Fix the Process Before the AI: Prakash Kota of UKG

0:00Prakash Kota: Speed is definitely a useful signal because acting with urgency, especially in this AI era, is very critical. But it is not the only outcome by itself.

0:10Peter High: Welcome to Tech Innovation. I'm Peter High, President of Metastrategy. My guest today is Prakash Kota. Prakash is the Chief Transformation Officer of UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions serving more than 80 ,000 organizations worldwide. Prakash leads enterprise technology strategy, business applications, employee experience, enterprise data, and beyond, helping shape UKG's next phase of growth. He was recently promoted into his current role after having spent a year and a half as the company's chief information officer. Prior to joining UKG, Prakash spent two decades at Autodesk, where he spent more than seven years as that company's CIO.

0:49Peter High: In our conversation today, we'll explore his first 500 days at UKG, the business processes he and his colleagues are reimagining, how AI generally and AI assistants more specifically are creating opportunities that extend beyond productivity to growth and better customer and employee experiences, among other topics we'll cover together. Prakash, welcome back to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today. Thank you, Peter. Thanks for having me. Great to be back too. Today's episode is brought to you by Tines 3B. Organizations are pushing teams to move faster with AI. That's creating a wave of AI-generated code and unsanctioned automations, leading to rising costs, security risks, and huge IT burdens.

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2:22Prakash Kota: Yeah, it's my great pleasure. I was really

2:24Peter High: looking forward to this, especially in light of not only the new company, but the new role. We've spoken off the record, but looking forward to going on the record here. Talk a bit about UKG's business, if you would. I imagine a lot of people who are watching or listening to this would be familiar with it, but also some that might maybe less so. Fill in the blanks for them, if you would.

2:41Prakash Kota: Yeah, sure. So UKG, I would say we are the only HR tech company with workforce operating platform with unifying HR, workforce management, as well as pay. People know us a lot from the time and pay aspect, but we are beyond that. And we are built to solve unique challenges for frontline workers. As you know, there are so many companies that do a lot of things for knowledge workers. And we take pride. Probably there is no other tech company as big as ours serving about 80 ,000 organizations, as you mentioned, for frontline worker organizations. And as you can imagine, with the level of data, labor data that we possess for the last several decades, of the impact that we can create.

3:32Prakash Kota: So UKG turns that workforce intelligence, what we call it, workforce intelligence, into real-time decisions around staffing, pay, compliance, and productivity, enabling every workforce to be effective in whatever they do and every organization to be effective in all of the decisions that they make. And that's why we always proudly say that we are more than 80 ,000 organizations running on UKG. We feel like they don't just manage it. They run their organizations on UKG is what we say.

4:07Peter High: Amazing. That's a great overview. Thank you for that, Prakash. I mentioned in the introduction, you were recently promoted to chief transformation officer. First of all, congratulations to you. And I wonder, I would love to have you describe your expanded purview. I covered a little bit of it, but I know that actually it even goes beyond what I described. So talk about this relatively new role and what is now within your span of responsibilities.

4:28Prakash Kota: Yeah, no, first of all, thank you. The timing of this conversation is so, it happens too, that this happened very recently. and so the promotion is more about expanding my responsibility from leading just the tech to be leading transformation from business processes because at any company if you look at in the last decade or two we all have built especially in enterprises that have existed that long we have built all of our processes that span across those times and now we're moving into an AI era. So all of us are trying to put AI tools on our existing processes. And we know as we have been embarking on the journey and playing with different tools, it can only get a little better but can't be totally effective.

5:20Prakash Kota: So the whole idea is the transformation work and the charter that I'm tasked to do is helping to connect and accelerate this work starting from process, tech, data, and AI to ensure we accelerate across the company. So the mandate is make sure our strategy, our process, our data, tech, and talent are all moving in the same direction.

5:46Peter High: And what a great sign it is that you have an executive team that is willing to make this change. I mean, you're very titling. The responsibilities you just described certainly suggests that the team recognizes a great opportunity by providing you this mandate, by providing the impetus for the changes to come. It must be very exciting for you, I'd imagine.

