[04:52] What is your experience with ERP?

My interest in technology started when I was very young and I would try to fix things. I remember resetting and rebooting a PC with fresh Windows. I studied business at school, and I wanted to understand how businesses worked. I wanted to understand the administration and why certain departments exist.

I came to realize through this that few people understand IT in business, and that rekindled my interest and set me on the path to where I am. I realized the opportunity to help people harness technology and information for their business strategy and progress. I ended up getting certified in Sequel and joined as an analyst after college and helped them leverage their data.

[12:00] Did you teach yourself Sequel?

At first I did, but I quickly realized that you need an external learning platform or instructor after a certain point. It’s like learning a language in high school. You hit a ceiling.

[14:33] Let’s dive into business intelligence and what it takes to communicate with executives.

When it comes to understanding the needs of the department, taking the next step in certification is crucial. You can use your learning up to a point but until you can see and understand the full picture you aren’t able to be efficient.

[17:00] You need to understand the business and the data before deciding what ERP to use.

Correct. A company I worked at was using a Sage system; already antiquated. After learning Sequel, it became clear that this wasn’t the correct system. It was a manufacturing business, and this was geared to accounting and finance businesses. Before you can get to the point of deciding what ERP you need, you need to understand the business and the data that you are seeing.

[20:00] Tell me about bringing up deficiencies to leaders when it comes to IT.

It’s definitely difficult, especially if you’re new. Especially if you are joining a team that has been doing things a certain way for years, having someone new come in and telling them how to do their job better. For example, people often think things like AI are going to replace them, but it’s about using automation to free up employees’ time to work in areas that are more human contact facing. If you don’t change with the times, the business won’t last.

[27:20] What challenges have you faced and overcome them? Whether it was in ERP, digital transformation, or any business intelligence.

I’ll start with business intelligence because it’s in the name. It’s a service or product that is intelligent and benefits everyone. For example, reporting. Many businesses are moving away from static reporting, like Excel. Business intelligence is more dynamic and able to model and frame the data. The sale of business intelligence is generally easy because it is necessary. Digital transformation takes that a step further by providing additional value to your business. It’s about using logic to make decisions instead of emotions or habits.

[36:55] How do you cut through emotional responses to change and retain people whilst driving change?

That’s something I’m continuing to learn. It starts by representing a value to the person over the business. Explain it from their perspective. Highlight exactly what benefits the changes will have directly for them. It takes time to drive that point home. Once you have them bought in, you can implement training and education to begin incremental changes.

[43:25] How do you get business leaders to understand and communicate with the employees?

We are currently in the middle of this process. We are an employee-owned business, and it is a very trusting environment. We’re all in it for the same reason. In this case, it makes it easier because we are all working towards the same thing. If you don’t have a workplace with trust, find somewhere that you do otherwise driving change will be extremely difficult. You need to be realistic. Change needs to be driven from the top down or no one will buy in.