Webinar

Targeted Digital Transformation : Revenue, Asset Uptime & Risk Posture

About this webinar

Digitization projects, especially those involving cloud-mobile applications that automate fieldwork, offer clear benefits to end-users. But what factors should leaders evaluate when selecting the appropriate mobile solution?

We were honored to have Krish Dharma, Strategic Advisor for the SEMI Supply Chain Initiative, and Reid Nuttall, Principal at Capgemini America, as our speakers for the occasion. Our founder, G. Satish, will lead the discussion on how to assess digitization efforts with a focus on ROI, compliance, and sustainability, along with Connixt’s insights on the key considerations for such decisions.

Evaluating Digitization Projects – How Should Executives Decide?
Date : April 24, 2024

Speakers

Krish Dharma, Strategic Advisor, SEMI Supply Chain Initiative

Reid Nuttall, Principal, Capgemini America

G. Satish, CEO, Connixt

0:17
hello everyone and uh welcome to this uh webinar session also being
0:23
simultaneously live streamed to our LinkedIn page and YouTube channel if you’re joining us there welcome to the
0:29
session and F free to leave a comment anytime during the session um my name is G Satish I’m the
0:35
CEO and co-founder at conx and our discussion today is about digital
0:41
transformation more specifically the nuts and bolts of how exactly organizations justify these
0:49
initiatives how does the SE Suite view these projects uh you know they sound great to
0:55
the managers the lines of business but why should any CEO or CFO care
1:01
to discuss this today on this panel are two very distinguished guests uh Krish Dharma and Reed nuttle season
1:08
practitioners who worked in lines of business and now consult and advise and both managers as well as the SE Suite so
1:16
I’ll do a quick round of intros before we jump right in uh Krish uh I’ll go
1:22
with you first you know a 40e track record driving Innovation and change in
1:27
supply chain operations it and Enterprise business
1:32
transformation uh he has held SE several senior positions management positions in
1:39
supply chain and operations and is currently leading the Supply Chain management initiative as as a strategic
1:46
advisor at semi an industry Association Electronics design and Manufacturing
1:51
supply chain U thank you chrish for joining us
1:57
here Reed has been a CIO in three different Industries and has deep experience in
2:04
selecting implementing and applying technology uh it functions he has led have been frequent Award winners such as
2:12
the information week 500 the computer World 100 and the utility and analytics
2:18
Institute best infrastructure business he’s currently the principal for utilities at C Gemini
2:26
and is involved in significant businesses and Technology ch initiatives throughout North America and for good
2:33
measure he was the CIO in the oil and gas industry at one of my very first customers in a previous company so
2:40
welcome to this discussion Christian Reed good to have you both here be here
2:46
to be here so um we’ll Dive Right In I want to start with this you know
2:53
the the title of this uh webinar is targeted digital transformation I would love to hear your
2:59
perspective Ive on targeted and digital transformation so go ahead
3:05
please I’ll dive in and particularly about the word Target it because
3:10
everyone’s been talking about digitalization and digital transformation for quite some time a problem is that so many people
3:18
treat it as a big project when in fact with the miraculous tools that we have
3:25
noway you can really Target your digitalization and have a project that gets something done that has a
3:31
significant Roi and is very quick you know modern it departments they really
3:36
need to understand what only they can understand they need to understand their data their data architecture they need
3:42
to understand their integration and integration abilities however why do they need to
3:49
continue to to um support software packages when you have SAS um other capabil software as a service and other
3:55
capabilities in the cloud nowadays you can take some of these tools you have
4:01
and Cobble together a solution very quickly that’s not a big project that has minimal risk and that can get the
4:07
benefits of the digitalization very quickly so that’s why I like the term targeted when you talk about
4:13
digitalization because it’s action you’re doing something you’re doing it now and it has permanence because it can
4:18
last because it’s supported by the experts being a SAS tool that you you
4:24
that you are utilizing yeah and if I can add to that read it’s it’s almost like fail fast
4:30
right you try something out you you it’s it’s agile you make make the process agile in trying something out if it
4:37
fails build it better and so on and so forth in my opinion there’s a little subtlety between digitalization and
4:45
digital transformation and let me point that out right I mean people tend to use it uh