6:08Prakash Kota: It is. At this point, I also want to highlight the culture of the company, Peter. I think that speaks a lot more than anything else because I've only been in the company for 18 months. Because a lot of people talk about culture as a buzzword when they talk about companies, and I can tell, attest to it, that I've seen this in action from the CEO down and it all starts from the top. In the actions we take, it's not in the slides that we present. And I'm able to also collaborate and partner with all cross-functional leaders and CEO staff members to continue to create impact and make progress. It's because of the way we work and I feel really blessed to be part of such a culture and organization.

6:56Peter High: I'm so glad to hear that, Prakash. Wonderful to know that that's the case. Well, you mentioned you've been in role for about 500 days, year and a half. Talk a bit about now your time as chief information officer, which recently ended prior to the promotion. What did you identify as some of the most important opportunities for transformation? And I'd be interested in how you sequenced some of the changes that you've brought to bear so far in your tenure with the organization. Yeah.

7:24Prakash Kota: One of the things that was very clear when I came in was, as you know, there were two big companies that came together, Ultimate Group and Kronos, which became UKG, while we have done several other acquisitions. These were two big acquisitions that were done and brought together. And both of these companies have continued to operate and grow simultaneously. But there has never been a full charter of integrating them. And as you can imagine, all of this back-end integration takes from a prioritization, doesn't take the front seat until all of that complexity starts slowing us down. and that's when I actually came into the company and it was very clear that when processes were not standardized, when things were not simplified and consolidated, it was really impacting our scale and things were getting stuck and that's where the first foundational work that I did in the first 18 months, I would say, was to really standardize and simplify and secure so that we can actually scale the company where we want to be.

8:34Prakash Kota: So it was all focusing on some foundational work, getting our multiple CRMs into one, multiple ERPs into one, getting multiple data warehouse or lake houses into one and centralizing the entire tech function within the company into one so that we all collaborate and leverage from one set of data, one set of systems, one set of processes. so that we are looking at the same thing, even though that the data is, whether it is incorrect or has a different point of view, we are not looking at different data sets to form different opinions because then that wastes a lot of cycles. And so that was my primary focus and feel really good after 18 months looking back that we have made a tremendous progress in getting that foundation right, which will now help us to do a lot of transformation that I'm tasked to in the next 18 months or so.

9:28Peter High: And I can only imagine the richness of what you're creating by bringing all this data together. We mentioned already the more than 80 ,000 customers that you serve, all the data that, of course, you appropriately safeguard but can draw inference from and perhaps even provide insights back to those very customers as a result of being able to mine it in new ways given the work that you and your team are doing. Is that a fair assessment as to some of the advantage of what you're doing? 100%, right? It involves a lot of product utilization data, understanding how customers are accessing some of this data and where they are not accessing and giving that intel and insight to the different appropriate teams

10:11Prakash Kota: so that we can have the right conversations with customers. and also equipping different functions, whether it's customer experience, whether it is sales organization, whether it is finance teams, all of them looking from one set of data, one set of central data is a huge thing because then we are having the same conversation whether the news is good or not good. You're at least looking at the same data and marching towards solving the same problem rather than marching in different directions. And that's what has been really powerful because that complexity, unlocking that complexity eases us to really focus on one goal rather than multiple goals.

10:49Prakash Kota: And that's what has been the critical thing.

10:51Peter High: Yeah, fascinating. And I know, Prakash, from our recent conversations, you've emphasized the need to rethink business processes before applying artificial intelligence to the organization. I wonder, talk a bit about how you're identifying workflows, approvals, and handoffs that no longer serve the business and deciding what should replace them and the way in which you kind of rationalize that.

11:16Prakash Kota: Yeah, I think this is also one of my early career learnings because I'm a software engineer at heart and sitting in Silicon Valley, I get fascinated when new tech comes. And I've done guilty in the past. I have deployed a lot of cool tools and technology, then hunting for a problem to fit that. And so I have taken a real notes from that past. So I always start with work and the outcome, like the process and the outcome and what problem are we trying to accomplish or solve, whether it is for our customer or employee. And where does the process actually slow down? and how do we need to really look into it and redesign is something that I've always thought through before even having any tech conversation.

12:07Prakash Kota: It took a lot of time, Peter, I have to say, for me to not talk tech for a while before we get into the whole process and problem and outcome that we want to achieve. Once that process is clear and the problem that we are tackling is consistently understood by everyone, then I think we decide whether we bring in a technology, build something or buy something and how can AI support it in this new era or those conversations that happen afterward, which used to be not the case. And that has really helped us. Otherwise, we are always bringing in new tech and hunting down the problem or where do I fit this?

12:49Prakash Kota: Now that I have a cool technology, where do I identify? And that doesn't move the needle.

12:54Peter High: Yeah, that's such an important way of framing things, Prakash. I appreciate you noting that. I know your ambition for AI extends beyond productivity to helping UKG grow and scale as well, really kind of the next level of value in many ways. And I wonder which business outcomes are you targeting and how are you measuring progress? How do you know that the organization is on the right path?

13:16Prakash Kota: Yeah, I would say productivity matters, but it's only one part of the opportunity. And the way we are looking is very holistic. How can AI actually improve the cycle time or decision quality or customer experience or our ability to scale and removing unnecessary complexity? So we are looking at all of those things and how we do. And it again starts with outcomes more than one level. Earlier on, we may be looking at people, are they using the tool effectively or whether it's helping them to make their work efficient? then I am always a big believer that wherever we can really think about whether that changes the workflow, less rework, faster decisions, ultimately we have to connect to the business results.

14:00Prakash Kota: So the measure is not how much AI is being used if the work and the outcome improve from the actions. So we are looking at every single business divisions and what is it making them effective to make decisions and to move. If like, for example, if we hired marketers to focus on certain function of marketing and really bringing in a high quality leads, how is that moving the needle? What it used to do and what portion can AI really help them, augment them and what can they do? And similarly for sellers, having meaningful conversations, being prepared for meetings so that the sellers are not spending time searching, but they're actually spending time selling.

14:42Prakash Kota: and similarly for customer experience, giving them the right context of what the customers are going through without needing to ask customers for all of that information. And then how do we really proactively solve some of those issues so that that has a very good experience and CSAT and satisfaction for them. So we are looking at every angle again, what outcome we want this to drive and then how can AI augment that rather than just making them productive. Through the process, That is also one of the measures we are keeping in mind so that employees are engaged and feel much more productive. But as I said, it's just one of the measures.

15:20Peter High: Fascinating. And I know you recently modernized the technology and processes supporting your full customer funnel as well. Can you talk a bit about that, the fascinating work that you and team are doing?

15:29Prakash Kota: Yeah, yeah. So I think if you look at it right, a person, whoever it is, a prospect person, may first encounter UKG online. and then they share the information to help us understand what they are looking for because we have many products or offerings and then connect it to the sales team and then evaluate a solution and then it moves through an opportunity to an order if you look at this overall experience it's it doesn't feel connected along the way it feels like shipping from one department to the other department through consequential work that requires a lot of hand work handoffs so So our work was within all of these steps, how do we have the right signals going to the right individuals at the right time?

16:14Prakash Kota: Even if it means you need to send it to multiple teams at the same time, that was a big effort we did. Whether it is lead qualifying or lead prioritizations, everything done by AI before it gets handed over to, as an example, BDR, or before it passes on to the sales team. so it goes with a lot of intelligence and signals not just as a lead because typically in the past it is used to be like it goes as a lead and then the individuals in every department has to do a lot of homework about them to first engage with them to add value now through this journey of the flow all of that intelligence and signal and connectivity goes along so the conversation is there is a lot of continuity to the conversation and that makes also customers feel special hey you know about us when you are talking to us and and even though it's a lot of things that we are enabling our folks who are talking with the customer but it feels you're giving like every customer feels like they're the best customer and we are paying every single attention it's because of how we are helping modernize this whole process from the way how leads get and how it gets all converted to being a real customer.

17:29Peter High: Yeah, very interesting. And so much of the value derived in these still relatively early days of the implementation of more sophisticated artificial intelligence, Prakash, is about speed. The processes or methods that used to take days or weeks being reduced to minutes or hours. And I wonder, how do you think about the translation of some of that speed into better customer engagement or better commercial outcomes to take two of perhaps other levers you think about in terms of translating that speed into value? Yeah, I think that's another important question.

18:04Prakash Kota: Sometimes speed is definitely a useful signal because acting with urgency, especially in this AI era, is very critical, but it is not the only outcome by itself. That's something that I keep pushing. Like if an activity took weeks and if it can happen in minutes, that creates an opportunity to respond sooner and spend more time on the actual what customer needs, that's great. But the next question we need to also ask is, the faster process is very accurate and relevant and useful, but if that process itself is not right, then making it go fast may not also be really good. So I think this is how we translate, like we need to make sure we're translating our speed into a commercial value that we are still learning where the gains are most meaningful and how to scale responsibly and we are not also putting a lot of automation in the bad processes that speeds up things, but where we don't want it to.

19:03Prakash Kota: So that's where I think it has to be also very deliberate. And again, it starts with what outcome we want to achieve and how will customer benefit from it or an employee benefit from it. And then how do we look at speed as one of a useful signal to really put that to action is the focus.

19:20Peter High: Yeah, and I mentioned earlier AI assistance. I know this is an area you're investing in. Talk a bit about your thoughts about the development of AI assistance and where to leverage them, how they work with or without humans, as the case may be. I'd love to learn more about your philosophy there.

19:38Prakash Kota: Yeah, I think in the last, this is one of those projects, we're calling it Rewired. I am super pumped up and thrilled about where we are headed in the coming next 18 months. all of us over the last 18 months or so have been exposed to a lot of tools and then every vendor overnight became an AI vendor as we can imagine and then everybody has a conversational agent within their own platforms so when I take a step back and look at it Peter like everybody has become maybe productive but they've also become so busy in using all of these tools and having so much conversational and generating text and whatnot.

20:21Prakash Kota: All of those, I still feel like a more reactive effort where I need to know what to ask the intelligent system to get me the right data for me to then take a decision and take an action. But where I am going with this whole AI assistant concept is more like what portions of the work can be autonomous. Like I'll give you an example. A salesperson or a media who is spending a lot of time in preparing for getting ready for a meeting, I feel like a good amount of the time that they take gathering information, summarizing, preparing, understanding the intel about the company and the resource whom they are going to meet, a lot of those things today, they spend about 40-50 % of the time preparing for the meeting so that they can have an impactful call.

21:13Prakash Kota: And for me, that's not the real, the purpose of that call is more about building relationship, getting into a dialogue and making decisions. That's where the actual value of a human expert resides. So now imagine if we have a true AI assistant autonomously understanding that I have a meeting with this customer and really prepares for me all the information that is required without me asking for that question and then feeding it to me. So it's more a push to me so that I feel equipped for me to take the call and then actually spend the time with the customer and make the decisions. How cool will that be?

21:55Prakash Kota: Right now, it is more a pull. I ask the AI as a tool and then AI gives me that information. I am switching that to making it a teammate where an AI assistant is a teammate from tool to a teammate where you know what my next action is going to be or next call is going to be and you give me the right information at the right time with the right signals across so that I'm not spending time searching and doing a scavenger hunt within the enterprise. I'm actually spending time with the customer and having meaningful dialogues and making decisions. So that's the kind of way I am envisioning. And for me, all of those steps are still autonomous.

22:40Prakash Kota: What the agent does, knowing and having intelligence. So it then goes from being an intelligent teammate along with me to be making me more effective. So in this case, the role of the human expert is also equally super important. And so for me, how do I protect that time so that they do more, they spend more time in what they like, in what they can achieve their goals without doing all the administrative work that they were doing. But today I'm not even asking for that administrative work. It is actually fed to me. And that's where we are headed towards. How do we make this AI assistant truly understand me and give me what I need depending upon my persona so that I can be more effective in whatever I'm asked to do or hired to do?

23:26Peter High: Yeah. You've described this approach relative to the Gentic AI of launching, landing, learning. Talk a bit about that framework, how you've defined it and how it helps accomplish some of what you just described.

23:41Prakash Kota: Yeah. See, the concept of whole launching is putting a well-defined use case into the hands of a group or an early testers or people who lean in and always want to explore so that we can test it safely. Then landing is making sure it fits the actual workflow outcome that we wanted to achieve at scale and to make sure it meets all the right standards. And in between, the learning is all about looking at what did we learn from our initial launch? How can we tweak it? And where did we see the pitfalls? And where can we course correct before we really take it at scale to the broader users? In that way, we can actually start small, move fast.

24:26Prakash Kota: And then even though we have big goals, We can actually start taking actions and move fast rather than always trying to boil the ocean for the scale at which we need to launch in some of these enterprises. That could be overwhelming. And then we can slow things down. This approach of launching, learning and landing really helps us take with confidence measured and gives us a good evidence for us to have that experimenting culture before we actually expand broadly. So that's the whole concept of launching and learning and landing.

25:04Peter High: Fantastic. I like that. We've talked a lot about customer engagement, customer experience, and I know actually part of your now expanded purview includes greater customer contact. Something, by the way, that you certainly had as part of your mandate in your prior role at Autodesk of being very much a customer-facing chief information officer. Talk a bit about, you know, translating that forward, that past experience to an environment like UKG and what excites you about becoming more engaged with the company's customers.

25:34Prakash Kota: Yeah, no, I think, see, the biggest thing is every company in this universe is reimagining their processes, their workforce. How can they reimagine how work gets done and how to enable their employees, workers to be more effective and productive? and we are in the business, as I said, and this whole HR tech company with only probably AI operating platform with decades of labor data that can really help them create a huge impact. So I'm always fascinated to spend time with peers in those companies to really help them understand what are we building and what is the value for them. and it's always connections, sometimes not just talking about UKG.

26:27Prakash Kota: It is also talking about what are, they are also solving very similar like what I'm solving within the enterprise. And so spending time with customers and you will be fascinated, Peter, like irrespective of the industry, the kind of things that we are trying to solve, whether they're a tech company or not, we are all trying to solve very similar things in really moving our businesses and impact, creating impact. and also in turn providing a lot of value to our customers, whoever the customers are for each of the company. And so that kind of energizes me, spending time with customers, learning from what they are doing and also sharing what we are bringing table to them that they can take it to their companies to really modernize is one of those things that I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy in my time.

27:17Peter High: And I know your CEO, your executive team are directly involved in the transformation we've been describing throughout this conversation. I'd love to have you talk a little bit about the importance of having that shared responsibility and accountability, understanding of what's to come, and the value that you're deriving by having that support from across the executive team.

27:40Prakash Kota: Yeah. And I think I touched a little bit about the culture and how it operates. The best thing is the overall, we start with where is the company headed and what is our strategy? What is our top pillars as a company? And because the transformation affects the whole company. So, and it has to be led across all the functional leaders marching towards one goal. It cannot be all divisional goals marching in silos. That's the best framework that we have. where we have a very common set of goals of what we're trying to march towards and every leader thinking about how can they make an impact in moving the needle in the direction where we need to go.

28:21Prakash Kota: And it starts from CEO down so that any prioritization that we have, any programs that we bring up, any projects that we do, it's all connected to how is this going to move the needle for the transformation agenda that we have? And how does it also matter from a customer standpoint? How does this impact customers or how does it impact employees? These are fundamentally the two questions that we always ask, like because it's almost keeping the customer at the center and employee at the center in whatever we do and also seeing how do we measure. The most of the companies also I've seen have great projects and ideas and vision.

28:59Prakash Kota: And then if we don't have proper measures along the way and then we don't focus on measuring at some place, some of these big transformations fall apart. or don't succeed to the vision that we have. So having that clear structure and ownership and then collaboration between cross-functional teams when we do these big programs is another big thing that comes top down. And the CEO actually spends every Friday, she diligently has the top 10 programs, including measures from the business standpoint. She has a dashboard or a cockpit we call, and whoever is driving that program for the company, irrespective of which org they belong, gets called in.

