I'm Mark Reid Edwards, marketing leader at HFS. Welcome to this HFS video cast of a special fireside chat between HFS CEO and chief analyst Phil Furst and Publisys Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz. In addition to serving as CEO, Nigel is a consulting leader and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book titled Digital Business Transformation. Leading the discussion, as always, is Phil Furst. Phil founded HFS in 2010. Recently, the analyst observatory at the University of Edinburgh recognized HFS as a leading global analyst firm, ranking the company second in influence over enterprise buyers and second for engagement with enterprise buyers. So let me hand it over to Phil to get the discussion with Nigel underway. Phil, it's all yours.
Thanks. Thanks, Mark. And lovely to meet you, Nigel. Maybe we could start with you telling us a bit more about your background and how you ended up leading a major digital leader like Publisys Sapient.
Sure. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on. My journey from a career perspective started with entrepreneurship. I started a company because I really believed in the power of technology in the early days of the internet. And the foundation of the company was connecting technology to business to create value. And some of the work that we actually did ranged from connecting schools in sub-Saharan Africa to kind of the internet to building some of the early internet platforms. And some of that gave me, you know, the opportunity to do some pretty incredible things that fundamentally meant that I could see how technology was transforming people's lives. So for me, post running my own company, what really drew me to Sapient at the time was how the culture and people dimension of the work that a company did could go beyond just the impact it was having in terms of what it did. So why it did what it did and how it did what it did being, you know, being connected. So over that journey, having met our founders at Sapient, I've been in the company in a number of different roles from building and leading our business in the United States to then leading our business outside the United States. I was chief strategy officer for the company for a number of years and now as CEO of the entire business. And for me throughout that entire time, the idea that a group of people connected by a common purpose with shared values focused on the difference that business could benefit from by leveraging technology and digital in the broader sense was one of the greatest motivations for me. And this idea of digital business transformation really in the way that we articulated today has been at the core of what's driven the company.
What's your vision over the next few years and the role of digital on people's lives and business and how this is going to evolve with the changing work environments, the changing global business environments, supply chain ineffectiveness, all this sort of stuff. I mean, what do you think it's going to look like?
I was recently in Davos and I was in this conversation having as part of the digital leaders community, which I'm part of there, talking about the good and bad of technology. And I think that has existed for a while. But if you just think about the world we inhabit today, imagine COVID in a world that was less digital than the one we're in now. Just think about the ability to run organizations in a distributed fashion. We had almost 20,000 people needing to work remotely in a week's notice. It just physically wouldn't have been possible to do so many of the things we're doing now. Are there going to be more changes around and concerns around privacy, around how we're going to govern data access, around how we're actually going to ensure the democratization of technology so we don't create a new class divide of digital haves and digital have-nots? All of those things, of course, remain real concerns. But I feel like so much of the benefit that we as people are deriving today is from the shift of technology in the Industrial Revolution, essentially, in hindsight, being the root of so many of the problems we have, from climate change to sustainability to, frankly, rare earth mineral mining and all of the other challenges you've got there. You fast forward to today, and I think digital could potentially become the solution to so many of the biggest problems that we have encountered, from the reuse to recycling to thinking about broader ESG goals around sustainability within organizations. Because I feel like when we think about digital business transformation, an example, we launched this platform called eMissions, which is all about maintaining and managing sustainability through carbon emissions across the lifecycle of an organization, forcing choices at the lowest level. In the cases of many organizations, including a very large energy company, saved them hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in choices that would have affected negatively how they were performing on a sustainability index and made them make different choices. Those are all examples of things I think that are pretty powerful in the context of how things, I think, can evolve. Like everything, though, I think it comes down to the kind of choices we make as people and more broadly, the collaboration that is going to be required at a national level in order to facilitate some of these things actually really being beneficial to the majority of us as opposed to some people.
So the democratization will bring, it needs to start to bring collaboration together, not drive people further apart.
Exactly. Yeah. I met with Bill Clinton about four years ago, and he said, we thought social media was a good thing at first, and it's turned out to be, it's kind of hit a wall in terms of the value it's adding. So I think some of the things you're talking about with driving more collaboration, democratizing some of these conversations, what do you think needs to make the change? I mean, obviously, COVID changed a lot of how we work. We weren't even going near conference calls two years ago, and stuff is unthinkable. We did audio calls back then, right? You could get a German digger call, right? And all this stuff. And suddenly, that was a big leap for us in terms of, hey, I don't need to go to the office now. I can do all this stuff from the comfort of my home. And now that's changing the whole work environment. So do you think there needs to be a platform for the next leap? Is it going to be a global recession? Is it just a natural evolution of business? What do you think will be that big burning platform for change?