4:50
interchangeably uh and perhaps it’s a Nuance but nonetheless uh digitization
4:56
is pretty much taking current processes and digitizing it you know making it uh
5:02
you put putting bits and bites around it whereas digital transformation is a few levels deeper where you’re actually
5:09
looking at the processes the associated associated metrics the tools and all of
5:14
that and then transforming the environment as well so I think that’s important to keep in mind as well as you
5:21
go through this process it makes a lot of sense and just a note I’ve gotten in trouble many times
5:27
talking about fail fast even though it’s the right thing so I always say um accomplish change
5:32
quickly but fail fast is the appropriate way to look at it just not to Market
5:39
it you know and and especially you know I I know in Industries which uh rely
5:44
heavily on reliability right as the first thing you know I think uh your
5:50
point is well taken read what I want to talk about in general right uh as a concept with
5:56
digital transformation and this kind of leads us to the second part of what of our title really uh the Three core areas
6:05
that we’ve actually seen one is accelerating Revenue growth uh increasing asset up time and
6:13
then we’ve also talked about improving risk posture so these are sort of the the broad result areas and in recent
6:20
times to this we add basic factor of sustainability that runs through all organizations this is what we want to do
6:28
so uh which leads me to my next question which is really the first thought about
6:34
software is that businesses based their decisions on these core rankers I just talked about
6:40
right increase Revenue including customer satisfaction which is Roi decrease costs which is Roi mitigate
6:47
risk and you know which is compliance um and then the last bit which I said is sustainability
6:55
so has this changed much uh you know have these factors changed uh
7:03
in in evaluating IT projects or application projects between the classical
7:08
Enterprise and this Brave New World of digital transformation how do you see
7:16
this so I’ll address that um they haven’t changed but there’s been
7:24
some addition to them and some other concerns and one is that speed of success matters more and as happened
7:32
more in the last couple decades as you’ve seen so many large it um efforts
7:38
where some have been tremendous success years later but now companies are are
7:44
expected to move faster so the risk and the speed of the project
7:50
is also included along with the ROI risk mitigation and sustainability and again sustainability is is new the other thing
7:58
that I’d like to highlight is that there’s a huge difference in the employee effect now it used to be that
8:04
we would look at a cost it’s reducing costs as part of the II as being a focus
8:11
that we’re going to take costs out of the business we’re going to take it by reducing the effort of employees um I think that’s really kind
8:19
of old thinking because while that is a part of it what matters more now is
8:24
employee engagement number one and employment retention number two I think
8:29
back to the days when we first put a laptop in the trucks in the utility that I was at and it was rough going because
8:37
we had a lot of damage to the laptops um mostly incurred by screwdrivers with frustrated people who didn’t want to
8:43
have technology next to them our people that are working now now expect not to
8:49
do the drudgery and they get mad when they see that their personal technology is so far
8:55
behind their business technology so they expect it to work and they will be more
9:01
engaged at the rest of their job and expanding the success of their job if you actually give them some digital some
9:07
technology that is closer to what they have at home that is able to do things that are different than filling out the
9:13
forms doing the the busy work things that they know that they’re being paid kind of by the hour for because it’s
9:19
busy work and the company didn’t care to give them the technology they need so that’s related to the ROI but I think
9:25
it’s a really important thing that we always need to think of is that Employee Engagement and retention means a lot more now yeah
9:33
plus in addition to that like you said Reed there is a time to Value right people are looking for results faster
9:40
and if you take the traditional view of how we put together uh Erp systems and
9:47
and other uh enterprise-wide systems those were year-long projects people
9:52
took their time there was a lot of time spent on designing the processes uh and and then configuring the systems user in
9:59
and so on uh today’s environment people are saying okay how can I get this up and running quickly and then uh get the
10:07
value as well quickly more importantly Technologies available today you know
10:13
there’s a bunch of AI coming into uh play today right um so there is the
10:18
