Julie Giannini: Scaling Customer Success and Professional Services at Egnyte

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Um, my father is a civil engineer and he is retired now, but he spent his entire career in the federal government building bridges, dams, mainly around water resources in California. So I have a lot of fond memories of visiting him in his office and seeing the drawings and drafting tables and just have a lot of personal interest around construction from that. And as well, I also really enjoy home remodels.

So I realize it's not quite the same as building a bridge, but I'm empathetic to things like rework and cost overruns. And so I'm passionate about this space in general. I'll tell you a little bit about my work background. I started my career at Arthur Anderson and accounting, which is a bit unique, and I think it gives me a different perspective in my role as a chief customer officer in terms of kind of top and bottom line for our business and our customers.

And after a few years there , one of our large clients, VHP Peloton, which is a global steel mining and petroleum company tapped me to join. And I started out in accounting and I moved over to sales and marketing, which I loved.

And , um , it was 1998 and my accounting boss tapped me and said, we're a little bit worried about December 31st, 1999, or worried that our systems are going to go down and we've decided to implement an SAP financial software system and would love for you to join and join up with the Pricewaterhouse team and get this implemented. And I thought that's an interesting problem to solve. So spend about a year doing that.

And after that point, Oracle tapped me to kind of bring that knowledge over and I've been in tech ever since that was about 20 years ago. That's so, so talk a little bit about, you know, ignite and, and, you know, you're solving kind of myriad business problems. So if you can share a little bit about what ignite does and, and , um, and your role there. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you a little bit about how I landed at ignite.

So the company I was at before ignite is called Imperva, it's a data governance and security company, and I was running go to market and making sure customers were getting value out of our solution.

And it was during that time that I started speaking with the CEO of ignite Veneet Jane, and the more I spoke with Benito and met others on his team, I realized the business problems that they were solving in various verticals like construction, life sciences, financial services were really compelling. I've always had this interest around that intersection between technology and how it solves business problems for customers.

So I realized there was an interesting opportunity to come join and help in ignites journey. And so as chief customer officer, what is your day to day look like? So what is your, your primary focus? I mean, besides customers? Sure. I mean, I would say when I think about kind of holistically my role it's , it's broken out between the amount of time and maybe it's, you know, 30% on customers, maybe 30% on my team.

Um, you know, some portion maybe the rest spent on just holistically the business and growing ignite. So it's very multifaceted in terms of , um, solving problems, but with a true focus on making sure that our customers are getting value out of what they purchase and being successful with that. And my role is specifically encompasses , uh , professional services, customer success, training renewals, and retention. And so how, how big is your team? About a hundred.

Wow. Yeah, we have about 700 setting night and we're growing and we're hiring, so please check us out. That's great. This is , yeah, this is probably, we should put a link down in , uh , down below at art and our YouTube channel. So, so let's talk a little bit about, you know, you've spent a lot of time in technology. You spent a lot of time looking at, you know , how enterprises solve, solve problems and you know, what are some of the trends you've seen?

You know, I think we can, we can all agree that the , the kind of cycle of, you know , technology innovation has gotten much, much smaller and as much faster. And so what are some of the trends that you're seeing moving forward or even things that are just exciting you and, you know, in business? Absolutely.

I would say , um, there's a few things that come to mind governance being a huge one, you know, a little bit from my background, but very timely as well with, you know, as we saw in the news just last week, the colonial pipeline, that ransomware attack, it's something that's affecting all companies. And so many of our customers, and especially in the construction arena, you know, it's a $12 trillion industry.

And while the margins may be slimmed , the revenues are huge at these companies and they're doing massive projects and so bad actors are targeting these companies. And it's something that , uh, you know, that we're really passionate about and building into our product at ignite. And I think it's very timely across, across all industries.

Also seeing a really interesting trend with VR in terms of the, that acceleration of how VR is, is making so many things easier, whether it's , um , allowing general contractors and folks to envision what their, what their build outs are gonna look like. I think that must help a lot of the rework that happened in the past and just give folks an amazing vision into the future. And then I would say the final one that I think about is artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It's something that is relevant again to so many industries and so many technologies. It's something that we're also building at ignite to some of our offerings like smart cash , which is something that's really been adopted by the construction industry, as you know, talking about artificial intelligence, you know, how are you kind of leveraging AI even, even in your own product line? Yeah, absolutely.

So as I briefly touched on smart cash is an interesting solution that we have out in the market. It's resonating with a lot of our construction customers and as the name implies, it's, it's got the smart component to it. So it basically leverages AI and machine learning to essentially anticipate what the users want to share and essentially upload.

And so when you think about in many industries, especially construction, bandwidth is limited and it's difficult and challenging to upload these large files, you know, up and down the pipe. And so essentially the smart cash with AI overlay allows us to say, well, let's just upload the changes so that we can get that data up there without taking all that bandwidth. And our customers are telling us, they're seeing savings on the bandwidth side of 70 to 80%, which is pretty compelling.

Oh, that's tremendous. And , and , and then there's some other practical use cases or smart cash even outside of the construction industry, because you serve a number of different industries. We absolutely do. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're making a big push into life sciences. Um, that area is growing by leaps and bounds financial services. There's a really great number of use cases with media and entertainment and so forth.

Um, uh , construction is actually our biggest customer base and our biggest revenue generator. And we have about 3000 customers there. So yeah, that's smart, but yeah, exactly. I mean, smart cash can be used at job sites, but it can be used many places anywhere else . Yeah. Yeah.

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near the Twain shall meet. Although I guess as in general, the industry is changing, but where do you see some of the, maybe some of the easier ways that companies can kind of bring in technology , um, especially to maybe a workforce that might be a little more reticent to, to be accepting of new technologies and new workflows? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really just a matter of , of being open-minded and , and giving it a try. Right?

I think every business, every company is thinking about margins and how they maximize revenue, how they spend less, how they have less rework , um, less cost over runs. And I've just got to think that while it's tempting to kind of do business as maybe a company has, when you realize how these technologies can come in and really bring that time to value and shorten that and, and really have operational efficiencies, I think it's super compelling.

So , um, that's where it , it's interesting because ignite our sweet spot is really kind of in that commercial and even SMB space. So , um, while we have massive customers , um, you know, spending hundreds of thousands and more with S a year, we even have customers spending few thousand years .

So just from that perspective, if I were a construction company or real estate company, that was maybe reticent, as you said, I would, I would at least be open-minded to giving it a try to see, you know, is , is there a great ROI? I mean, in theory, that's why tech companies exist.

So I think you just got to give it a go and I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that a lot, you know, a lot of companies look at, you know, kind of ERP or, or, you know, commercial software and SAS products and things. Well , that's just kind of out of the realm of possibility for us, but it sounds like you can serve, you know , smaller companies and that they will see tremendous ROI. And so how do you reach those smaller companies? Right.

I mean, the big ones, they're all out there, we all know who they are, but how are you reaching the smaller companies? Where are they finding you? Yeah , it's a combination. I mean, I think what we've benefited from it ignite are all the great marketing offerings that are out there, whether it's outreach or , um, various ways that we can do lead gen , uh , that's that's maybe on the cutting edge.

And then of course, there's, you know, whether it's event like, like this trade shows, which are now virtual, right customer events , um, a lot of prospecting that we do, it helps us, you know, it's both outbound and inbound, so it's very much both sides. Some of it's casino , salespeople, prospecting, word of mouth, I would say that's a lot of it.

And a final interesting way we've found new business is as people at certain customers move within the industry, they then say, Hey, we want to bring ignite in. So that's one. Wow . That's great. That's great. I think that's a Testament to your tier services and, and certainly to how you treat your customers. Thank you. Yeah, we hope so.

So let's go back to, I have to go back to virtual reality because that's where the things that I personally focus on and, you know, do you have any experience either with some of your customers who are leveraging VR or are there , um, you know, is there, is there going to be a chance that some of the, some of the work that you do as well , some of your offerings mil , um, be integrated into either virtual or augmented reality solutions?

Cause I think we're seeing both kind of enter the AEC space. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think with the, with the progress that we've all seen in VR, something that ignite has kept top of mind, our integrations that we do with companies like Procore for Technicolor , Autodesk as well. And so that's a great way to bring that virtual reality piece and align it up with what customers are also doing with some of their other vendors.

And so we're making a big push with our partner ecosystem, especially around that. And then is that, does that sort of , um, lead into smart buildings and then into smart cities and kind of leveraging IOT data? I mean, I'm just trying to, you know, we've, we've a story of , uh , really how some of these technologies are going to combine for really how we do business and even how we live tomorrow.

Yeah. Well, I think what we're seeing where there's an interesting intersection for us is BR along with VDC, that virtual design piece.

And so as companies are using things like laser scans, drone videos , uh, through things like VR, it's, it's become this compelling issue where they've got this massive amount of data and huge files resulting from that that they want to upload and share, and then how they go about bringing that in and making sure they do that safely without any, you know, ransom ware attacks going on.

So there's a lot of intersections happening and , um, I think that's where the exciting part of the future is, would be our , and there are there some, some ways that companies can be thinking about mitigating some of these risks? I mean, you did bring up the pipeline. I mean, that is certainly pretty frightening. And a lot of dissension amongst those saying, you know, you , you know, you can't, you can't pay the ransom, but then what's, what's the alternative.

And so what are some of the ways that your customers are mitigating that risk and even just thinking about it, are they, are they concerned on a , on a day-to-day basis or does it seem like something that happens to other companies? It's definitely accelerating. I would say there are some companies coming to us after ransom attacks and saying, we want to work with you. We want to see where you can help.

Um , because we're working on some interesting evolutions of being able to sort of anticipate ransomware attacks and be able to really get their data back within a matter of hours, if not minutes. So it's something that we're, we're testing out.

Um, but when you think about that colonial pipeline, ransomware attack, you know, they had to pay 4.4 million in Bitcoin, not something a lot of companies want to do or very comfortable with not to mention it's a little bit of a mark on the company at times, and maybe even the CEO, it's just a huge amount of risk for these companies.

Um, and so when you figure that these companies and it , and it's pervasive, right, that you may have, you know, on average, I think the average ransom attack is around 5 million. You figure that if you're a company, the cost of protecting yourself, it's like an insurance policy, right?

Whether you spend a hundred thousand 500,000 on a solution that ensures your data is protected and can be recovered quickly is , is critical because you figure, especially in the construction industry where there's, you know , warranty data that you have to have at your fingertips risk of litigation, you need these, this access to your data for, for many years. And so it's a critical piece that absolutely our construction customers are asking for more.

I think the last I saw was that , um, I think it might be as high as like 30% of our construction customers are seeing some kind of a ransom ware issue. And so they're really thrilled that they can lean on us to get protection around that. So let's , let's switch to the more kind of positive side of things. And some of the ways that, that, you know, construction companies now are really building in efficiencies.

You talked about smart cash, but maybe some other examples , um, both with , uh, ignite or even just some technologies that you've been seeing out there that are, that are really helping the process we had. You mentioned Autodesk, we had , um, Amy Marks , who's the queen of prefab on, on, on as a guest.

Uh, and so that's, that's a , that's a kind of a regular topic is , is how , um, you know , much value pre-fabrication is bringing, but other , some other aspects of, of building efficiencies in that you're seeing.

Yes, as a matter of fact , um, there's, you know, when you think about for construction companies, these large job sites, and they have trailers, and maybe they bring in these huge laptops to, you know, first get internet access, but then to upload and download files, that's, it's kind of clunky and massive and expensive. And so something exciting that ignite has rolled out is the public cloud connector.

And this is pretty timely because as companies are moving away from their data centers and moving all their data up into the public clouds like Azure and AWS, the public cloud connector allows all this data to , to basically live up in the cloud and the , and the files can go up and be stored there. And then again, kind of like the smart cash Chino there, the changes can flow up and back pretty readily. And so it eliminates the need for those massive laptops to be shipped around.

And I think customers are seeing a lot of value from that. Now we were actually just talking about that earlier today around , um, just the, you know, all the, all the technologies that , that are coming that are reliant on strong wifi connections and connectivities, you know, which , um, construction sites is always a tremendous challenge. So I think that that's an interesting way to search , uh, to think about how we solve for those particular issues. Absolutely.

And accessing these large files. Right. So how do you do that? And so some of the benefits are, you know, we found ways to , um, again, instead of like , um , I'll give you a great case study. We have a customer that's working at DFW the airport in Dallas to re to retweak it and enhance it. And they used to in the past, you know, put a trailer there , print out all these binders and data like reams of data. And when you think about it, it ends up being pretty static.

By the time you print out these drawings, they're , they're old. Right. Um, and so with, you know, with some of the ignite technology were able to sort of replace that with this whole, you know, in the cloud aspect. And they found themselves saving $5 million in just all that savings of printing trailer time. And then all the cellular data to that gets saved where you're not having to, you know , again, be doing dial up and various costs. So there's a lot, a lot to be found in modern technology.

That's great. Well, I'm , I'm looking forward to the time we can actually then put on some air glasses and then visualize all the data that we're storing with you. I think that'd be the perfect, the perfect marriage. Exactly. Some apple glasses, exactly. Those , those are coming. Um, and so taking us into the future , um, I asked this of everyone.

So if you could project yourself into the future, you know , 15, 20 years, and you can bring with you any service or any product or just something that makes you personally happy or makes your life better, what would it be and what would it do?

Sure. Well, I have one top of mind currently, which I think is coming, but it can't come soon enough, which is just simply a faster way to charge my electric car because currently I plug it in and it just seems like it always takes a lot longer than it should.

So I think that one is probably in the works, but when I think about sort of out into the future 15 years, what I would love, and I got this idea , um, you know, recently Boston dynamics launched that robot, that Amazon is using the stack boxes. And I thought, how amazing would it be?

If I could get a Boston dynamics robot to come into my house, I could kind of store it in the closet when I'm not using it, but it could come out and clean fold, do laundry, like , and maybe even bring it out at parties. I just think it would make life a lot more efficient and fun. I mean, it could be like the next gen vacuum. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. I love that I might go off and work on that. It's like, it's like a , it's like a human Roomba. Exactly.

I might have to go patent it. I know ideas out there . I love that. I'm all by one. I'll buy one for sure. I want one that just makes really good coffee. That's all I need that would make my mornings. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today, Julie. Thank you so much for coming on. And uh, we look forward to speaking to you again soon. Amy , it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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