29:44Prakash Kota: It's more to support them. If things are not going in the direction it is supposed to be, she's almost like pulling everybody. Okay, how do we ensure we pull the right people to make sure collectively we are successful? So it doesn't become a siloed org problem or whatnot. And it's also not punitive. If something is going off rails, the whole discussion is what can any of us around the table do to support, to bring it back on track and keep marching towards. And that brings a very bold culture of people not trying to cover up things until it becomes deep red. Even if it is slightly off track, people are very open to having the conversation because it has the right level of visibility.

30:24Prakash Kota: Because setting goals is one aspect and then following through to ensure that execution also is a big rigor. That's a good muzzle that we have developed over the last 18 months. And we have a good practices where the transformation, irrespective of who has the title, is looked at from the CEO down on all of those programs that we're executing.

30:45Peter High: Yeah. You mentioned earlier, Prakash, that you're based in Silicon Valley and have been for quite some time. Your company is headquartered in the American Southeast in Florida. Talk about the advantages of place. You have access in driving distance, so many great entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and others who are shaping the technology landscape. And with a foot in that environment while also having a foot in the broader economy and, of course, the company itself, I'd love to have you share a bit about how you think about that translation from where you live and do spend some of your work time and where you travel to, both the headquarters and other diverse geographies across UKG's landscape, the advantages you draw from each?

31:31Prakash Kota: Yeah, I think I feel very blessed to be in the heart of Silicon Valley where the action happens. And it's also great to connect back to the actual headquarters and where the company was built and continue to be developed. I think it's a good mix, Peter, I would say. sometimes you could always be in the whole science project experiment just bringing a lot of tools because you have access to all of it and on the other end you are more grounded understanding all of your customers and what happens and how it's done so I think it's a good mix of both so it's more than a science it's an art of how to leverage and take advantage of your presence in Silicon Valley that you are there with access to so many of them because you can also be overwhelmed with tens and hundreds of vendors trying to approach you and to sell every single day of being very again prescriptive of what outcomes you're trying to achieve and to choose the right partner to work with and to really bring impact I would say it's been a good exercise and the whole world and ecosystem around us is also evolving so fast and so because of that rapid change that is happening being present in a place where you have accessibility to some of those innovative startups is always a blessing.

32:55Prakash Kota: And then connecting back to our company and the peers within the company and to connect with them so that they can, we can all collectively take advantage of it as we are bringing value back to our customers has been a good synergy, I would say, that I have been figuring it out by connecting the East to the West.

33:18Peter High: I love that. What an advantage you have, but by extension, the company has through that experience that you garner. I wonder, before I let you go, in terms of keeping yourself informed in the evolving state of the art, anything you've recently read or listened to that you'd recommend to others, either specifically or generally speaking?

33:38Prakash Kota: Yeah, I love reading. I've been reading a lot. Something relevant that excites me. couple of things that comes to me good strategy and bad strategy by rumelt i think it argues the most strategy is really fluff or goals and buzzwords and wishes but good strategy is almost like as a as a kernel of three parts like diagnosis of a real challenge guiding policies how to deal with it and coherent actions that follow through that has been a very interesting book and then the other thing that I keep struggling it connects back to the question that you asked also between east and west is the thinking fast and slow that that I think explains the mind of as two systems one is very fast intuitive automatic and the second one is slow deliberate and effortful so it's it's not something is good or bad but how both of those systems really help.

34:39Prakash Kota: And in the current world we live in, I think both of those practices has really helped me. I mean, being appreciative of both of that system process has been really helpful. Those two come to mind, Peter.

34:52Peter High: Yeah, I love great suggestions both. And I'm especially a big fan of Daniel Kahneman's book. Thank you for those suggestions. And Prakash, thank you more generally for a great conversation. Fascinating to hear about all that you've accomplished in just a year and a half, 500 days in, as well as to hear the great excitement that you have for what's to come for the company with your broader set of responsibilities. Also, I'm looking forward to remaining abreast of the progress you and team make. But thank you so much for taking time with me today. Thank you.

35:22Prakash Kota: Thank you very much for having me again. It's always a pleasure and delightful to share stories and to have a conversation with you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

35:30Peter High: Thanks for listening to Technovation. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe and leave a rating. It helps more leaders find our podcast. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you next time.