Kristi Flores on Customer-Centric Innovation

What’s in this episode?

Scott MacKenzie hosts an industrial talk podcast episode featuring Christie Flores, head of marketing and SVP of partner programs at Accruent. Christie discusses the importance of customer engagement and collaboration at the Accruent Insights 2024 conference in San Antonio, highlighting the event's significance for the company and its 500 attendees. She emphasizes the company's focus on innovation, user-friendly products, and cloud-first strategy. Christie also mentions the integration of AI and machine learning, supported by Ford of, to enhance business operations across various departments. The conversation underscores the value of community, networking, and continuous improvement in technology.

Full Transcript

00:00

Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott. MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go Well, hello

00:21

there, industrial professionals. Thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk and thank you for your continued support of this platform that celebrates you. You are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate. You are changing lives, and therefore you are changing the world each and every day. We thank you very much for what you do. And speaking of changing the world each and every day we're at Accruent Insights. 2024 San Antonio, Texas is the location, and yes, that company is changing lives and therefore changing the world, each and every day with their solution, they are passionate and and nobody says passion better than Kristi, for she's in the hot seat. She's been in the hot seat before. She never disappoints. Let's get cracking with the conversation there are worn out. Let's just wrap it up now. I don't think I could that it's done. Thank you very much. How do they get a hold of you? You having a good conference?

01:16

It's been amazing,

01:18

and it is a conference. It's a user conference not have meeting Exactly. It's bigger than that. It is, it's, it's a and again, I we spoke about this offline, but I I just, I enjoy seeing the engagement that is taking place, that that's here. Let me change the camera here, right behind me. A lot of people have engaged over there, but for the most part, just up and down this hallway. It's just been a buzz all

01:48

week at every different angle. I'm so excited, but really proud of our customers and the connections that we have. And this week is something that we plan for all year. It's the most important week of the year for us, and we're so lucky to have over 500 people here this week just to spend time together. And

02:10

I was mentioning last years when we were at the Gaylord and and because it's the size of a small town, you know, people are getting lost this one, I find this venue really good. And it's, it's able to bring people together and in proximity and and I don't have to walk well, a mile to get to whatever it's, it's perfect. You guys, well done. Well done. Good. All right, for the listeners, let's sort of level set once again on who Kristi is,

02:42

Kristi Flores, so I am head of marketing, so Chief Marketing Officer, and that's right, an SVP of Partner Program. I just recently took on some additional responsibility, but I so head up marketing. So obviously, this event, we run this event, it's one of the most important weeks the year for the company. So we're just incredibly excited to help bring our customers and our teams together. How

03:06

do you, and I've asked this with other people, but I'm going to ask you to as well. How do you from this event with this, this energy, this this willingness to contribute, take all this wonderful information, distill it down into actionable, you know, items, and then then, then go back to the customers, and to have that back and forth dialog. How do you, how do you do that effectively?

03:33

Gosh, it happens in 1000 different ways this week. So in some big ways, you know, we have a lots of meetings, individual kind of one on one with customers, as we you know, after we share the roadmap, we get their input on how does that align with your businesses and some of the challenges that you're facing, and are there other kind of pieces that you would want to contribute? We also have just larger concessions that lots of ideas come out, and that's actually some of the most I'd say. Some of the biggest breakthroughs that come through is when we get our customers together. That's when they start sharing some of the pain points, or some of even the ideas that they have, and they start feeding off of one of each other. Yesterday, we were in a meeting with Bill and Richard and Craig, and it was incredible to see once we started opening the floor for what are some of your ideas, what are some of the opportunities that you see in our business from there that was like, where the spark really happened in that meeting. And it was really special to hear a customer bring up some ideas, and then to see all the other hands in that room say, hey, that's exactly, you know, I have that similar pain point. And we know oftentimes when we spend time with customers, they do have similar challenges. But when you see it happen in moments like that. It's, it's pretty special, and it gives us a lot of clarity.

04:44

You mentioned road maps. Does each platform, each solution, have a road map that you like? Okay, here's here's Red Eye, and Red Eye has this road map, and it's going to be linking together. Is that how you sort of communicate? Those roadmaps for each solution

05:01

we do. So we, you know, we've got a holistic kind of vision on what are some expectations and where are we headed as a company, and so part of that is these connected ecosystems. We realize that our customers live in a very kind of matrix and connected company. So they their workflows don't just stop at what they're doing. We all know that we often merge and blend with other parts of the organization. So how we can make it more efficient, easier for our customers to do their jobs across the entire business, and that means connecting some of our products together so we can drive that. This year, we had incredible examples of that with Red Eye Maintenance Connection that allows when our facilities and maintenance teams are out trying to repair things that they have access to, all the documentation and things that they need, whether it's in Red Eye Meridian. So incredible examples of how we connect that ecosystem. So you'll see those trends in all of these product roadmaps. Scott, we also are very, very have high expectations around innovation. So each of the products are we're going to push for. How are we delivering on the latest functionality, whether it's within the products or even disruptive innovation like current space intelligence that we brought this year. So

06:08

I thought space intelligence was a geosynchronous orbit, and I was, I was in space. I was actually in space.

