doing it, and you can increase that.  

 

Ian Zhao 0:15:39.7: 

And they usually say, 'Oh, I have seen that, and McKinsey did that to me last time, and they say they increased it by 20 per cent. I said, 'No, it's not.' Right. Then I give you step by step, 'Okay, this is what you see, and this rep. I gave them some specific examples, and I can name the sales rep's name and see what he did, because I did experiment, and that was very powerful. If you want to talk to the leaders, and of course you want to talk to the high level, right, but then if you talk to the one level below them, give them the most specific example; they will appreciate that. If you can talk to both levels, you will be able to sell our product. That's what I'm doing. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:16:28.1: 

That's awesome. Did you measure the benefits? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:16:33.1: 

Did I what? 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:16:33.9: 

Measure... 

 

Ian Zhao 0:16:36.2: 

The success? Okay. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:16:36.9: 

Yes. Measure the success. I know this is a loaded question, because if you say you have a great benefit, I'm going to raise the price. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:16:45.9: 

So my first app is sales - is the GTM planning. So we did measure that we were able to reduce the total territory balancing time from five days to two days, and then altogether is that basically you can move from the two to three weeks to the overall territory planning, and then they move down to within a week. So this is what - [?how are we with the arithmetic? 0:17:18.3] - I think it's about 60 or 70 per cent of time saving. But you are talking about the salary of the offshore sales planning analyst, and the saving is very small.  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:17:35.6: 

Yes, but the top line. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:17:34.3: 

Right now we can measure - yes, go ahead. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:17:37.3: 

The top line, right. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:17:39.3: 

Yes! 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:17:40.9: 

Why does that make such a difference for Zoom to be that quick, that agile? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:17:55.3: 

Yes, because after territory is done, right, then you're talking about a quota, and you're talking about - you have the compensation plan rollout. If the territory - I mean those are the two biggest time consumers. One is the territory planning, and then the other one is the capacity planning before. I mean we're talking about a roster check, and each take like two to three weeks, and then so altogether like 75 per cent of the total planning time. If you can shorten that, what happens is that all the sales reps, once they have finished Q4 they hit the beach for a week or two. When they come back they have their territory, they have a compensation plan waiting for them. They can start to sell right away. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:18:51.6: 

That is worth millions, right? 

 

[Round of applause] 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:00.0: 

That is worth millions. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:01.3: 

Yes.  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:02.8: 

Easy! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:03.1: 

So is Anaplan willing to sell us... 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:07.4: 

Yes! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:07.7: 

...the cheaper software... 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:09.3: 

[Laughs] 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:09.3: 

...in order to get a cut of those millions? I hope you will?  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:13.6: 

I'm not sure if the mic is working? Is it? Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:16.0: 

[Laughs] 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:17.9: 

Anaplan is your partner. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:19.6: 

Okay. Thank you. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:21.8: 

Anaplan is here to make your company successful, and so you, yourself, successful. I know how much you have knowledge into these Go-To-Market business processes, and I know how much you can take those applications that are ready for you. I'm talking about the account segmentation and scoring, the Go-To-Market capacity planning, the Territory and Quota, that beautiful sales forecasting that [?Kay] was just presenting. You missed that one. So I need to show you that one.  

 

Ian Zhao 0:19:56.6: 

Yes. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:19:59.0: 

These are the applications that I'm pretty sure, and I know you will implement at Zoom, because it is in the continuity of what you have started for the last ten years, and the benefit will be way beyond what you're experiencing today once you have all of these. These apps are all on ADO, our integration platform, new. They are all on Polaris, so your team will embrace Polaris, so there are no more sparsity problems and difficulties in the modelling. It's streamlined. AI is going to be on top of those applications. We're going to talk about AI soon. So again, this is a continuity, and the ROI, which we will calculate together will be phenomenal, I'm sure. And yes, Anaplan's going to be your partner, don't worry about the price. I'm not the AE anyway, so we'll see where we land. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:21:03.6: 

Oh, great. Thank you. I think Guillaume, you are rehearsing our demo in front of my CTO five days after, right? I got it. I got it. I got it. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:21:13.8: 

Okay! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:21:14.6: 

This is your sales pitch, which is fine! But what you nailed in terms of overall roadmap, right, and what I see most of the time when we have Anaplan, you only have - you started with one app, right? It could be FP&A, it could be HR or, in our case, is the GTM. What I see, the GTM, it can be just like very expansive in that - because the sales department are usually the number one department in terms of budget and headcount, right? 