ability to um you know harness a lot of the information that exists that can be
10:26
done only through U you know digital trans information kind of projects right
10:31
you have to automate you have to start collecting that information and and that in turn will help you get to that value
10:38
much faster I if I can sort of take off from
10:43
that too so the two one of the things and it sounds um you know uh you know a
10:49
bit tight when you say that but no user has ever complain my software is too easy to use or my application you know
10:56
is is not complex enough right and so when when Chris when you talk about Erp
11:03
projects and and and re when you talk about Employee Engagement frequently the two are
11:10
nowhere in the same discussion right because often times Enterprise projects
11:15
get sold in the boardrooms and uh you know the meeting rooms but uh the world
11:21
we live in for instance at conx you know where it comes to the mechanics or the technicians the folks out on the field
11:27
uh where it comes to the utility industry the crew that goes out and uses this and hence the screwdriver on the laptop right I think uh we’re seeing a
11:35
lot of that uh impacting how the current wave of digital transformation projects
11:42
are are actually uh you know evaluated and handled and to us at least uh the
11:48
biggest portion of this is uh adoption rates right how many users are willing
11:55
users and how many of them are unwilling users but there is no middle ground in
12:00
the sense that you know I we can’t have you know people not using the system at all which used to be the case with a lot
12:07
of the larger Enterprise projects so it’s it’s it’s an interesting sort of segue into I guess my next question
12:15
right so with these projects that we talk about these targeted digital trans
12:21
you know uh transformation projects especially as they relate to
12:26
the the nuts and bats right the cloud mobile applications such as ours really that automate Mission critical work on
12:33
the field these clearly deliver value to the end users right if it makes their life easier if it is fewer uh you know
12:42
times of walking between the place of work and the laptop or a kiosk or writing down on sheets of paper you know
12:48
with greasing hands and then trying to uh enter that information into a backend system clearly delivers value to them
12:55
but how do they justify this uh to an executive I mean if you are sitting there uh in the SE Suite how do you
13:02
justify this I somehow like to think that makes life easier for your endusers
13:07
is that a sufficient reason and especially where it comes to integrating with backend systems and and so on uh I
13:15
guess the basic question is what is important for the line of business owner versus how does the same thing translate
13:22
to a a SE Suite executive who has to make the decision about funding these things
13:29
yeah so let let me take a shot at that right so so again there are different levels of thinking uh at different
13:37
levels of the organization so if you take uh you know we take an organization and split it into five levels where we
13:43
say hey there’s a corporate goal which is maximizing shareholder value or
13:48
maximizing the return on invested assets then you talk about an executive level
13:55
uh set of metrics which could be increasing margins reducing cost those kinds of metrics and then subsequently
14:01
you Del down delve down into management controls what are the levers that go with the management controls and then
14:08
subsequently the the the uh the kpis that go with the functions could be in
14:14
the shop floor or the maintenance crew or whatever it is right so there is a
14:19
spectrum of measurements and and even compartmentalized thinking if I may
14:25
where people are looking at these at different levels so the guy on the shop floor could be worried about uh you know
14:32
uh overall equipment Effectiveness for example how much am I how much should I be producing what am I producing and
14:39
what are my losses uh how do I improve that or how do I improve my overall
14:44
output and U uh reduce my losses right so that level of thinking but you’ve got
14:50
to be able to connect the dots and uplevel it as you go up the uh the organization through the various levels
14:57
of management so that you cannot be speaking the language down at the very
15:02
lowest level you’ve got to be able to scale it up and and put it in the perspective of the person making the
15:10
decision does that make sense yeah and Chris I’d like to add on
15:17
to this using your words from earlier in this in this broadcast you know we were you were
15:22
talking a bit about the difference between um targeted digitalization and a digital transformation project when you
15:28
go up to the higher level you tend to think of digital transformation and of the big picture and building the
15:35
capability you know there’s some great software out there there’s great tools and whatever and in a big firm and you
15:41
know I’ve as a CIO I I’ve only been in in firms from four to 14 billion annual
15:49
revenue so the big forms you’re thinking about digitalization is my toolkit to
15:55
put together and to have consistency with it as you go through and one of the
16:00
failures that we have historically had in big firms is that the decisions are made at the higher level so we have
16:07
failed to give digitalization where matters at the lower level because we’re more concentrated on the roll out of our
16:13
tools as opposed to to a different point of view where we’d be more agile and
16:19
have a key passel the tools but allow the digitalization to occur with the
16:25
more targeted tools that don’t require support as much the the SAS type tools at a lower
16:30
level I look at I have a brother who is currently working with aund million
16:36
construction firm and he doesn’t have that much in IT project and the tools that they have are absolutely amazing
16:43
what he’s been able to do with that and he’s focused on the digitalization of activities and has had
16:50
a lot of success with that while I in the past have focused on the digital
16:55
transformation and actually have been guilty of holding up necessary projects because I was focusing on looking at the
17:03
whole work and while I could justify some of my actions in the past some were
17:08
good and some weren’t with the current level of tools is different it’s
17:13
different and you need to pay attention down below it’s like in the and I’ve said this before in the past I used to
17:20
say to justify this project show me the cost savings you know you’re taking a fourth of a person’s work away does that
17:26
mean I I actually pay that much a salary that’s a naive way of looking at it
17:31
because I’m not looking at the fact that nowadays employee knowledge means a lot and having their engagement to use that
17:38
knowledge matters in so you need to think of that and then also because I was always coming from the it site so I
17:45
want to protect my own little domain and I’m thinking about oh I want these tools
17:51
and you know some of these for the large firms these these resource planning tools you have are are
17:56
tremendous um and they’re getting so they’re not as bulky but still I would
18:02
focus on those projects that would use the tools I have at hand as opposed to see that there’s tools out in the
18:07
marketplace now that are SAS orent it that don’t cost my it Department a lot of money but could actually make other
18:14
people’s jobs a lot easier so that we can have a better return on investment so there is definitely a
18:22
different Viewpoint at different levels in the organization and I think that many of us at the higher levels of the
18:27
organizations have made a lot mistakes in the past so that’s a very Frank admission
18:35
there Reed because again I where we see you know as somewhat sitting on this
18:41
side of the table too is um for the line of business owner right to them it is
18:47
very granular in terms of you know here’s the cost of Errors right here is how I’m evaluated right cost of Errors
18:54
the number of inspection fails uh they need to increase wrench time increase asset availability up time which is a
19:01
little bit at a higher level but fundamentally I think their objective is
19:06
can they simply let the workforce do what they meant to do as opposed to you know data entry and so on and so forth
19:14
in the context of what you’re saying read or or how you you putting it crous
19:19
um yes those are important but they’re so granular right I mean they’re so down in the weeds it doesn’t adequately sort
19:26
of translate all the way up to the top If This Were to be a prioritization
19:32
project for you know a billion dollar Corporation or a four or a five or a 10 billion dollar company it is so granular
19:38
that I think it gets lost by the time it actually comes up to the sea level um it
19:44
kind of leads me to to the other question then what does ROI mean for the CEO the COO the CFO and the CIO because
19:53
I mean here I think one is the tangible versus the intangibles in evaluating these initiatives
19:59
Reed you touched upon this briefly which is sort of the HR impact right and something I like to call this is sort of
20:06
the institutional IP right can we retain the knowledge that my team is
20:12
accumulating uh and what if it is across multiple regions uh you know that we
20:17
talked about global tribal knowledge for example right across languages and then the it impact and
20:23
finally the agility so be great if you you both could kind of address these areas right for the different seite
20:30
folks and what does ROI mean there so again going back to the the
20:36
five levels of the organization as an example that I mentioned and and the fact that the metrics uh get
20:43
progressively up leveled as you as you go from the shop floor up to the Sea
20:48
Suite right it’s important to keep that in perspective so if you’re passionate about your metrics and the fact that
