560: MITHU BHARGAVA - "OVER-ACHIEVE"

I'm doing great, thanks for having me on, Lou.

Absolutely. So I have the honor of leading NCR's Professional Services organization. So think of Professional Services as the primary customer-facing technology arm of NCR that works with our customers every single day to bring our software solutions to life. So you know, as the company evolves from being a hardware to a software-led company, it is the Professional Services people on the front lines who work every day with our customers on integrating solutions, bringing new consulting capabilities to life, and in situations like we're in right now, navigating through a COVID crisis and bringing their customer-centric innovation and making it real.

Absolutely. So Lou, we recently had our investor day early December, and we couldn't have been more pleased with the response that we've received. If you've been tracking NCR, May 2018, actually May 1st, 2018, is when our new CEO came on board, and I joined the very same day. That's why I remember it. Since then, it's been, yeah, I mean we both started the same day. It was part of a larger leadership turnaround that we had. And part of this whole process was how do we take a fundamentally hardware-perceived company and shift it to a software and services-led company to become the provider of choice to run the store, the restaurant, or the self-service bank. So as we work through this transformation as a company, what we very quickly realized is it's not just the technology transformation to become that trusted partner of choice. You truly have to have your customers believe in you. It started with how do we change our approach to our customers. Our company mantra is treat every customer like your only customer. So when Mike Hayford came on board, one of the biggest changes he made is every single employee at NCR is compensated on our customer satisfaction scores, truly embedding that customer centricity into the DNA of our company. We've been undergoing a huge talent transformation, hiring different talent, the best talent that exists out there in the industry to work with our customers, building out a whole new portfolio of offerings. Think of it as a very distinct end-to-end set of offers we put for a company strategy. We said 80-60-20: 80% of our revenue would shift to software and services, 60% of that would be recurring, and 20% EBITDA improvements. But what was more important is we actually put an execution plan in place. So fast forward two and a half years later, with investor day, we actually exposed a lot of these results to our customers. And our investors were very impressed to see not just the improvement in customer satisfaction costs but the level of transparency that we shared around the business. We broke down our digital banking business for them, AD as a service, and we actually shared real customer testimonials validating what we're doing. So I'll say, Lou, we have a long ways to go in terms of where we want to get to. We're going to continue to execute, but we've been really, really pleased with the transformation results to date and the way our investors are reacting to that.

Absolutely. And I think I'd give the credit to the entire team. I'll say two things. One is we're thinking of NCR as NCR as a service. It doesn't matter if you're buying hardware, software, services from NCR. The way you should think of NCR is as your end-to-end partner to run your store, to run your restaurant, to run your self-directed bank. And what that means is the way we contract with you, the way our offers are packaged, it's hardware, software, everything in an as-a-service model, which is a huge shift and something that's being very well received by our customers. Now the second thing I'll say is you know I think our technology is awesome, I think our industry expertise is awesome. Our customers come to us for our technology, for our industry expertise, but they really come to us for our people. And I think if I look at the huge transformation that we've made, especially in the light of COVID, to truly position ourselves differently, it's been really, really heartwarming. So I'll give you examples in terms of what we've done in a COVID environment. We saw that as COVID hit, every business out there was being forced to transform. Our customers were being forced to transform. One of the things that I feel really strongly about is Professional Services being that engine for customer-driven innovation. Well, now was a time where every one of our customers was coming to us. So the number of banks we had, from small credit unions in the US to the large banks, to a bank in the Philippines, to Mexico, where everyone said help us create contactless ATM operations, help us redesign our branch operations so that rather than having live tellers, remote tellers provide the same experience to our customers. How do we integrate our digital mobile and our physical bank presence? And we innovated and we were able to get these banks to adapt to a COVID world. In the retail space, a big part of our customer base are the grocers. And a lot of these new trends that we see as the norm now — curbside pickup, in-store pickup, delivery — all came to light during COVID. Now bring that back to an individual retailer: they have to change their processes. How do they actually enable that to happen? When you think about self-checkout, how do you make self-checkout a touchless experience? How do you actually use NCR self-checkout services to have optimized store operations with minimized interventions, no teller assistance required? All of these were per customer solutions that we were able to drive to get them up and running. You know, there were instances, Lou, where we had our technical project managers on site with customers helping with store inventory and placing, stocking the shelves, because that's what you do. It's a customer-first mindset. And then I'll give you examples in the restaurant space. We've actually helped a number of small businesses come online. We've had 600 plus customers come online on the Aloha platform. But we've also really driven some innovation. One of the largest restaurant chains here in the United States and now global came to us and said, 'Hey, we need to have a separate digital order make line so that the digital orders that come in can actually be fulfilled, but we can't add any more kitchen space, we can't add any more floor space.' So using our software and our innovation, we created a different separate make line for digital orders and were able to increase their order accuracy by 99%, reduce waste and wait time significantly. So you can hear me, I can go on and on. I share excitement here, but you get the sense of how we're transforming in line with our customers.