 

Guilaume Arnaud 0:21:51.9: 

Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:21:52.6: 

You have to budget, and you have to headcount, and so that it's a natural expansion to financial planning, and to the workforce planning. This is exactly what we want to do right now. Once we are done with the sales planning - what do you call it? SPM right? SPM planning, and then the next step, we're thinking about, okay, if we want to move to the AI sales and what kind of a sales rep we want to hire for the different skillset, and then that is a natural segue into operational workforce planning, right. And with the workforce planning, then you're talking about the connecting to Workday. That will require more real-time data connection. That's ADO - by the way, can you make sure that your ADO for Workday is working, because right now it's not! Anyway! 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:22:45.3: 

Right now, it's not! Okay! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:22:47.2: 

It's not released yet, but I hope that... 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:22:51.2: 

Ah. So it's not released, and you say it's not working. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:22:51.5: 

...once that's released then we'll jump onboard, okay? 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:22:54.8: 

Yes! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:22:56.3: 

That's the second step, right. Then with that workforce planning - then immediately you can segue and put GTM planning, IFP, and workforce planning all together. That's the iron triangle you need in any kind of industry, any kind of company. A style of a company like OpenAI for example. Once you have the app, you will be able to have fast deployment, and this will fuel and at least guarantee the growth of the company. If it's a large organization, it will help you transition the entire organization and the operations from the current model to the new model much faster. You're talking about selling not just the planning software; you're selling organizational agility. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:23:56.9: 

Organizational agility. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:23:56.6: 

I'm helping you with that. Yes. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:23:58.5: 

Organizational agility. [?Scott 0:24:00.0], you've got that one? I think that's - that's a good one. So let's talk about this connected planning. So those of you who have been following Anaplan for years, we've been talking about connected planning for years, right, even the first day in 2013, I think we talked about connected planning. What is the reality today? Connecting your apps, your Go-To-Market, your T&Q app, to the finance app. What challenge do you see and how would you like Anaplan to partner with you to make it smoother? And I have a big roadmap about that, but I want you to talk about it before. How do you see this connected planning happening between those two? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:24:51.9: 

Yes. I see that currently, in most of our organizations, and to some degree in Zoom, that connected planning is disconnected. It's not because people want to disconnect it; it's just because data is siloed, and everyone is looking at their own process, right, and you need someone to connect the dots. Naturally, I think the COE lead for the enterprise planning or the connect planning is the catalyst for doing that. First of all, you have the organization in IT to do the development, and then you link to the different organization with the COE lead, and so that they can be the natural fabric in between the different organizations to start building the app. It's first, look at maybe connected data, and then with AI, then you start building the app, and then you have the use cases. In our case, when we start connecting the salesforce planning with HR planning, is that, okay, I want to change the organization. For example the Americas sales is based on the size of the account of enterprise, mid-market, right, and now we want to branch out a different vertical, right, and then for a [unknown word 0:26:27.9] or for healthcare, and if that's the case then you need data, and you also need HR to start hiring for the reps who know how to sell to the healthcare market.  

 

Ian Zhao 0:26:38.9: 

This is a very different market. Someone told me, okay, you go to the hospital, and you take a look at if they have the Epic system or not, and if they have the Epic system usually they can support a very large enterprise, but if this is just like a small hospital, they have a homegrown patient care editor system and patient information system, if that's the case then you don't sell certain things. At VMware I know that we tap on the Epic system. So this is the skillset, right, and then now you put that into the HR brand. It's not just like recruiting. It's also thinking about where you want to put the ad and where you want to write the job description. This is the first small case for connecting HR planning, workforce planning with sales planning with the seller. Then you try to branch out to the others. So I will say that use the COE as the natural fabric to come up with the idea, and then with the plan, with the app to connect the different department, and grow from there. But IT should always do the development at the centralized hub for that. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:28:11.2: 

That's right. So if we have centralized data models across all the apps with data flows that would flow from one application to the next, that would really help you as a COE to own that part and every - domain leads, sales, HR, as you say, also finance, to get the plan update from each other's. That's where the value is. Is that what you're saying? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:28:38.2: 

Yes, and also, I want to add - one thing is AI, and although I think AI - everyone's thinking about GenAI, right - but when you do the planning, naturally the AI can spot some of the bottlenecks. For example, when I see we are just planning for the headcount and we realize that okay we want to grow by 40 per cent year over year, and then I just don't have the headcount and the budget to grow the headcount above 40 per cent. What do we do? Right. Then you first take a look at, okay, here are the territories that naturally have that kind of potential to grow at 20 per cent higher. Oh, let's just put more people there, right. So that is the first step. Then you still have the gap, and then if the AI system can let you know, hey, I think this is the conversation you need to have with HR to first hire those recruiters, and then the recruiter can start hiring loads of sales reps. I think that prompt will be very helpful. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:29:45.6: 

Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:29:46.0: 

Anaplan can do that. Anaplan is like at the forefront, and if the software can embed that, brilliant. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:29:55.1: 

Awesome. I guess you saw the AI presentation we had this morning at the keynote - I don't know if you were here - but that's where we're going... 

