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Unknown Speaker 0:00
Thanks for joining us to talk about the sun core wind. Can you tell us how this all started.

Unknown Speaker 0:05
Yeah Hi Steve. Yeah, sure. So just a little background on me so I'm an account manager with Informatica I'm based in Calgary, Alberta been here six and a half years or so. And yeah, with regards to Suncor that actually started from one of their folks attending a webinar, back in the summer of 2017. So one of the things I've always believed in it's important to see inbound activity in your patch and that's one of the things we have as at our disposal in our organization people to help us to see that activity through, you know tools like Tableau so that actually led to that person introducing me to an architect that was more responsible for master data in 2018 that led to an early introduction like ours ourselves or pulling in our MDM specialist team to educate them a bit on Informatica and Informatica MDM. And really it was after that meeting when we looked at ourselves internally and said you know what, let's stand down on this one, they are not ready for us. We're not ready for them they're far too many points and steps away from being ready for an active sales cycle so we, you know, largely disengaged qualified that out at that point. Timeline wise about you know 910 months later they reached out to us again late 2018 and wanted to continue discussions, we didn't know in the background was they were in discussions with SAP to start migrating from ECC like a lot of these big SAP shops are too. As for HANA. We didn't know that then but that's what actually was going on and that's why they had reached out to us again to have some more discussions and learn more about what Informatica potentially could offer as they were talking with SAP on migrating Dysport. So, some more discussions took place again, you know, timelines and then we're now fall 2018 now moving forward into 2019. Some more meetings occurred and then it really got serious and spring may timeframe, 2019, at this point we're we've already been providing information we've been providing use cases on other joint SAP shops and more educational material. As we saw them getting more serious and we had a recent win here in Canada, a power company called saskpower, who's also an SAP shop and they were just ahead of Suncor so we use them as a reference and said you know what, wants to talk to one of our customers that had recently, you know selected Informatica for their s for Migration so we did that, we threw out a reference early very early in the sales cycle. So then, then it really got serious and they wanted me to meet with their director of architecture and really was that point where I pushed back and said you know what, you know you guys are in sa p shop. You have been for many years if it's, you know, a skew on sa P's price list, you're going to buy it from them. I was pushing back on them at that point and they truly were interested in doing more with us so during that meeting I said with. If you truly want to do a POV slash PLC with us. And we're going to ask for some money so asked for $100,000. us and they said okay. And we also asked for an exact sponsorship call with Suresh, men and our SVP of our Master Data Management Platform, with one of their execs, and they agreed to that as well and really Steve that's how that's how the ball started rolling with us eventually working to repeal V with them.

Unknown Speaker 3:17
Great. So you mentioned the the DS for Migration but in terms of the use case, can you give us a quick overview of the overall use case what products you know were involved and you know what what solutions they were seeking from you.

Unknown Speaker 3:29
Yeah, sure. Really what they were seeking back then was an alternative to MDG was really what was going on back then again we didn't necessarily know all those details but you know use case for them was, hey Informatica we need you to prove that you can do what we're doing with MDG inside SAP today. We know that you guys can, you know, master data can master data across the organization we need you to prove that as well but we really need you to prove that you can do what current state, which isn't common for us, if you will, in terms of doing something like that, especially with appeal PLC or POV in this case being so focused on on SAP data and primarily SAP data but that was really their use case, because they needed to prove it through the architecture team and up through the business team that you know we could do the same as and better than they're doing with SAP.

Unknown Speaker 4:21
That's great. It's going back to that initial push back I love that how you really qualified them to make sure they're serious because a lot of guys more or a lot of retro pursuing SAP accounts, don't maybe don't qualify as carefully and they realize only later that they get qualified out because of a political decision so I've been glad you push back. So in terms of the buyers in this case, what who were they can you just give us a quick sense of who they were and what were your messages to those buyers as key decision makers there.

Unknown Speaker 4:47
Sure, yeah you know what's interesting is you know Informatica sold to these architecture teams for years and years and years and this was no different. It was actually the architecture team pulling us in and the reason they were pulling us in is they wanted, better they felt that there was a better way. A better mousetrap out there, a better technology set than what SCP was offering so it was really that architecture, team that was was pulling us in the door really to help support the business and help support their migration as for HANA. Of course, as we were, you know, working with them. And during the POV who we also were engaged with was what they refer to as their master data team. So those current SAP MDG users. And one of the interesting things that we learned what Suncor was doing, which a lot of SAP shops do is they use MDG as a data entry tool. So they literally have a call center you can think of it as a floor. In one of their buildings where there is a section of people that take spreadsheet requests to enter data into MDG completely different than how we sell and position our Master Data Management Platform but we started working with, with these people from their master data team and who were part of the whole sales process and their current users of MDG. Of course we also had to work with one cell to eventually later in the sales cycle they're the GM of the whole export program their chief data officer and I'll talk about them a little bit more but one of the things we learned that's helpful for others is these users insights on Quora that we're used to using MDG. We're hungry, they wanted better they wanted to get out of their spreadsheet nightmare they wanted to move away from running a call center largely for you know requests coming from field sites to update master data that an email goes in and people maintain spreadsheets and all the formulas and calculations in these spreadsheets to enter this master data so there was really a push by them as well and when they were exposed to our technology and software, it was really eye opening for them though, you know, again we could support their whole digital transformation that was going on because this f4 program was part of a much much larger digital transformation just to be more efficient as an organization and, you know, improve a lot of their business processes and gain more value out of their data.

Unknown Speaker 7:04
Yeah. Well, that sounds painful, but I'm sure SAP didn't stand by idly and watch all this happen so how did you differentiate all the all the while you know against SAP throughout this process,

Unknown Speaker 7:17
yeah that's that's a, that's a darn good question. So, the sap shopsin's, as we've all come to learn or we came to learn is their relationships are deep and they're broad and they're wide, and you know Suncor is a Greenfield account for us was a Greenfield up until a couple of months ago. But we can't even come close to matching the level of relationships they have I mean it's very common, as in the case with Suncor that SAP is hosting a mat. Their HQ in Germany, numerous times during the sale cycle, the GM of this s four program that chief data officer, you know, we might be working with their admins to get their time and where are they well they're, they're over in Germany. Oh really. Okay, or they're down in Houston because they're presenting at the, the SAP, best practices and oil and gas event, or they're over in Norway working with SAP on some other programming initiative, or they're in some executive briefing with Sep so the depth and the coverage that they have is, is beyond anything we're even capable of doing. Plus SAP went so far as to take one of their very very senior people and park him outside the office of the chief data officer I mean SAP of course has their own office space and these big shops like Suncor I'm sure it's the same with Chevron shell BP Schlumberger etc but they absolutely do have their own office space it was, it was difficult so what we did was just back to the point as Yes How did we compete you know we we use information that's that you provide Steven thank you for that in our,

Unknown Speaker 8:44
in our competitive intelligence DAX and

Unknown Speaker 8:46
content that we have internally we truly do use that content. We use content that we have from other organizations as I mentioned SAS power we had content from other SAP shops that had selected Informatica so we're pushing that to Suncor we you know we took the offensive as well on these references I mentioned early we had them speaking with saskpower. One of the things we also learned was you know Suncor is having their own discussions with others in their industry. And thank you, you know, Tara Kraus as well because she and I came to learn that Suncor and Chevron were having their own discussions on Suncor its digital transformation and what Chevron was doing Chevron's relationships with Informatica. So we took the offense of and in that regard and also we use Deloitte as a reference because they had selected Informatica for their own s for deployment and Anthony bear and team have recently closed for it so we use for it as a reference ssab Swedish steel manufacturer we use them as a reference so we very very much took the offensive on pushing this information in and also proving it like the POV was, was a lot of work to do for our team and our resources that I'll speak to in a moment but we, we said we'll prove it, no issue for us of course sanchar said okay how many months, do you need and we said we'll, we'll be done in a month and after they pick themselves up from falling off the chair because they're not used to those fast timeframes. Because SAP can deliver in a period of time like that we you know we prove a POV with their data with their use cases integrating data to and from s four because we have an internal s for deployment we can use for that few of you as well. And we engage Suncor heavily in that POV with our guys that ran that like Gu Han sivaji and David gang and mark and Jamie Peterson were the three main leads and of course Anthony bears are MDM specialist at the time.

Unknown Speaker 10:31
Great, and did the PVC come into play too I think I heard you leverage the PVC.

Unknown Speaker 10:36
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that Yes we did. We got some time with suncourt to walk in and present a POV summary document, you know, here's what we did here is the benefits of Informatica here's how we proved out our use cases. Here's the value for your organization as part of your digital transformation. And we, we offer them, two things One was to come to Toronto because their MDM development team and executive or in Toronto or plan B was come down to our briefing center and meet with our executives and and learn more about Informatica and establish the relationship so they took us up on the offer. In November of 2019 to come down to our briefing center in their sea soaking down one of their folks from procurement came down which was a bit unusual there gm of f4 and also their chief data officer and one of the. There's many interesting quotes that came and that was a full day from our executives from Neil, Tracy onza Suresh many others who are executives that were wonderful. Bill. Bill Burns, and many others and I'm sure I'm missing that presented and participated that day but the chief data officer Angela Angela Butler said, and I'll get this wrong but she, she effectively said you know what Informatica this has been extremely helpful. I've now realized that you apply, much more to me than I than I knew before, so her as a CTO, not only looking at sa p but looking across the organization or the other system she came to the realization by coming down to our briefing center that I know we we apply much much more to her role and her. You know her agenda and her deliverables going forward than she had realized prior to coming down for the BBC.

Unknown Speaker 12:12
Great. You mentioned a lot of people internally helping out with the seals, what about partners, take delight was involved right.

Unknown Speaker 12:19
Yeah. Interestingly again as we came to learn some curves actually Deloitte largest customer in Canada so big, big Deloitte account what what sunkara was doing though was they were keeping us and Deloitte at arm's length from each other, they didn't want us partnered at the hip they didn't want us on four legged calls but we find ways to still partner in the background right so that's not necessarily visible so we would still have calls with Deloitte, and one of the things this Deloitte team that we work with. And we still work very closely with who were doing the implementation of Informatica at Suncor was just sharing of information sharing documentation, sharing use cases sharing business cases sharing POV documentation so they knew exactly what we're doing and. And we know what they were up to, in that account because they have much much more going on inside Suncor besides an Informatica deployment. So yeah, we were definitely partnered with Deloitte in that account and Microsoft was also in at Suncor. So, you know, we had open communication with Microsoft we were on separate tracks they're more So focusing on advanced analytics, but we also did share information from time to time with the folks at Microsoft, as well as well. Very good.

Unknown Speaker 13:33
So let's wrap this up so just for those listening, what would be your, your key takeaways key lessons learned that they could apply in their opportunities out there.

Unknown Speaker 13:42
One of the big ones was you know these Sep customers are used to writing big checks. We like big checks, you know, there used to that so you know numbers when we're putting large dollar amounts in front of them, as compared to some of the other shops we deal with it's, you know, these folks aren't blinking in that regard. One of the other things we learned I would say that will help benefit others was at one point when Suncor had reached out to me and said, Rob, we need to have some discussions and learn more about your MDM platform and data quality and integration and governance was they had spent four days is what they told us with sa p so they brought in their minds the best and brightest from SA p to come in and educate them on the S four platform and as part of that, educate them on the latest and greatest from MDG and the bomb j software that SAP still has for data quality and integration etc. And what Suncor had had told us was what they told SAP was you know what SAP like that stuff looks the same as it did seven years ago, you're really not investing in it. And that's one of the reasons they had reached out to us but you know when we talk internally that sa P is not investing in data management it's not core for them anymore It truly isn't and that's coming from Suncor that's not coming from me. So that was an eye opener for us what we should know we can go in a position of strength knowing. We're better we have more that applies to them and we have you know better technology stack that can support their business. One of the other things I would just say as well as these SAP shops, expect you to know SAP. They expect you to be able to speak the language they'll throw SCP architects at you, they'll throw people that talk about these and idocs and all sorts of SAP lingo and we do have that bench strength from our MDM specialist organization from organizations internally in Informatica where we can draw on those resources that can help us in these situations to speak that SAP language so we can be confident in that regard that we have the resources that we can pull into these sales cycles to back us up to speak the same language that these big SAP shops expect.

Unknown Speaker 15:50
Well that's great, I love this story it's a huge with phenomenal execution. But I just hope it encourages those out there who sometimes intimidated about approaching sa p shops I know that sa P is omnipresent, and that this is a great lesson about not being intimidated by SCP to qualify carefully, make sure you know these loyal SAP shops are serious about looking at Informatica, and just going in and being confident and speaking SAP, and just showing that we are invested in where, you know, we're a leader for a reason it's all all great stuff Rob thanks, thanks for sharing the Suncor story.

Unknown Speaker 16:25
Yeah. You betcha happy that we can spread this information and help each other in the organization and provide this input others.

Unknown Speaker 16:32
Great. Well thanks again, and good luck out there everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai