What’s in this episode?
Scott MacKenzie interviews Marvin Clark, CIO of Accruent, at the Accruent Insights 2024 conference in San Antonio. Clark discusses his background in financial services and his current role at Accruent, emphasizing the company's focus on innovation, customer experience, and employee success. Accruent offers 14 products, with a focus on eight, and is working on integrating them further. Clark highlights the importance of big data, AI, and modern user interfaces, stressing the need for robust infrastructure to support these advancements. He advocates for cloud solutions over on-premises systems for better security and scalability. Clark can be contacted at marvin.clark@accruent.com.
Full Transcript
00:00
Scott. 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. Hello
00:21
industrial professional. Thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk, and thank you for your continued support of this wonderful platform that celebrates you. It's all about you. You're the hero in this story that you are changing lives, that you are changing the world each and every day. Thank you very much for what you do. That's why we celebrate you on Industrial Talk. We are broadcasting accrued insights here in San Antonio right now on the floor, people are buzzing around. You might hear the buzz in the background, but that just means people are solving problems. That's what that means. And we're just having a grand time. It is day two. It is wonderful. And in the hot seat, he's been in our hot seat before, Marvin Clark, CIO Accruent, and he's got he's trying to hold on to this tiger by its tail, this Accruent Tiger. Let's get cracking having a good conference.
01:11
Absolutely love it, yeah.
01:14
Why do you like it? Why do you love it?
01:18
I love being around our customers. See, there
01:21
it is. I knew it was coming. I could have filled in the blanket. It's like, yeah, absolutely.
01:26
It's awesome. It's, it's so great to literally sit down and talk to people, hear about what they're doing, not just with our current products, but just what are their struggles? Where are they seeing success? It's, I just love spending time with their customers,
01:43
and I got to tell you, there's a lot of engagement, and the customers are and I'm right outside the general session area, so I get to watch people come and come and go in and out, walking around the floor. And I realize that everybody has a sense of purpose and energy. Nobody's nobody's slipping around. It seems like everybody's just really engaged and excited about being here. And I It's infectious.
02:11
Well, thank you, Scott. I love it. It is. People are really engaged. The folks from Accruent, they're they're just so energetic, and they've been working their butts off for the last day, and it's awesome to see.
02:26
What a love fest. Don't feel it all uncomfortable.
02:30
Now it's true, then that's true.
02:33
All right, for the listeners out there, because you are the CIO and because I've had number of conversations around all of the wonderful solutions that accrue and provides and the customers that I've had conversations with, take us a little bit about what you do. You know, your background?
02:50
Yeah, my background, prior to coming to Accruent, I've I spent about 30 years in financial services, so facilities management, I can't
03:02
do the math. 30 years you started at age 10 or something. I
03:07
did. I did. Thank
03:08
you, Scott. You're welcome very much.
03:12
But no, so I have a lot of experience in financial services, so this is still fairly new to me, but I love everything I've learned about facility management, and I love our product offerings, and I like fordit being our parent company and mothership, they give us a ton of support. I truly love working for afford it. It's it's true, it is. It's a great company. I
03:42
have to ask this question, because I never really it just popped into my head. How many, really Solutions does Accruent have? Like, I mean, is there a number that you can sort of roll off the top of your
03:57
Yeah, I would say that we focus on our top eight products, but we do have 14 products.
04:04
There you go.
04:05
So we're looking at, I think, just before we jumped on this, we're looking at potentially pulling things together, simplifying some of our products, doing some more integration. At the end of the day, we'll probably be somewhere around eight to 10, but with all the same capabilities, functionality
04:23
that's that connected. You got it strategy where we're the you still do what point solutions exactly. You still do that. But there is this effort because I think clients are customers are driving that. Why would I want to have this, this, this, this, try to create
04:43
something. And what you always talk about on your podcast is data. Do you want the data going in and out of six or seven different systems, versus having a system, a platform, and having the capabilities and the functionality that you want, and so the data is all there? You can do what you need to do.
05:02
So take us through that as the CIO. There's a lot of initiatives that are taking place within I would imagine, well, in my conversations, there's a lot of things happening. So how do you as the CIO, prioritize all of this, this stuff coming in from the customers, from from a crew, and saying, we need to do XYZ. We need to pull this together. These are the strategies. How does, how do you sort of prioritize all
05:36
that? But it's, it's a really good question, and I think most companies have to work through that. What I like, what Accruent does, and what I think the leadership believes in, is focusing on the critical few. So you could spend your whole year working on 50 or 60 really cool things and not really getting any of it done. At Accruent, we focus on building a roadmap at the end of the year that's very clear, knowing what we need to do to our products, what we need to do to our back office to be successful. And then we focus on that. Now, as every company will, you're going to have a few left turns and right turns throughout the year, but you want to limit that, because when you tell a customer that you're going to deliver something, we want to make sure we do that. If we say that we're going to improve our back office and our employee experience, we better do that. So we really stick to the critical few. Make sure that everything aligns to that. And if there is an opportunity or a need to change, then we change, but we do it in a very thoughtful way.
06:46
Is there, if you can share, can you share? What are those critical, you know, items that you're truly sort of from a macro perspective, it doesn't have to really be micro? Yeah? Oh
07:01
no, it's an awesome question. Everything we do aligns to our mission statement. So you've probably heard it for the last few years. It hasn't changed. We focus on innovation within our products. We focus on the customer experience and and how we support our customers, and we focus on ensuring that our employees have everything they need to be very successful. If our work doesn't align to one of those three pillars, then we probably shouldn't be working on it. But those are the three pillars that we created a couple years ago, and we've stayed true to that. So we focus on the innovation within our products, listening to our customers. Voice of customers so important to us, we obviously are focused on how we support the customers. That's something that I am directly responsible for, and then making sure that our employees have the tools they need to be successful.
07:58
What are you hearing from the user community, what are some of the salient points? Again, macro, not not you know, but what are they? What are they sort of sharing with you?
08:09
Well, I'll use some of the terms that you talk about a lot. So big data, they want to know. What are we doing? How are we managing the data they want to know where we're going with AI. So are we incorporating AI into our platforms, and how they want to make sure that we're thinking about a modern user interface? So is it easy to use? Is it something that transfers very nicely to mobile, so that they're not stuck on a computer or a laptop if they're if they're doing work outside of the office. And one that's very specific to me is, are we protecting the customer's data? Do we have the right security in place? And a final thought, I would say, is around our infrastructure. Do we have the right infrastructure for all the things that are going to happen either today but in the future, when you start when you start collecting Big Data, when you start implementing AI, you have to have an infrastructure that can support that, and that's really important. So we're working with a lot of our customers today that are on premise. They built their own infrastructure. They're supporting our products within their environment, or they might be using another cloud provider. But what we're seeing is, man, if you could use our cloud, if you could really host your products through us, we can deliver best in breed security. We can give you the tools and the technologies that you need from an infrastructure perspective to ensure that your products are safe, they're reliable, and with all the new enhancements that are coming out with AI, they're going to work. You're not going to have to beef up your environment. You just told us responsible.
09:48
Yeah. So if it's a, if it's a cloud based solution, the and the versus on prem, right? Just saying, hey, if we've got a AI, a. An update on crem, you're going to have to modify your, how you, yeah, you know, your, your, your stack of some sort, in
10:08
a big way, yeah, and that's, that's a major expense.
10:16
So we have this, we're, we're, we're dealing with all of these, these interesting challenges. Can you say that, from a from a cybersecurity perspective, everybody's like, well, that's why I want to be on on prem I want to be able to be secure. But is that just sort of, is that just a sort of a fallacy to a certain extent. I mean, when you take it to the cloud, I mean, it's still very secure, you still have to be diligent about, you know, protecting it.
10:50
Oh my gosh, yeah. So I would say, I would say this, Scott, as we talked about, I've spent most of my career in financial services.
10:59
See, you guys were ahead in the financial services. Yeah, we were, yeah,
11:03
first and foremost, when you're dealing with with the stock market, you can never be down. That's a fact. And you have to be so secure. I mean, as secure as it gets. So if you translate that into what we're doing with the current now, you you want to make sure that you're providing the right security, but also the same reliability, uptime and all of that. I was one of those folks that strongly believed in having everything on prem because I wanted to manage it. I wanted to be accountable. I knew that I could build out the right environment. That was true, I would say, 510, years ago, in today's world, with what Microsoft has done and the other the other cloud providers, they truly do provide the best in class security, and they provide the right storage, the right CPU to where you can let go up in scale or down in scale without having to buy an environment that's 2x or 3x so that you have to be to make sure that you've covered all the volume that could hit your environment. So I would say, with newer technologies, you should be looking at the cloud. It's the right way to go. Yeah,
12:19
see. And I would say if I was, if I was Microsoft or AWS, or whatever it might be, whatever cloud solution I embrace, they have to, yeah, it's, it's a quarter their business. It is. They can't risk anything happening that'll just be catastrophic.
12:41
And you think about vulnerabilities, yeah, if you're managing on prem, you have to fix those yourself. Yes. And if you're dealing with any type of size, hundreds of 1000s of servers, which most companies do today, you have to fix each server individually. Even if you have the automation tools and all that, you still have to go server by server, even if you call them virtual servers, but when in the cloud, that's a push of a button, yeah, and you're safe, yeah. So I have completely changed the way my thought process. And as you probably know, we're partnering with Microsoft. They're here at our conference this week, utilizing their technology stack gives us everything we need for our products, plus best in class security bar none.
13:29
See, it's just what I do. Like about cloud solutions is that in the past, when you had on prem and you had updates. Everybody? Okay, get off the system, shut down, go home for the evening, and when you come back, it's going to be a completely different system, and you're going to have a grand time. And then we're going to just have to deal with all the challenges, right? But on in the cloud, it just happens. It just happens. Isn't that just a wonderful thing. It really is, and you can handle the data. So if I want to be a connected organization, right where I'm putting devices out there, just because the internet says I need to put devices on these assets and I'm pulling in data, yeah, I don't have to deal with the on prem challenges that that that
14:20
requires no, no, no, yeah,
14:24
it's all good. Where do you see it going? Marvin, I mean, look, I mean, with all of that great stuff, you've got your pillars of things that you just will not, you know, your strategies aligned with those pillars. Where do you see it going? I understand AI is a big deal. That's got to be a huge focus. That must have been just a a matter of, hey, all of a sudden, we got AI. We got everybody's calling us to ask for AI. And we want to, you know, look at this data, this big data, and we want to be able to analyze it through AI.
14:27
Well, I I'll say a few things. Where I think it's going is AI is definitely going to play a part. For sure, big data is going to play a big part. I am, I am extremely proud of our product teams, our engineering teams, they are implementing AI in a very thoughtful way. So it's you've seen a lot of every vendor in the world that said, Hey, we have aI now. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So I think there's a thoughtful way to do it, and I think that there's a very quick way to say, yep, yep, we have aI here. Here we go. We are doing it across each one of our products in a way that makes sense, that that truly enhances the product and enhances the end user experience. So I love what the product and engineering teams are doing at the same time, we're taking our infrastructure and making sure we can handle that. So it's important, if you build a really cool platform or a really cool product, but you don't have the infrastructure to support it, you're not going to have the right user experience. So we are in partnership building using the right technology stack within the infrastructure to support all the great things that the product teams are doing. So I would say where we're going is a thoughtful approach for how we roll out new capabilities such as AI, big data, collecting data together, giving the insights that our customers are looking for. They want to know what the data is telling them, and we're getting to a point where we're able to collect that and show it to our customers.
16:31
See All I want as a, as a, let's say I'm Scott, Scott company, yeah, I just, I want my technology to really be seamless, connected, delivering the insights that I need so that I'm a better business and more efficient business, and continue to drive for greater efficiencies too, as well. Right? I want, I don't want to just be stagnant. I want to just continue to say, Okay, we're gonna this, this platform, this technology stack, is growing with me, and I don't have to think through that
17:07
exactly there. Yeah, I love what you just said. Okay, I actually wrote it down because I was really nice to say. I'm worn out now.
17:19
So talk to us a little bit about how people can get a hold of you. This is great conversation. How do we
17:24
do you can get a hold of me at marvin.clark@Accruent.com
17:30
you're on LinkedIn.
17:31
I am on LinkedIn. Under Marvin Clark,
17:34
there's no other Marvin Clark.
17:35
There is one. I think they have an initial so
17:38
really, yeah, because we're friends on LinkedIn, I know that, but I didn't know that. It's like Steve Smith, who's Steve Smith, and he's got his own now that guy's, yeah, all right, we're gonna have all the contact information for Marvin out on Industrial Talk. Reach out to him, connect with them. They're doing a lot of great, great things at accrued We are broadcasting accrued insights 2024 here in San Antonio. It is a collection of problem solvers right here, right now. And I'm telling you, they are customer centric. You get that feel that it is I'm living proof. I might not be a customer, but I feel that warm. All right, we're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.
18:23
You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.
18:34
Yeah,
18:35
try to unpack that one. That is a great conversation. Marvin Clark delivering the goods, and I have to say, because that was a crew at insights, the user community. It was inspiring, and it's not hyperbole, but it was inspiring to see how much focus is placed on the customer and the customer's needs, and then using the technology, using the innovation, in such a way that truly addresses the challenges that are happening in the market today. That's what they're doing. It was inspiring. I really enjoyed that conference, that user conference, big time. You need to, you know, you need to look into it. You need to connect with Marvin Clark, all right, we're building a community. We're building an industrial community that is passionate about you. You want to be on the podcast. You need to let me know, because I want to talk to you. Be bold. Be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Marvin and the folks at Accruent Change the world. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. You.
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