 

Ian Zhao 0:30:04.4: 

Wonderful. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:30:04.8: 

...with agents that are like role-based agent, as we call them. In every app you have agents, and yes, when we're going to connect those apps together through what we're going to name Planning Flows, the agent's going to do the work of connecting those plans together. And either it's like an automation of some data that moves from here to here with a data transformation, which to your point, your COE will be in charge of, or it's simply a notification, right, that says hey, there is a sales target which requires a lot of hiring. HR, here's the hiring that the Go-To-Market team needs. What can you do with it? What can you recommend? Then they have those notifications, and they can scenario plan, and then send back their recommendation. So this is the very healthy AI driven planning flows that Anaplan's going to be going forward with. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:31:05.9: 

Yes. Exactly. I think this is exactly your CEO, [?Charlie], you're talking about in the CMVC, right? 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:31:12.0: 

Absolutely. Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:31:12.3: 

And Anaplan - well, the AI is not about a GenAI, but also about a predictive AI and a deterministic AI - and this is the word - your chief customer officer told me about it. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:31:25.4: 

Yes. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:31:25.6: 

And with Anaplan's data at the backend with the AI engine, right - and you should be able to figure out, okay, deterministally, what is the best way of doing something, right? Scenario plan is the first step. You figure out the first scenario. Then you base it on someone's preference. You figure out which scenario is good, which scenario is not so good. That's fine. The next step I think you're talking about for any kind of industry should be a combination of AlphaGo in a SpaceX. So hear me out. That analogy is that SpaceX is all about trial and error, execution, and they upgrade at - like very quickly evolve their product, right, at lightning speed. AlphaGo is about - it's all in the brain, to find out the kind of solution - the human brain may not even know it existed. And I'm not sure - anyone just play Go here? That's one of the epic games between AlphaGo and the famous, the topnotch South Korean leader, right. It's just kind of move 37. It's the move that put's the piece right on the right side of the board, and nobody understood what was going on. People thought that this was just basically a wasted move. It's only after 50 or maybe 70 moves later that they realize, oh, that is a significant move that basically sealed that game's success. You want to do that. You have the Anaplan, you have the data. Find that move 37 early, and let your CEO know that you need to do that. Then ask the COO to transfer your organization with the connected planning and the HR sales and finance to be the SpaceX to move forward to get to the game earlier. I think that's the inspiration I hope that Anaplan can help everyone here to achieve. Can you do that?  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:34:14.2: 

Well of course. Of course we're going to do that. But I think this is - back to the connected planning and the AI, I think this is where Anaplan's going. It's going to be a journey, right? Let's take it step-by-step. AI's going very fast, so we leverage those tools very quickly as well. But yes, to your point, if we imagine a system - let's look at Zoom first. Let's imagine a system where you have all the sales apps connected to each other's, the capacity app connected to the workforce app, the few finance apps also connected, and a bunch of agents in each of those apps connected to each other, then we can do - I mean this is pretty much what you described, where agents can be aware of what's going on in every model, and from here either make decisions or prompts the user to make a decision, or to provide an answer. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:35:14.1: 

Yes. 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:35:13.3: 

And that's where Anaplan is going. I mean I think in two years from now the UX of our apps is going to be completely different from what they are today. There might be no more menu and buttons and go here and click there, and put the filter here and sync your grid. That might change, right? It's going to be all driven by prompts and alerts, and awareness of the agents that going to tell you as a user, hey, did you check that forecast of the date, and that drop into these number of the raw materials or the oil price or whatever. Do you want to know what the impact of that's going to be across the board? Oh yes, I would like to know that. Okay, so impact on finance, impact on all the different aspects of the company. So help us put that together at Zoom! 

 

Ian Zhao 0:36:07.9: 

Will do. Yes, I think that this is almost like a five o'clock, and we dream high, right, and when you're talking about execution, there are a couple of steps. Number one, we want to make sure that we have the full stack of SPM fired up and running. That will happen towards the end of this year, and then we need to think about how we should use predictive AI to find out where are the big challenges, and usually the big challenges are opportunities in connecting to the other apps, and also to fine tune our model. Going forward, I see that agentic AI can build models with the human supervision, right, and to getting more of the honeycombs and Anaplan honeycombs to the area that we didn't even know that we needed to pay attention to. This will be very helpful. Then this will help us to do another round of the overall organization change and become more agile. Zoom has the culture, always a can-do culture, and we want to deliver happiness. I think that will make me very happy.  

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:37:44.0: 

I think that's a fantastic conclusion. I don't know how we're doing on time. I lost track of time as usual. 