06:15

It was that big. I wanted to do more. It's pretty incredible, very disruptive. Maybe not that disruptive, but it's, it's pretty cool. So we talk about innovation. It's big and small innovation. And then the other big commitment that we've made, and you'll see in all the product roadmaps, is, how do we make our products incredibly user friendly, easier to use for our customers? And so we've made a lot of investments and simplifying things less, clicks, easier, to use, more predictive, all of those things, so that those are big themes that you'll see in any product roadmap session that you have. So

06:52

that's interesting, because I like that user component, because really, when you get right down to a user, just wants to look at it, and then the information just jumps out and then goes into the brain, and I don't have to do any clicks whatsoever or any typing, right? That's sort of the the so that's good. I'm glad you guys are looking at that.

07:13

Yeah, we've got to make everyone's lives easier. And sometimes it means it's just there are improvements in how we develop the software and the user experience, and sometimes it's actually integrating technology so we can be more predictive and and let our customers know that things might be failing soon, or there may be an easier way to set up and schedule an event. But all those things are part of how we think about simplifying.

07:33

Ever going to be that point in time where Accruent will be 100% cloud versus on prem, yeah,

07:40

it is coming. We are a cloud first company, and so how we think about, you know, there's a lot of different reasons why this is such an important evolution for the business. One of them is around you. I saw you talking to Marvin earlier, the security component of it to make

07:54

our conversation difficult. He did. And I said, No way. Am I going to do that?

08:01

Kristi, I will. I will make it fun and make it easy good. I will talk to Marvin today. Yeah,

08:07

make sure he knows that I told you

08:11

no, but that so I'm sure this is top of mind for Marvin, especially heading up our all of our information technology, but it's top of mind for a lot of businesses in the security components of how we all need to make sure that we've got a really sound secure software platform and that our customers are protected. That's that's a big part of the cloud component. We know that we're partnering with Microsoft, and how we enable that is incredibly important. The innovation piece is also really important. If we, as we develop and we have a continuous delivery of innovation, the faster we can get it to our customers, the better. And so we can do that through cloud. See, that's,

08:49

I think that's an underrated benefit of a cloud to a certain extent that the updates, the changes, happen automatically. I don't have to shut down my business over the weekend, updated, get the servers all down and up and maintained and everything. And I don't really see how, from an on prem perspective, with all of the the necessity for data, even AI, right, that computing capability, I just think that if you want it, yeah, you're going to have to have that decision

09:21

absolutely, yeah, things have changed. We you know, it's no longer just a couple of updates a year, which happened a long time ago. We are making updates every week, every month, and we want to make sure that we get out to customers as quickly as we can do you loop

09:34

back with the customers that said, let's say here at this particular event, hi, I would like to see this thing being this particular product, and then all of a sudden it is, do you look back and say, hey,

09:46

there it is absolutely all the time. It's so gratifying when you know that there's so cool. Yeah, when there's a problem that they're trying to, you know, solve, and that we can solve it for them, it's, it's the best. So

09:57

that's pretty cool. Yeah, because I. I i would like to see that picture. They're pretty happy about that.

10:03

Yeah, they are, especially when we're partnering with customers and they're influencing what we're doing. There's nothing better to know that you're not only helping your business, but you're helping your peers, and we see that so much at this conference. And part of you know, one of the big values that we have here is the community and the networking. Our customers are so generous, not just with us, with their time, but they're generous with their peers. You know, they're all in industries where they know they can benefit if they're sharing tips and ideas with each other. So when you go into these sessions, the reason they're so collaborative is because they want to help each other. Yeah, oh, Kitty, I know it's wonderful. It's wonderful. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I was at a dinner last night with LSU and and do Yeah, they are here. Tigers, I know they're here. They should stop. I

10:51

see you. They should yeah, Missouri, famous, 360

10:55

software, they're doing some expansion, but all these customers are so generous with their time and how they're helping each other. So it was a wonderful evening, but just a great example of we can all get better by sharing and really being generous with I don't

11:11

see how you can avoid the necessity to collaborate. I think that it requires that collaborative mindset, that willingness to talk, because it's happening so fast,

11:23

yeah, you know, and we all have so many of the you know, oftentimes we have similar challenges across our different customers and products to the more that we can bring them together. And first of you know, first and foremost, they're not alone. You're not alone. Sometimes it can feel lonely if you're faced with some of these challenges. But the other piece is just as they work together, they find better, faster solutions, and we can help as well. See, that's

11:46

cool. Tell us about the mothership, the Fortive relationship. How do you work with Fortive? Of in