20:54
you’re going to improve labor utilization or uh you know some met
21:00
the the message I would send out to my team if if if if I was uh the executive
21:06
making the decision would be hey you need to uplevel your thinking as well
21:11
you know don’t just think of that sliver because I’m sure there are um other
21:17
intangibles or other tangible benefits that can be captured with this project so as an example um you mentioned Satish
21:24
that the tribal knowledge right um so if if I’m able to digit go through a
21:30
digital transformation where I’m able to digitize a lot of the uh learnings that
21:36
are or or maintenance tasks that people are doing right it it solves two problems one it
21:43
gives me a a good repository of techniques to use when a problem arises
21:49
first of all secondly my mean time to get to identifying the problem gets
21:55
reduced because now I can troubleshoot much faster and fix the problem much faster because I’ve got this repository
22:02
of stuff that people have have you know put into and then most importantly uh
22:08
you have the ability to improve your training as well for for your Workforce so if if somebody leaves that that
22:15
knowledge is not completely lost right so all of these factors become key but but the most important message for me
22:21
would be expand your thinking don’t just think of your sliver of it open it up to
22:27
think about oh by the way these are the other benefits so that I can translate it into something much much
22:36
higher I I do want to ask kind of a follow on question to that and this this
22:42
this is sort of and this is extremely related to this too right
22:47
um the the the there is this constant uh with larger businesses larger
22:54
corporations especially but we’ve seen this with some midsize ones too where they’re using Legacy technology and
23:00
simply there is no money to now move to newer technology or anything but this uh
23:06
age-old question of you know make versus buy you know best of breed versus you know core
23:13
application so there is a cost impact to that you know we constantly hear this you know end users say that you know
23:20
this is functionality I’d like to have but it’s uh read with all due respect it’s never going to fly past it right I
23:26
mean we’ve seen this uh because there is uh you know there is a technology tax to
23:32
be paid because this is all you know stuff that we’ve had accumulated over the years who’s going to unwind this
23:37
who’s going to sort of you know go through this and do this and of course you know there is you know not invented
23:43
here I mean there is a range of these issues that come up which frankly leaves the end user you know the folks uh on
23:51
the field the actual users kind of frustrated that it doesn’t matter what I think is good doesn’t matter if it’s
23:57
going to make it easy for me it’s never going to fly so this is somewhat an it related question because ultimately this
24:03
is these are you know it has to bless this so your perspective would be super
24:09
interesting yeah it’s all L from my perspective and of course it’s changed when I was young um so I’ve been guilty
24:16
of the wrong way of thinking but I believe that again in you
24:23
need a central Force an it that is very good at knowing things that are
24:28
particular to your firm that give you a competitive Advantage you need to know your data and its architecture you need
24:36
to know your Integrations your integration capability you need to also
24:44
um know and have hands on your security and that that’s key that’s role of it is
24:51
strategically important now I’d also in the past said that I need to know my
24:56
architecture I need to Def find a titling have all my tool there I think that part of the equation has changed in
25:01
the last decade or two and it’s more important to learn to be agile and to be able to let things happen quickly so
25:08
that you can actually provide something to the business I give an example two decade
25:15
decade and a half ago um with OG energy core our biggest
25:21
um unit was a utility and we’re putting basically a computer on every house Ami
25:27
system so we’re putting that in is brand new technology and we were one of the lowest
25:33
producers of in cost of energy in the country we had to do it very coste
25:41
efficiently In My Own It Department that I had Absolut control
25:47
over we were failing and I eventually moved my whole Enterprise enter
25:52
architecture Department into the program for the smart grid we called it because
25:57
my architect were holding us up and rather than understanding that they had
26:02
their role in what’s unique to us they didn’t need to have that role to be
26:08
limiting so that we couldn’t use new technology that made something and that by changing that we actually made it so
26:14
that we were capable of getting some new ideas there’s a gentleman called Mike Ferell a few levels down in the customer
26:20
relations department that came up with an idea which was a demand shifting U
26:26
for energy and I won’t go into it much but because we were able to use the existing tools that we had some and some
26:32
SAS tools on top of that we were able to have an idea that was key in making it so that we had the highest fiveyear
26:38
shareholder return of any large utility in the as electric Institute and that’s
26:44
all because we figured that our role was to be good only we’re good at and then
26:50
use modern tools for the rest I relate this also going back to when I was younger and had a little hair
26:58
that Bruce Porter was there in his book comparative advantage and talking about how important it is for a company to be
27:03
strategically on focus and that that’s the role of Senior Management and then you had um um Peter Ducker come up and
27:12
he simply went up and said well um culture beats strategy or eats strategy
27:18
for breakfast and understood that it’s not just where we focus but it’s how we
27:24
focus and how we get a culture that’s going to build our business that matters so you see how I had talked about people
27:30
before and engagement I think that the role of the big company is not to do the work and
27:38
not to limit the tools but to guide and make available so that the modern tools that don’t take a lot of support you
27:44
need to be smart there you need to be smart in security can make it so that you can have the targeted improvements you need and actually have this targeted
27:52
Target digitalization which will increase your bottom line significantly and if I can add to that
27:59
read uh I’d like to weave in the human aspect of it as well right I mean we all
28:04
uh go around thinking that we need the accolades for any any ideas right so it
28:10
may be that you want you have a pet peeve or youve realized that a particular solution would be very useful
28:16
to you and and traditionally you’ve been um stonewalled by uh the finance
28:23
organization or the it organization Co-op them you know you don’t
28:28
necessarily have to be uh the the person saying I’m leading the charge um you you
28:34
could give the credit to the to the others you could say hey we were brainstorming this and as I was
28:40
explaining my problem so and so from it or so and so from Finance said hey we
28:45
could do this and and so it becomes their idea and in the end you’re going to reap the benefits because the metrics
28:51
going to that are going to be improved are yours right so it doesn’t matter it’s really how do you get to the goal
28:58
um you know uh it really doesn’t matter so if you weave that part of it I found
29:04
that to be pretty successful across my career right where I give the credit to somebody else but I get what I want in
29:10
the end and I appreciate I’m sorry but I
29:16
appreciate what you said about people I I don’t care if you manage it or anything else success comes through
29:23
people you need to liberate people let them move give them the
29:28
rules that they can work in but make those rules to be loose enough so that they can use modern tools that don’t
29:34
violate key principles or Securities and let them work and you get Wonder for
29:39
that I mean I have Awards where I took the credit for people that just did
29:46
something and I didn’t even know they were doing it um and that’s fine and that’s what success does if you’re in
29:53
Central in in leadership and especially in it leadership yeah so saish one of the things we could
30:00
do is actually I can share the uh The Matrix which takes it all the way from
30:06
the kpis to the U uh the corporate objectives and shows the linkage across
30:11
each of these Dimensions right the five levels and we could uh we could post that up on your website for people to to
30:18
leverage as appropriate oh that’s a great idea chrish you know we’ll get that done right after this uh event you
30:24
know we’ll we yep yep we’ll we’ll put it up there and you know people should take a look at it it is a fairly
30:31
comprehensive approach to looking at this as kpi moves through different levels right uh makes sense it leads me
30:40
kind of as a we sort of end and we have a couple of uh you know viewer questions coming in
30:46
but sort of the one kind of last thought about this so we’ve talked about the
30:52
benefits of doing some of these projects or how to address the um the ROI the compliance the the risk
30:59
posturing out of all of this right but uh we talk of risk what is the risk of
31:05
not doing something today simply because there is no material impact or Roi or risk today the question is
31:14
uh in many ways and you know we we saw this over the you know during the shutdowns and all of that right I mean
31:20
things that we don’t anticipate right but the companies that were already on the path to digital transformation you
31:26
know weathered this much better than others who did not so if you could both
31:32
address this as a concept right it is not just it’s is the Roa in the risk for today but then what is the cost of not
31:39
doing it today answer you’ll become the company of the type that I tend to invest in
31:45
which loses value quickly because more aggressive people come over and take over and somehow no matter how smart I
31:52
think I am I I I cached the wrong ones if you want to be relevant you’re going to learn to be aggressive
32:01
quick absolutely otherwise you’ll be left in the dust and uh you know you’re really not helping yourself by not even
32:09
thinking about these things right more importantly it’s acknowledging that the world is moving on and you better better
32:15
keep Pace but secondly it’s it’s being able to do yourself be truthful to
32:22
yourself and say I need to be doing some of these things to continue surviving and and
32:27
satisfying my shareholders I mean big or small company it really doesn’t matter right you you you have a vested interest
32:34
or an obligation to run your business the way it should be run I I will sort of end this with the
32:41
anecdote before we jump into a couple of questions we had from viewers
32:46
but this is so critical right we’ve talked about the the the the sea level we talked about culture right so the
32:54
question of uh what happens when I do this great project which saves either a boatload of money for for my business or
33:02
which makes us more efficient or anything so I think we’ve seen this happen in the past that hey I can’t
33:07
project these kinds of savings because someone is going to ask me the question why was it so inefficient in the past
33:13
and these are real questions that come through and I I think it is a cultural issue it is easy to blame the individual
33:19
for thinking that way but I think it’s a cultural issue where they’re fearful of actually showing great results or
33:26
showing up somebody saying hey we didn’t we should have done this earlier I mean why not but the other thing that we’ve
33:32
seen um and and this is It’s comical but it’s also kind of
33:38
tragic when people say well hey you know I can’t become that efficient because that means I need fewer resources to
33:44
work on this particular thing and you know that sort of you know brings my budget down or brings you know even
33:52
worse it actually brings my utilization rates uh down it it actually impacts
33:58
what I can build and so on and so forth I think it’s absolutely a failure in culture and and and how organizations to
34:06
because again we talked about relevance right I mean if you don’t do this today your your competition is actually doing
34:13
it there already and it’s not even in your neighborhood you know halfway across the
34:18
world somebody’s already doing it this way and I think that’s the real challenge so anyway I’ll I I think we
34:24
could expound for a few hours on just you know these these challenges I want to dive into a couple of quick questions
34:31
uh before we wrap up the session so one um I’m a business owner of a midsize
34:37
business okay so should this approach be different for smaller businesses than larger ones and keeping in mind that uh
34:46
a small business could be as small as a few million dollars to 100 million or whatever so the broad question is should
34:53
this approach what we’ve discussed here how does this scale across organizations
34:58
large or
35:04
small okay so even though I come from the large and not the small let me just make one comment and I was waiting for
35:10
you Chris and then I saw you start to speak out when I was so I’m I’m sorry about that but I believe that in small
35:17
you get the same problem we get in the large and that is be careful about
35:22
increasing your maintenance cost so do the digitalization but but look for soft
35:27
as a service look for capabilities that you have where you’re not going to add a
35:32
whole bunch of support As you move towards the digitalization that that to me that’s a key to keep your mind on in small
35:41
business and I would probably add that it’s it’s perhaps a little easier for a
35:47
smaller business to think about changing uh depending again the on the maturity
35:52
of the organization compared to a much much much larger organization right because
35:58
there is baggage there is hierarchy there is all kinds of controls in place
36:04
that prohibit you from doing things that may not exist in a smaller environment so that’s that’s a perspective to keep
36:10
in mind as well and uh we have time just for this one more question any others that are in
36:17
here will address later uh after the event certainly um how do you factor in I
36:24
guess it goes back to one of the questions I had earlier how do you factor in Legacy C it should we keep adding to the stack to make it work or
36:31
find the money to migrate I mean this is a hard dollar question I mean it all boys around
36:37
dollars should they end Mass you know wait till everything migrates to the new
36:42
to new environment or should it should they at least make do with what they have I mean any thoughts there General I have a
36:50
perspective all for the class but to me is exactly what I said before okay that
36:57
you have some technology that you’re going to you’re going to have to maintain or phase out you need to do
37:04
that but when you look strategically at your it Department you need to say what do I
37:11
want to be very good at and keep in house and you want you want to be very
37:17
good about knowing your data and knowing how you’re going to integrate it knowing how it’s architect it you want to know very good about maintaining your
37:25
security but the tools that you have the tools that are actively used you want to maintain but as you grow you
37:31
don’t want to become a maintenance shop so you want to find more tools beyond the core that you have now that you
37:38
won’t be stuck with maintenance your goal is not to provide just one user’s breadth of tools and spend you don’t
37:47
want to spend 70% of your money on maintenance yeah plus you you you have
37:53
to balance it out right you don’t want the proliferation of various uh you know Solutions or or software as
38:01
a service solutions on the one side uh and then uh try to help you you need
38:06
somebody managing each each and every one of those on the inside as well so that that’s a fine balance that’s on on
38:13
on on one side of the equation the other side of the equation is in in today’s environment it’s it’s very easy to
38:19
connect systems right API calls you’re able to connect to Legacy systems and and so that that integration layer has
38:26
been simplified quite a bit so to the extent that you can get up and running on some of these um software as a
38:34
service solutions faster than you would uh trying to rip out the guts of of your
38:39
legacy systems mean so it’s it’s it’s a it’s a fair Balancing Act I guess so I
38:46
so the the the one perspective I have on all of this and we deal a lot with Transportation sector so you know it
38:51
kind of fits in there you know all of us you know when we drive our cars right
38:56
some of some of them you know we we retain you know old ones for sentimental value but whatever
39:02
reason or you know you simply don’t want to change now so the question is really
39:07
uh we know that next year we’re going to change the car we we drive or a year and a half from now we’re going to change
39:12
the car we drive should we maintain it today or should we you know check the brake pads and should we actually you
39:19
know change oil or should we just let it go to waste and uh and then you know figure
39:26
out this later because who wants to put in more money into you know this asset that you know you’re ultimately going to
39:33
retire and uh I think it is a fine balance between saying you know there is a nice to have that you can probably
39:39
make do without but then that is the fundamentals of saying that I still want to get from point A to point B safely
39:47
and if there is a way I can do that without cons consuming as much gas or in these days as much electric charge as as
39:53
I as I as I as I otherwise would I think that’s a that’s a smart decision to make
39:59
then no one wants to stop maintaining and drive something unsafe and nobody willfully says you know if I can save x
40:06
amount of dollars on on gas or on charge then I I should do this so again
40:14
I guess to that extent it goes back to you know this the safety the risk posture I mean this is exactly what
40:19
we’re talking about and then the savings that might actually ACR from doing the smart thing so I’ll stop there with my
40:26
analogies I mean I don’t want to keep going that but it’s it’s it’s at least a thought but uh other than that I mean we
40:32
we we’ve actually gone a little bit over time but I I do want to thank you so much uh chrish and Reed for your time
40:38
today this has been a very interesting conversation and it feels exactly like that a great discussion just great
40:45
hearing you gentlemen talk about you know the things that you’ve done and and frankly a couple of areas where you
40:50
think you know at least read you were talking about the Younger You versus versus the well let me say that the
40:57
newer Youth and and thank you for you not older you are
41:05
you know thank you for all the perspective we have today and you know I know there’s going to be more questions coming in this is going to live on
41:11
LinkedIn live and and on on our YouTube channel and so on so again ask the
41:17
questions come in you know we’ll respond to those but thank you both so much for your time today truly appreciate it and
41:23
you know we’ll catch up again soon and we’ll pop the U the Matrix you provided chrish on our website anyone that is
41:30
interested please go down go there and download it it’s a telic document riew all right thank you very much thank
41:37
you both thank you CH see you

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