- Judson, good afternoon.How are you?- I'm well, thanks, Satvinder.How are you? - I am doing well.I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.So every time I speak with you, we talk about AI.It's something you're really passionate about.I know it's something Microsoft's really passionate about.There's a huge need for more and more use cases.Where are you seeing them the most,and where are you helping customersreally change themselves?- It's been funny actually to seehow fast it's evolved, Satvinder,even in the period of time we've known one anotherover this last year.A year ago, if you came to our Customer Visit Center,you would've seen a lot of customers coming in,and, you know, kicking the tires,and poking around the surface area of AI capabilities,you know, with generative AI having,you know, really just hit the scene about 18 months ago.And most people sort of casted it aside,and said, "Well, this is great."It's," you know, "some parlor tricks," so,or, "Maybe it can help me write my holiday cards,"but it's never really going to amount"to anything in business."You know, three months later, they came backwith all very solemn looks on their face, saying,"You know, we're pretty sure the AI robots"are coming to kill us."You know, "What can you do to help?"So you went from like complete disbelief to fear-- Yeah. - To today, to your point,customers come to our Briefing Center with a listof 100 big ideas of what they think they can dowith generative AI,and if they've paid an advisory firm $25 million,they have 400 big ideas of what they think they can do,and that's fine and nice.But we really actually spend a lot of timehoning in these scenarios into pragmatic innovation,which I mentioned before.But we're passionate about making surethat AI investments actually drive business outcomes.And so, there are four categorieswhere we see very consistent outcomes being driven.The first is around enriching the employee experience.So what if you, what of your AI scenarios?How is it actually going to change how people get work done?Are people going to be able to collaboratemore effectively than they were before?Are they going to be more productive in their individual jobs?Is the organization going to get a lift from the AI experience?The second is how can it change customer engagement?Can you revolutionize customer engagementthrough the use of AI because you find better answersfor customers faster and more consistently than ever before?And can you personalize your engagement with customersthrough the use of AI because of the unbiased understandingof the data that underpins the same?The third category is aboutreinventing business processesand reshaping them altogether,because if you think about it, every business processwe have today has been around human workflow,moving an object from point A to point B,or a piece of intellectual property from point A to point B,and if you sort of step back of it and say,"How can AI reshape the process itself,"we're finding really good innovation projects there.And then the last category isjust bending the curb on innovation.How can you innovate faster?How can you produce more lines of code,more better lines of codemore effectively, more efficiently?How can you innovate the nextin a computer-aided design engineering scenario?Lots being done to help democratize innovation.You know, innovation is, everybody has a passion for it,but somehow there's been this almost exclusivity associatedwith those who can innovate and those who cannot.You think about the number of people on the planetwho maybe have a brilliant idea about solving a problem,but they don't know how to write the code to do it.Somehow now we have, through generative AI,been able to break down those barriers,and democratize the experience.If you have an idea, if you want to create,AI can empower you to do so,and faster than ever before.- On this spectrum that you talked aboutfrom organizations that really lean in, embrace it,and see it as a value add, see it as a reasonfor recreating their value statementfrom a customer perspectiveto the other end of the spectrum, fear,what's your advice for companies that are stillin that end of that spectrum?- Well, look, I would say broadly,anytime you fear something, the best thing to do isto get as close to it as possible.You know, understanding helps to dismantlea lot of fear in general terms,and I think AI is no exception to this.Sure, a lot can go wrongif the technology is not harnessed well,and not managed well, and not governed,and not used responsibly,but you can say that about a lot of things.And so, the deeper understanding you have aboutthe applied use of AI in your environment,that you're understanding about data privacy and controls,AI content safety, putting the right tool chain in place,so that the guardrails for innovation are establishedinside of your organization,and then you can harness and wield somethingthat may have once caused fear in your mind.But simply choosing not to embrace it,or, you know, step forward into deeper understandingis actually going to put you at a greater riskto being susceptible to others that may be innovatingaround you at lightning pace.- The Microsoft LSEG partnership,it's been almost 18 months,and I've been privileged to be part of itfor the last 12 months.Give me your sense of where you thinkwe're genuinely adding value from a customer perspective,because I love what we are trying to do.Our mission is to transform financial services,and I genuinely believe the partnership that we havewill enable us to do so,because we bring different strengths,but the combination of what we areand the value we can create from a customer perspective,I don't think anybody else can.So what are you hearing from customers?What's the way forward?Where would you see us in another 18 months?- Yeah, look, first of all, I think even the wayyou framed the question issort of a good underlying thesisfor why the partnership makes so much sense,because you have a tremendous amount of expertisein the financial services industry,LSEG is a trusted brandand a trusted partner to so many in the industry,and Microsoft is providing the empowering technologyto bring the next level of innovation to life,and now infused with generative AI across the board.And so, fundamentally, the partnership,you know, is well-forged,because you bring great expertisethat has no overlap with ours,and reciprocally, we provide the same.I think the other thing that is really powerfulin the partnership is both LSEGand Microsoft are trusted brandsacross our mutual customer base.In other words, our mutual customers are rooting for us.They want us to help provide more valueto them in a more cohesive and efficient way,and a more integrated way.I think if you think about the challengesof understanding financial data and inferencing from itand understanding how to drive next best actionsfrom the data, again, you kind of come backto this democratization, you know?The world of a financial analyst is somehow a gatedand exclusive world.But if you can open it upand empower others to understand thingsthrough natural language and discover the insights from dataand have it served up to you in a conversational way,this idea of a copilot for every roleand every organization and every circumstance,I think, is going to serve our customersextraordinarily well, right?And so, if you think about the data that underpinsso many financial institutions todayand the decision-making ethos,LSEG is going to continue to providefantastic services in that regard,but now, they're going to be able to be exposedto so many more people through generative AI,because those insights are far more easy to digestand understand for those that may not have deep expertise.And then in the workplace environment,the daily recommendations, the objection handling,the insights, the summarization,the things that people can use, you know,right in the environment in which they workare going to accelerate productivity.And so, there's this individual productivity,there's this organizational productivityI think that's going to liftour joint customers moving forward.Look, what's next for us is we have to deliver.We, I think, have a lot of fansin terms of our joint product roadmap and strategy.I think our customers are,especially the ones that have been early design partnersthat have had their hands on some of the capabilities,are very excited about it.And if we deliver on the roadmap that we have,I think we're going to be in a fantastic place,and a place that actually has usahead of, frankly, really anything in the industry,and from that will be a platform for usto just have continued innovation.- I love it when both of us say that customers areat the center of everything we do,and I often use this as an example.Our Design Partner Program really does put the customerat the epicenter of everything Microsoftand LSEG are doing.And that's the feedback we getfrom them as well, right? - No, totally, I agree, yeah.- So Judson, look, amazing time to be in the industry.- Indeed. - Amazing time to partner.Thank you so much for making the time for us.- Satvinder, thank you so much for the partnership.It's really, really been a pleasure to work with you,and we're excited about what lies aheadin our future of our partnership.- Thank you.
