Mad Money

Adobe CEO: Microsoft partnership will automate sales, marketing with AI

Key Points
  • Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen said his company's partnership with Microsoft will spur innovation in the sales and marketing fields.
  • The CEO told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer that enabling people to create and businesses to transform have been Adobe's primary goals — and tailwinds.
  • Narayen also touched on job creation and Adobe's role in White House technology council meetings.
Adobe CEO on Microsoft partnership
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Adobe CEO on Microsoft partnership

Adobe Systems Chairman, President and CEO Shantanu Narayen sees a bright — and much more streamlined — future when it comes to his company's partnership with fellow tech titan Microsoft.

"I think both companies share this common vision of being able to help businesses transform," Narayen told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "When you think about what we can do with the combination of what they've done with Dynamics and what we have done with the Experience cloud and the Marketing cloud, together we can go in and automate both sales and marketing with artificial intelligence."

Artificial intelligence has quickly become a centerpiece of Adobe's business as the design software company incorporates machine learning into products like the Adobe Sensei.

"The volume of data that we are tracking and enabling people to understand and infer things from ... that will help a creator be a better creator. That will help a marketer be a better marketer," Narayen said.

Watch the full segment here:

Adobe CEO: Microsoft partnership will automate sales, marketing with AI
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Adobe CEO: Microsoft partnership will automate sales, marketing with AI

For example, Adobe's Experience Cloud, which helps brands manage customer interactions and advertising, processes 100 trillion transactions every year.

Narayen said the data gathered from those transactions will in turn feed into Adobe Sensei, which will do things like transform paper documents into editable digital files, create predictive models, and change expressions in photographs with a few clicks.

"It's a way to really bring creativity to the masses. And it's a way to enable everybody to be a creator," Narayen said. "We partner with great companies like Nvidia who are able to process this in real time, but it's all the magic that's created by our product folks."

All this ties in to what Narayen dubbed Adobe's two tailwinds that helped the software giant deliver better-than-expected earnings on Tuesday: individual creativity and a changing business landscape.

"People want to create and businesses want to transform, and we are mission-critical to both of them. We are driving tremendous innovation and executing," Narayen said.

And whether that execution is proven by 49 percent growth in Adobe's Premiere Pro video editing platform or an 86 percent jump in recurring revenues, Narayen said knowing what creators want is the key to Adobe's success.

"I think using the right lens and unleashing innovation on our product development, that's how we do it," the CEO said. "If you're a creative professional, we're just as mission-critical as a Bloomberg terminal might be for somebody in the financial community. And on the enterprise side, when small and medium businesses want to create an online digital presence, and they want to have commerce as part of their future, they use us to enable themselves to have this online presence."

When Cramer asked whether Narayen communicated these sentiments to President Donald Trump at Monday's technology council meeting at the White House, the CEO responded diplomatically.

"Design and aesthetics have never been more important, and I think as it relates to modernizing government, all businesses are transforming so that the customer experience is front and center. There's no reason why the government shouldn't do exactly the same," Narayen said.

The Adobe chief added that when it came to the meeting's central topics, modernizing the government and enhancing the skills of the U.S. workforce, he emphasized STEAM over STEM, the well known acronym for the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, adding arts to the mix as an equally important skill set to master.

With regards to job creation, Narayen issued somewhat of a warning to the country's leaders, urging them to remain focused on the matter.

"If you're not careful, I think it impacts the competitiveness of our country vis-à-vis some of these other countries," the CEO said.

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