11:53

a lot of different ways, I'd say probably one of the most exciting things that we're working with, port of on, and they've really helped lead the charges around AI. You know, I know we're all excited. There's a healthy dose of excitement, but also a little intimidation. People are nervous, like, how do you know? How do we stay ahead? How do we make sure we're using it? How do we use it appropriately? Are we using enough of it? And they've done an incredible job. It's over the last six years, they've invested in a lot of different ways. One of them, they have the fort, which is a team of data scientists that we have access to. So if we have a project an idea, they have a team of experts that can help us with solve business challenges through machine learning and AI. And so we've done that, from using it for our products to using it for marketing and sales, you name it, engineering, we've tapped into that team, and it's been incredibly helpful for our business. We also use it. We have a great relationship with the Florida digital team. So this is where they help our digital marketing organization, and they want to create the sense of, you know, making AI and technology very approachable. Every year they have a big event in person. This year, we are up in Seattle, where we have headquarters, and we had a hackathon around AI. And so each of the teams pitched different ideas on how they could use it AI to help accelerate our business goals and challenges. And that was fun to see, to give them space for the teams to think big and to even see what their peers were doing, because that's where the magic happens, when you're seeing different ideas across teams. And then we'd even do small things, like we would have a fish bowl of ideas every day. People would throw in small ideas, big ideas, on how they're using it. And that's a culture that we want to make for our teams, because we don't want people to feel overwhelmed. We don't want them to not know where to start. So doing is the best kind of thinking we we get started and we learn along the way.

13:48

I like that, yeah. So with that, with that said, translate that. I like the term for they call it the fort. The fort sells, so I am a part of the fort. Get a shirt that says fort. Oh, yeah, yeah, all the cool kids hang out at the fort. Yeah, most definitely with that, with that collaborative relationship with Ford of where do you see the AI solution impacting? How does Accruent prioritize that AI component, because I'm a customer I want I've heard it's on the internet. I haven't lived under a rock. I know it's happening right now. I want to know how it's going to impact my business in a positive way, and so I could do things more efficiently and effectively, and all that good stuff. What's happening? How do you guys, how do you guys sort of pull that all in? And have you already deployed an AI solution?

14:48

We do. We are using it all across the business today, and the way that we like to kind of think about it and guide the team is start with the business priorities and the things that we're trying to do. And can AI be. An enabler. Can it help us go faster? Can I, you know, be more efficient? Can it be more creative, or think about this in a different way? And so you always start with that challenge and the business priority. So we're not just using AI to kind of test it out. We're truly trying to use it as an accelerant and enabler to get to where we want to go faster or maybe even easier, better. And we we do it whether it's product and engineering. We use it across the entire company, whether it's legal marketing. For example, we're spending time at the end of this week. We have a marketing meeting. So we're just the team that put this entire event on. I'm excited to spend a day with them. We're going to think about 2025, we're going to spend time connecting and building community within our team, and we're also going to create space for the team to think about how we use AI in the future. So we're going to do our own kind of pitches and hackathons around how is the team thinking about AI specifically in their function to kind of make it easier, help them with productivity, help them with creativity, all of those things, but it's, it's gives the team space to push the boundaries on AI, even within marketing. So it's every corner of a crew, and I'd say we're using it. You just

16:10

don't let anything grow underneath you. I mean, you guys are constantly moving. See, I'm dazzled by

16:16

it. No, thank you. Yeah, we hope so. No, you guys do it.

16:20

How do people get a hold of you? Kristi, if they want to be a part of a crew, and they've got a solution that they are, they have a need, and they want to be able to sort of connect with you. How? What's the best way? Sure, LinkedIn, a

16:32

LinkedIn That's right. Or, you know, my information is on the website. Please connect.

16:37

There it is. Man, again, you didn't disappoint. Here's some reason. All right, listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Kristi out on Industrial Talk. Reach out. It is all about collaboration. You've heard that term a number of times. I'm going to say it again, collaboration, innovation, and you need to educate. So that just means you got to talk more. All right, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back. You're

17:00

listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network

17:10

Accruent Insight was the event. That's Kristi Flores. I got her stack guard up right here, chock full of great information. Priority, you need to reach out there and have a conversation. They're doing incredible things at Accruent. When I was there for Accruent insights, I was amazed at the engagement that took place between Team Accruent and the solutions and the end user, the individuals, their customers, the dialog. It was a fabulous event. If you're if you have any questions about technology or how to apply technology, or looking for solutions, I think the first conversation you have to have is go talk to Dr Christy, right there. All right. Industrial Talk is here for you. I say it all the time. You have a podcast. Put it out on Industrial Talk. You have technology. Put it out on Industrial Talk. We're here to just spread the Good News of industry and provide solutions and insights. Be bold, be brave. There greatly. Hang out with Christy. Change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly.