Pallab Deb: Ecosystem GTM at Scale Through Industry Networks

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner officer at work, span and I am excited to be here with palab. Deb. Palab is managing director of sis Si, si partners and the industry value networks for Google and so welcome Paul.

Pallab Deb  0:17  
Thank you, Chip. Glad to be here. I hope you're having a great evening. It's been a great event, huh? I that's what I hear, right? A lot of value, especially given what's going on in the marketplace. It's become front and center for partners to go to more go to market as a route to market by itself. So, yeah, I'm glad to hear you had a good time. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  0:35  
yeah. So it's so this is the Google we're in Mountain View. We're at the Bay View building, which is beautiful, amazing building here. And we just had the Google marketplace exchange event. Just, it's wrapping up, heading into grab some refreshments,

Pallab Deb  0:54  
yeah, but after a long, hard day, yes, indeed. But it's a, it's a phenomenal I wish your viewers had a chance to see this campus. It's just unbelievable.

Chip Rodgers  1:03  
Yeah, it is beautiful. So Paula, tell us a little bit about your role is really interesting at Google. And I know you've done, made a lot of progress over the last, even just the last year. And let's talk about the industry value networks. What? What does that mean? First of all, what are they? But then, what does that mean to Google? So I Google? So tell us, like, explain what the IVMS are.

Pallab Deb  1:25  
Yeah, sure. So if you think about it from a customer's viewpoint, right chip, when a customer a CIO, let's take that. Or somebody in the line of business thinks about technology, it's not for the sake of technology alone, they are looking for a solution to a problem. So if you think about that orientation first, you'll very quickly realize that a problem that a customer faces, typically, in a business sense, cannot typically be solved by just one product. Right? Google may show up or somebody else may show up, but we show up. Google shows up with a platform approach, saying, hey, there's great tech in this platform, great scale, great security, great performance, but somebody's got to build something on top of it to make it real for that customer, right? An ISV may show up saying that, hey, you know what? I do XYZ for a living. For example, I do digital commerce for a living, and we're the best in the breed true, but digital commerce needs to integrate into CDP needs to integrate into supply chain systems. That's how a problem gets solved. That's really the orientation that we've taken in the construct that, hey, look at Google. We are very clear. We are not going to be in SaaS applications player. We think our strengths are in the platform and the tech, not necessarily in the Applications layer. So therefore, given the fact that we are not going to be the applications player, and you have customers that are looking at applications to solve their problems, our approach is to think about being a catalyst and bring about partners who do things that are really, really well in their swim lane, but when you connect them together, build a network of them, they in the sum of their whole, the sum of their parts is greater than the whole in the sense that you string them together and they end up solving the solution that this customer is looking for. So as a catalyst, what we do is identify high value, repeatable solution areas that have potential out there. When we see that potential, we try to identify partners in our ecosystem that can solve parts of the problem. We bring in an SI that can string them together. So I'll remove the friction that's there between each one of them. Like build connectors, build a UI layer that offers workflows and analytics. And therefore, when you show up at a customer, like, I love this analogy, saying, We don't show up with a bag of Lego. Saying, Hey, we are Google. We've got everything in here. Now you've got to go and fix it. Means that show up with a Lego board, right? Saying, Hey, you're a Lego board for digital commerce. And guess what? There are these ISVs that are already stuck in there. So you can now build a topic, not worry about having to figure out which level goes where and how do you build the foundation? Honestly, that's the simple analogy, and the best way to describe what an industry value network,

Chip Rodgers  4:06  
well, you know, and I love that, because we talk about, you know, ecosystems and ecosystems coming together, and how I, you know, I have a podcast, and so many conversations are, look, we can't, we're not the only ones that solve the problem you need. You need to be able to bring, bring a whole solution to the customer. And that's exactly what the IBMs are.

Pallab Deb  4:29  
Yeah, absolutely. It's basically a solution oriented approach. I grew up in the SI world, and believe me, Chip when I showed up at a customer's location to understand what the requirements are, I never had any product in mind. It is okay. You are having a risk and compliance problem, and your data is spread all over the place, and you want to get sense and assess risks, let's say you never had a product in mind. And of course, the in the old days, then si would get to work saying, Okay, I'll bring in an army of people, and let's build it great money. Key, but not in today's world when you have a cloud as a great equalizer. So today the SIS go in there and say, okay, understand your risk and compliance problem. Let's look at what ISVs. Are there that can solve parts of these problems very complex now, given the amount of data at play, instead of the SI trying to build it from scratch, the solution orientation now has a productized element to it, right? But the solution orientation is key, as opposed to showing up with the product and say, hey, I can solve this little part of the problem. And somebody else comes in and the customers got to figure out how to stitch it all together. I think that's where IBM has become so attractive

Chip Rodgers  5:33  
well, and I love it the that, you know, it's, it's Sis, are very, very, have very, you know, deep knowledge in the industries and in specific use cases. And then they can pull and they have all the experts to be able to do that. So they

Pallab Deb  5:49  
have the end to end view that's also very important from them. When you come in with a product lens, you got your blinders on. You are a product of a partner that knows your swim lane with those blinders. But, you know, really deep, but you don't know what's outside of it, and that's where the SI it comes in, really

Chip Rodgers  6:05  
so, so you started in three industries, right? Healthcare, retail and financial services, that that's Yeah, and what's the so you've, you've done a lot in just what the last year,

Pallab Deb  6:20  
about eight months or so. So we've been doing this at a furious pace. The idea, and it is not, not just that we're doing this just for the sake of doing it, and neither do we want to create 1000s of these. But like I said, we want to look for those areas where there's value for everybody, there's an industry pain. And we need realize, since we started in August, we realized and quickly found 12 such areas of pain and partners in our ecosystem that could solve that pain. And so yes, in a short period of about eight months, I would say we have about 12 of these market ready today, and actually a few of these already becoming super instrumental in winning deals for us, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  7:01  
for you, and for the SI, and for the part all the partners, yeah, that's, that's tremendous. Exactly, exactly, yeah. So, so 12 and so 12. Those 12 are specific use cases within those three industries.

Pallab Deb  7:16  
Yes, yes. Like, for example, in healthcare, life sciences, we've got a network to solve the prior authorization. Use Case, very valuable use case, we've got a network that solves the patient experience for providers. Use Case, healthcare, life, retail. We've got retail, media networks, digital commerce networks, right? Those are obvious choices. Then, of course, core banking and enabling the value additions around core banking. So there's a whole bunch of

Chip Rodgers  7:41  
these, really. Yeah. And what's next then? Well, I

Pallab Deb  7:45  
would say that we want to do two things. Number one, for the ones that we've already built out, we want to make sure that we complete the loop by ensuring they have a strong go to market motion so everybody's participating in it, which is where you know what people like work span become very interesting, because when you start thinking about beyond the build phase, now you just want to develop pipeline, and the pipeline could come from any one of the constituents. So you got to have visibility across the partners that play in that network. You could do that by trading spreadsheets or Google Sheets. Or you don't want to do that. Do that right? You want to do that in a very compliant manner, in a very enterprise manner, scalable manner. And that's where I think work spend comes in, right? So that's one orientation. How do you build scale and make sure that all of that good work that's been done to build is now monetizing for everybody? That's objective number one. And the next piece is continue to find such more valuable areas right there are. There's a geographic element to it. I think we have been highly North America and UK. I centric in terms of our initial 12. I think there are unique problems to be solved in different parts of the world, and there's enough meat in them for everybody in local networks. So as to say

Chip Rodgers  8:57  
that's fantastic. Gosh. So much progress. So quickly. Congratulations, keeps us on our feet,

Pallab Deb  9:02  
keeps us excited. I have a great team out here, and Google is an amazing place, right? There's super collaboration all over the place. People jump in. I mean, you couldn't have done this if you had to do it only with a team of small team of two or three people. It's just that there's a tremendous multiplier effect from people coming in, and a desire from everybody to do a 10x right? Do something that produces a 10x impact. That's what we're trying to do here.

Chip Rodgers  9:26  
That's fantastic. Well, Paulo, thank you so much for taking a few minutes and sharing us. You know the what's happening with with Google industry, value networks, IV ends, and we'll keep watching, and we'll see and wish you best

Pallab Deb  9:41  
of luck with it. Thank you very much pleasure to be here, and nice to be talking with you. Yeah, likewise.

Chip Rodgers  9:46  
So thank you all for joining, and we'll see you. See you next time. Yeah, you.

‍