 

Unknown speaker 0:37:50.2: 

[Inaudible 0:37:51.7] 

 

Guillaume Arnaud 0:37:51.8: 

Yes. Any questions for Ian? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:38:10.8: 

Before, I will have to say that my hearing is not very good. That's one of the issues. Maybe that's why I talk too much! So when you speak, please speak a little bit louder. 

 

Audience 0:38:21.2: 

I will speak loudly. So it sounds like for your new use cases that you're implementing, you are using Anaplan's pre-built apps and you're deploying those. Have you done any migrations from existing classic applications that you had into a pre-built app, and if you did, did you face challenges? What was that experience like? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:38:44.8: 

So I think the question is whether I used that homegrown system or used the pre-built app in going forward? Correct? 

 

Audience 0:38:56.6: 

Have you migrated any existing classic apps into a pre-built app? So not like looking for - like if you go and use ICM in the future, you might use a net new pre-built app, right? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:39:08.7: 

Right. 

 

Audience 0:39:08.6: 

But is there anything classic that you have replaced with Anaplan's pre-built app? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:39:15.0: 

Not with Zoom, because it's my first-year anniversary! Previously we did, and the - I will say that it's relatively straight forward in terms of data connection, and then this is the part I have to say, that Anaplan's customer success team is just wonderful. Any time that you ask for some help, they can always put - [unclear word 0:39:48.9] resource and help you achieve that. We did a migration, and at first, we did not figure out if that's one of the issues, and we caught them within 24 hours, and we were able to get that issue resolved. In terms of the overall - the migration experience, it's pretty good. In terms of the overall app performance, what I see is that I never want to do a lift and shift, it's always - I feel that. I mean underlying data, if you're doing lift to shift, that's fine, but for the app, right, a better way to do it is that you first build out the things you want to build out in the new model, and then you pull over the data and run it, and in parallel with the system. I'm not sure if that answers your question or not. 

 

Audience 0:40:46.0: 

Yes, it does. Thank you. 

 

 

Audience 0:41:05.6: 

One of the delivery advisers here with Anaplan. You mentioned that you want to get that SPM stack up and running by the end of the year in Zoom. Recognizing that we have four apps here today, T&Q, capacity, [?segmentation 0:41:17.8], sales forecasting. Which one would you like to start first? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:41:26.5: 

Which one can you sell us first? No! Okay. So I think that we already have T&Q. Then I think after T&Q is more like workforce planning, and then after workforce planning is sales forecasting. It's not because I don't want to have the sales forecasting. I mean if I don't have the contract [?with clarity 0:41:54.6] I probably would do that first, but based on the cycle and probably the second one is the operational workforce planning, and then we'll do the sales forecasting, and what's the other two? 

 

Audience 0:42:11.0: 

We have capacity, so that aligns with the operational workforce planning. We have [unclear words 0:42:15.6]. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:42:16.5: 

Okay. Account segmentation, we actually build ourself already, and because relatively it's simple for us, I mean because Zoom is still a small company, but I see this probably down the road. So we picked three out of five. Capacity actually is more to it. What I see is that currently we use the capacity we think about how many hours do you have? Right. And you work 40 hours, and all the sale reps say I work 50 hours, and plus like a two-round of golf! Anyway! This is fine. You can do that, right, but any kind of human capacity is more along - I mean it is more than the time dimension. It's all about efficiency. So for that part, if you add to it, it's just like this model can be very interesting. So I only know we have just started this model yet, and I'm happy to know what you have. Oh, by the way, I did see that you guys have that drag and drop capability for organization change, and this is a game changer, and I told you yesterday that there are three things I got from this round of the conversation, the Anaplan Connect. Now, one of them is a drag and drop organization change. Number two is the geographic - geo map of the territory, and number three is the enhanced optimizer for the territory. I think these are the eye-openers. I really wanted my colleagues to see it, and then I want my CTO to be able to see it, because my colleagues, they came from a background from [?C-Suite 0:44:14.4] and Excel file, right, and once we see that they know, oh okay, there's a better way to do it, and again... 

 

Unknown speaker 0:44:30.5:  

What a great closing note, and a summary of Ian's takeaways from the last day at the conference. I want to thank you both so much for doing this fireside chat. I learned so much. Ian, are you going to be able to stick around for our reception afterwards? 

 

Ian Zhao 0:44:44.8: 

Yes. 

 

Unknown Speaker 0:44:44.1: 

Okay, great. 

 

Ian Zhao 0:44:45.5: 

I'll be here. 

 

Unknown Speaker 0:44:45.7: 

Great. Awesome. So let's just move the Q&A into the reception and enjoy a couple of cocktails. Thank you so much everybody.