Tech Talks Daily
00:08:13 · Valerie Henderson
[00:08:13] S1: I think the things that they have to be looking for always are how how are they organized up the stack so you can think about the infrastructure, the data, and the applications. And I often find that because of the pressure customers are getting from their boards, their customers, their employees to leverage this technology, you can want to just deliver something. And I think at the end of the day, if you are not thoughtful about what you have and what you can actually deliver securely, you're never gonna get that momentum. And I actually feel it can be more dangerous if you rush these things out. And even if they look great in a demo, if you're not actually able to turn it on and show ROI over time. And my belief is it does not have to be a crazy amount of ROI in the beginning. We have some customers that might... Maybe you're saving 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, but the way these things compound over time can be so meaningful. And that's the other piece as well, just being thoughtful of, okay. Where are your expectations? And I think starting at the bar low and rising it over time is the way to make sure that you're actually able to codify this within a business. Because, otherwise, it will always feel like something extra. I mean, at Caylent, we had to reinvent the way we deliver. It was always human based and based on time and materials, and we had to totally change what that looked like because AI changed the way our coders worked, our developers worked, how all of our actual IP could help power and speed things up across the rest of our projects. So I think, again, it's looking at the whole stack and then your operating system as a company. And if you don't have clarity on how this is gonna fit in there, a demo is just literally a demo.
00:10:07 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:10:07] S0: 100% with you. And Yeah. If we look on our news feeds and maybe even go on Netflix, the the hugging face and so many big headlines there has made a lot of people a little bit, security aware, or certainly more so than they were. So on the topic of deploying AI agents securely, I was reading that you've embedded AI deep into your AI first approach, but tell me a little bit more about that and how you've been able to scale your services organization in this AI era, but most importantly, doing it securely.
00:10:39 · Valerie Henderson
[00:10:39] S1: So that's... By the way, I mean, we think the most important thing from the beginning is Yeah. Security. And the the great thing about AWS is obviously integrated in everything they've ever built built is that notion. And so for us, that's just been part of our DNA. So we don't do anything without thinking about the governance to access first. And the cool thing is we have an incredible group of technologists that work within this business. Now they're spending time with our customers every single day helping build. But as people finish projects and have some time on our bench or our builders team, they were able to build us an incredibly powerful platform that we've able... Been able to build a harness that has allowed us to scale as the technology has gotten better. And I feel like there was a period of time where there was this belief of just token maxing. And I think now we think... We don't even think it in the context of the tokenomics as much as the and how we're thinking about what that looks like. And we exist to serve our customers. And right now, what our customers need is they need expertise, and they need agility and speed. So when we thought about how we are delivering, we thought about how can we help our customers in both of those categories. Now the amazing brains of our technologists have a deep level of understanding of the different platforms across AWS and Anthropic. But the speed thing, the AI unlocked what that could mean. And I think there's some element of it that's table stakes. But for us, being able to look at how we're using it, package it, and actually build a wrapper that takes all of that IP and make sure that when people start a project, they have access to that and knowing what someone has used and be able to accelerate the outcome for customers. The other thing that we've changed is our incentive structure. We want our delivery organization to be incented to help customers deliver and get what they need faster and better, meaning a higher satisfaction CSAT and speed. And that has been unlocked for us in an incredible way. I mean, obviously, that changes the way people think about their behaviors, but it's been amazing because I don't think that that's traditionally how delivery organizations have worked.
00:13:04 · Valerie Henderson, Neil C. Hughes
And that goes back to you have to rethink all things from first principles as you're integrating this technology into your company. [00:13:14] S0: And as we record this, we're literally weeks away now from 2027. I think when we look back 2026, we'll be remembered for Agentic AI and the huge advances that have been made there. And many CEOs will be behind the curve looking for 2027 to make their move or or try and improve what they're doing. As CEO, as someone that's having huge success here, I've got to ask you, what does Agentic success look like to you?
00:13:38 · Valerie Henderson
[00:13:38] S1: I would say Agentic success looks like to me a couple of things. Number one, a really healthy organizations have incredibly amazing talent and retention. I always... I think one of the most important things for a company like Caylent is our ability to hire, develop, and retain our technologists. And for me, our technologists want the ability to spend their brainpower on the most important and critical and hardest problems. So if we give our organization the right agents, the right tooling, the right platforms to give them that time and that ability to be creative and work on those problems, that's success because that pulls through to all of our customers. And I think that that's the piece that is harder to measure on the ROI front, but we do look at actual retention from an employee standpoint as an ROI. Because if a if a technologist or an architect is thinking about where they wanted to work, they wanna go work somewhere where they're gonna learn, and they're gonna be pushed, and they're gonna have access to the latest and greatest technology in this space, and that's Caylent. So we really think about, Agentic success from a internal standpoint from that perspective. And then for our customers, if every single one of our customers can answer the question of what's been the value of this, that is success? If they cannot answer that question, I would say that we have failed because you should not take on this work in building these agents within to these workflows unless you can answer that. Now I understand some level of experimentation that needs to happen, but we have to do the work to be able to break down these problems and these organizations and these teams to be able to answer that.
00:15:27 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:15:27] S0: Love that. Absolutely perfect. And I've also been, doing a little research before you join me on the podcast today to learn more about some of your recent research. And there's a standout stat in there for leaders listening that nearly 60% of enterprise leaders, they're already running agents autonomously in production. So great news there, but most are still starting small and then expanding as agents move... Continue to prove themselves, which is a a sensible approach. But where do you think people still need that sign off, and where is it maybe safer to just let agents act on their own today? I know it's a big move. It's... It's like letting your kids leave home. Right? What is the right moment?