It's a really good question, Lou. And I think the way I look at it is, if you have the mindset that our founder put forth, which is treat every customer like your only customer, it doesn't matter whether it is a thriving large customer or it is a struggling small and medium business trying to survive. That's the mindset that we're trying to ingrain across our team. So while we're here to support every thriving business with new innovation, we're doing the same to every business that's struggling. We've worked with Nimbus, as you might have heard from my colleague Dirk, on really how does the PPP program apply to restaurants. How do we make it easier for them? As a Professional Services business, as we work to get small restaurants online, give them a presence, give them a way to actually keep their restaurant alive. You've also worked on a number of other related packages: how do we actually help you differentiate, how do we make online ordering easy, and really targeted them at these small and medium businesses. So this was a very deliberate top-down effort where we said how do we actually help all businesses, whether thriving or struggling, and how do we have equal service offers to all. And I think that's been really our approach through this whole pandemic. And fundamentally, the belief of do the right thing and good things happen has kept us grounded.

Absolutely, Lou. In fact, if you look at most of our, I'll take a step back. We've got a really good presence in the enterprise space. If you look at just industry presence, footprint, and reach, we're the number one POS software provider in retail, number one on self-checkout, number one on ATM full-service machines. But our focus, where we've looked at our investments as a company as we build new products, has largely been not just in the enterprise space but starting with the small and medium business segment. So to us, everyone says every customer is important. I think the proof is in the approach and the investment that you have and the way you actually treat your customers across size, scale, and scope. And that's been an area of focus for us throughout and an area that we're going to continue to double down on.

An interesting question. And I think we've all faced this over the last six months more than ever before. We've had more of those days. So for me, Lou, my big learning was I draw my inspiration, my energy, my optimism, my ability to lead from the people around me. So what I've been doing as a best practice, even more so during the pandemic, is connecting out and reaching to customers and team members around the globe. My organization is in 55 countries today. Lots of wonderful talented people around the globe. Going back to silver lining, at a time like this, you no longer have to travel to Israel or travel to Japan to speak to someone or meet with someone. Everyone's a Zoom call away. And as a best practice, I spend about two, three, four hours a week just talking to people around the globe and seeing the way that they're continuing to go on every day with the uncertainty of health, family, all the challenges that we all deal with, but yet are so focused on their job, talking about customers, helping them, just keeps me going. So that's my secret sauce. Secret sauce is talking to the internal people and the clients.

Absolutely. So look, I think we've been really transparent. We set a strategy in place two years ago and we execute through that strategy, but we've got a long road ahead. So I think you're going to continue to see a lot more from NCR in our transformation to NCR as a service. If you go to our website ncr.com, you will see very targeted offerings to the three industries we serve: restaurants, retail, and banking. And you're going to see a huge shift in terms of leveraging our industry expertise, the knowledge that we have that honestly is incomparable in the industry, and turning more and more of that into advisory differentiated offers that supplement our solutions. So I don't, I can't speak to a shift in strategy or anything different than what you've heard from me, but what I will say is we're very confident of our strategy and you'll see us continuing to march forward.

Oh, that's a really good question. I think my goal, my word is going to be overachieve. I think 2020 was resilience, 2021 is going to be overachieved.

Absolutely. It's a pleasure having been on. Thank you for having me, and it's an honor to be part of NCR and serve our customers. So appreciate that.