Well, I think the burning platform for change that we're already seeing today, right, is whether you think about the macroeconomic concerns, whether you think about changing priorities in people's lives around work-life balance and how they want to think about what's work and what's not, you're starting to definitely see it with pressures around sustainability and building businesses that are genuinely adding value to the planet in its entirety beyond just value to shareholders. I think you're starting to see it in pressures that we talked about from how to react in the context of climate change, which requires so much urgency, or recover from what was probably the biggest health crisis we've seen in our generation, maybe in a couple of generations in the context of the pandemic. All of these things, I think, have created realization that the opportunity to allow people to connect more immersively, to work in a more distributed fashion, to earn a living on a fairer basis rather than it being monopolized by those with access or physical proximity to certain places. All of these things are actually, I think, starting to drive a broader shift towards, I think, a better place. What is going to be extraordinarily critical, I think, as we do this is really trying to reimagine systems. When I talk about transformation and digital business transformation, it's reimagining things in the context of a world that is digital, as opposed to simply taking all of the inefficiencies and all of the challenges that we have in one situation and simply migrating them onto another platform. To some extent, we've got to evolve and push things a lot more because all the old jokes that you talked about on the old conference call systems of like, hey, who's on and who's off and blah, blah, blah. We've now got a new generation of those on, like, I'm still on mute and this person, like just today, like joining the Zoom. I mean, it was so complicated to join the Zoom from the physical environment. I switched back to my laptop. So these are, I think, all things I think will basically have already created the realization that what we have is not good enough. And I think businesses are seeing that, too. More and more, I talk to our clients and companies more broadly. Why do I need to go into a bank to open a bank account? Why do I need to have a piece of plastic to get money out of an ATM machine? Why do I need to engage with my government by writing a letter? Why do I need to identify myself and to take eight weeks for me to get an identity document? And how can all of these things start to become far more seamless, far easier to access? And I feel like that reimagination is forcing, I think, huge opportunity. And I use this acronym in the context of transformation, which I talk about in the book called SPEED, which is all about having a clear strategy. What's the S? What's the strategy for the value pools that you're trying to unlock if you're a government or if you're a government department? We're in the midst of today driving lots of transformations in the federal government space in the United States and state government spaces because they realize that government does not interact with its citizens in the way that people expect to be interacted with, right? From how you get a driving license to how you get a fishing permit or how you actually get a COVID certificate. All of these things are complex unnecessarily so. And the value, of course, is huge both for the citizen and for government. Then thinking about things in the context of being products, that's the P. all examples of things I think that have both impact on the business, whether it's helping them drive growth or take cost out of the business, but also in the context of their customers.
So we talk about people driving impacts in the workplace of the future. What do you think is going to happen in terms of work culture in the next couple of years and beyond and the impact people want to have in the workplace? And how's that going to change in your view? And what are you guys doing to maybe address that with your clients?
Fundamentally, just if I start with ourselves, we're a people company and our people are our greatest assets. And I think you understand this as CEO of People Business too, right? Because ultimately, our people are the ones that create the impact for our clients and ultimately their customers, right? So for us, our investment continues to be in making sure that the company that we create is an environment where starting, for starters, everybody can genuinely thrive, right? So thinking about programs and policies that not only allow you to create a more diverse and inclusive environment, but more importantly, create an environment where people can work happily and effectively in ways that allow them to see their careers grow, right? And so many of these things sound really simple, but they're not. One example basically is women in the workforce, right? For us, particularly in the tech sector, it's a huge challenge, retaining women following life events, whether it's marriage or raising a family, and thinking about how the work environment could facilitate that, both in terms of them staying and potentially then coming back. And we launched a program called Spring specifically in this context to focus on both equipping women who are out of the workforce to get back into the workforce, but more importantly, actually support women who are in the company to start to be able to operate in this way. Whether similarly, we're focused on our LGBTQI community, people with disabilities or differently abled people. Every one of these meant that we've had to quadruple our investments in learning and development, in technology-based training, in continually recognizing that people are going to have to be able to access bespoke training tools, bespoke support across the organization in order to find the right opportunities that connect what they want to do with what their skill sets allow them to have a better impact on, right? And all of these things are examples. We of course do tons of leadership development. We have a program called Fellowship and Transformational Leadership, which is almost like an MBA-level program over the course of years. And then really starting to think about flexibility in a very different way, right? So how do you actually enable people who work from home to not be disadvantaged in the physical separation that they have from people who actually work from a physical environment? And all of these things, I think, are evolving at such a rapid pace. It means that we definitely know that as much progress as we feel like we're making, we're barely scratching the surface in terms of how we need to navigate the trends as they're evolving. Because I feel like today people recognize there is a need for social interaction and collaboration and connection, but there's also need for distribution. And we think about the workday in the context of modes. So kind of heads-up work when you need to be kind of interacting with people, heads-down work when you can be doing work by yourself, and heads-together work, which perhaps requires more physical connection, if not digital connection, in order to facilitate things. And these are modes that are very hard over the lifecycle of the kind of work we do to start to allow people to flow in and out of in a seamless fashion without actually having the right sort of muscle memory of the organization to behave a certain way. And so we're doing a lot of work to embed this kind of thinking.
Awesome. And finally, what's your vision for publicist safety over the next few years and the role of digital on business and people's lives, Nigel?
Ultimately, our purpose is helping people thrive in the brave pursuit of next, right? And we think about people more broadly as our clients, their customers, their citizens, their patients, and our own people. And ultimately for us, over the next few years, I'd love to see us partner with our clients to help them transform themselves on their DBT journey in order to continue to stay leaders in the space they operate in. Because how boring would the world be if the only successful retailer was Amazon and that's where we all bought our stuff, right? Similarly, in the context of customers, the work we do to make their lives better through helping our clients transform. And these could be patients, these could be citizens. And then ultimately for our own people, by creating an environment and opportunity for them to thrive, right? And what we know for sure is that as the role of digital in our lives continues to grow, all of these dimensions that I talked about as a purpose-driven digital business transformation company, we're constantly thinking about how to stay relevant across these three different audiences that I talked about.
Nigel, it's been terrific getting some time with you. And for everybody who's on here, I recommend they get a copy of Nigel's book. It's Digital Business Transformation, How Established Companies Sustain Competitive Advantage from Now to the Next. So read a lot of it. We've read it. It's great. It's great hearing the whole experience of Publicist Sapient and how you're building out a very unique business. And we look forward to engaging you a lot more and hearing a lot more of these great stories of what you're doing with your clients.
Awesome. Thank you, Phil. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Well, thanks, Phil and Nigel. What a great forward-looking discussion. To learn more about HFS, head over to hfsresearch.com, where you can view most of our research for free. Plus, we have a growing library of video casts just like this that you can take with you wherever you go. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you on the next HFS video cast.