Welcome to this Cloud Wars special report on executive changes at a Cloud Wars Top 10 firm — Workday — as well as the automation/process mining leader UiPath. This discussion features the insights of Cloud Wars founder Bob Evans and Acceleration Economy’s Tom Smith.
Highlights
00:25 — The discussion centers around Carl Eschenbach and Rob Enslin, who have recently become sole CEOs, after serving as co-CEOs, of Workday and UiPath, respectively.
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01:46 — The co-founder and now former co-CEO of Workday, Aneel Bhusri, has said he was “after” Eschenbach, who had been a board member, to take the CEO reins for four or five years. Eschenbach had been a top executive at VMware in the past through years of hyper-growth so he gets the mindset and approach that high-growth companies need. He was also a respected venture capitalist working with high-growth companies. This frees Bhusri to focus on what he loves: strategy and technology.
03:39 — Eschenbach noted in his recent CEO Outlook interview that Workday has replaced many country and regional leaders around the world. The total addressable market (TAM) for Workday outside the US is 50% of its TAM. But in practice, it’s only 25% of revenue, so that’s a big focus.
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05:18 — Eschenbach’s brought in a lot of new sales leadership and other C-level executives. He’s taking the strong Workday culture and adding a great customer focus as well as urgency on the sales and marketing side of things. Eschenbach has said the company has had a somewhat passive relationship with partners, emphasizing partners that can suggest new ways to grow based on their capabilities, technology, insights, and relationships.
08:07 — At UiPath, Rob Enslin became the sole CEO while co-founder Daniel Dines has taken on an innovation leadership role. Enslin held executive leadership roles at SAP and Google Cloud before coming to UiPath. Enslin stated publicly he intends to continue leading go-to-market initiatives and strategy, sending a clear signal he intends to stay fully engaged with customers and ensure the company stays attuned to their requirements, which are evolving quickly in the GenAI era.
09:33 — Enslin has stated UiPath is about “building simple solutions to complex problems hand-in-hand with our customers,” the need to build applications tailored to customer needs. He referred to partners as customers’ “vocal champions of AI-powered automation.”
12:09 — Bob notes that other companies including SAP had co-CEOs in the past, but that can introduce complexity and layers in decision making, and that prevents moving quickly and nimbly. Bob predicts we’ve seen the end of the co-CEO model.
