Speaker 0 | 00:09.562
Hi nerds, it’s Michael Moore and I’m here with Sam Nafziger, IT manager at Gripple USA. Welcome to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Sam, how’s it going? Is this your first podcast?
Speaker 1 | 00:21.265
Yes, yes it is actually. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 0 | 00:24.406
Ah, see we roped another one in and convinced them to… to join this fun little event here. This would be a good one. I’ve read up on you. I’ve got a bunch of information on here, and there’s a lot to talk about. But it’s time for our icebreaker segment. It’s called Random Access Memories. I ask a question, and then you respond with the first answer that comes to your head. So, strangest thing you’ve… ever spilled on your keyboard?
Speaker 1 | 01:02.896
That’s a good one. It’s got to be some kind of food sauce. I’m going to go with the McDonald’s barbecue sauce. That’s definitely been on my keyboard.
Speaker 0 | 01:15.366
McDonald’s barbecue sauce. Anybody that’s in IT knows that we don’t get to eat unless we’re cooked. So the computer. So I completely understand the barbecue sauce, uh, spilling all over the keyboard. Good thing. They don’t cost a lot of money. Um, if you could be any computer part, what would you be?
Speaker 1 | 01:42.262
Hmm. Um, probably a power supply, you know, that’s, that seems pretty straightforward. I don’t think that fires a lot of, uh, uh, maintenance. And, uh, you know, that’s, that sounds like me. I don’t require a lot of, uh, uh, fluff or, uh, maintenance, if you will. But at the same time, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, consistent, you know, it doesn’t really break down, you know, how often are you having to replace the power supply? Um, I I’d say that’s, that’s definitely representative of myself.
Speaker 0 | 02:15.276
I like it. And, uh, we’ll, we might swing back to that power, uh, power supply analogy later on. Um, All right, last one. Your printer is out of ink. Do you buy more ink or do you buy a new printer?
Speaker 1 | 02:33.099
Oh, that’s easy. You just throw away the printer.
Speaker 0 | 02:37.843
How did you even get to that point? I ran out of ink the other day, and this is what caused this question. I ran out of ink on my printer. I didn’t have time to go search for another printer, but I seriously thought about it. I was like, maybe I just go buy another one.
Speaker 1 | 02:57.257
Yeah, you know what? To answer that honestly, I would go buy another cartridge, but I would not be happy about it. Let’s put it that way.
Speaker 0 | 03:07.764
Oh, Sam, we got so much to talk about, man. I’m really interested. I was looking on here and I was looking at what you’ve done. There’s so many things that you’ve done here. And what I, what two things came to, came to mind, the biggest pieces I saw one was, uh, um, all the work that you’ve done on ERP, uh, being an ERP analyst and all those, uh, different pieces of even in other solutions working with the ERP. And the next one was, uh, business intelligence. Um, and, uh, I want to start with ERP because, uh, business intelligence, I have, uh, I want to get into that, but I also want to tie it in with using business intelligence to get into digital transformation and using the strategic, the company’s strategic strategy there to get pushed forward. So but let’s start with ERP first, right? Because I get this one. This is like something that happens a lot in companies where and I’ve been in a few where they just decide to replace the ERP. because that’s the source of all their worries. And the focus always goes to the IT department first, in my experience, to say, hey, what GRP should we buy? Or what GRP should we design? And then, ultimately, I have to always boot it back to them and say, hold on. We’re not there yet. And then talk about… you know, the processes that go on in companies. I want to hear your take on this because you are, I mean, I looked at your stuff. You’ve got the ERP. I would say you got it down, but you got the ERP experience and that’s huge. Let’s talk a little bit about your experience with ERP. And if you want to start with a little, you know, how you kind of got into it. Sure. Go right ahead.
Speaker 1 | 05:16.609
Sure. No, I’d be glad to. So it’s funny you kind of mentioned that. I happened to listen to a podcast episode from the other day. I believe his name was Jose, but he had… He had mentioned something that kind of struck me in that what got him interested in IT was when he was younger, he had been messing about with some sort of radio transmitter, and he figured out that he could override certain signals in this radio transmitter as people were driving by in their cars. And it ultimately sparked an interest in him that just kept going to the degree where he was able to use that interest and learn. and find other interests in other areas of technology. And I’d like to use kind of analogy to that end because my interest started in a similar way. You know, as a kid, I would get into technology by fixing either a DVD player or TV. You know, I’m relatively young, so I don’t have, you know, a memory of when there was never technology, but I can definitely appreciate having to, you know, restart and reboot a complete… Um… PC with a fresh set of windows because my brother downloaded too many songs off LimeWire. But at the same time, that ultimately sparked in the same way to the degree where I kept that as a personal interest as I progressed throughout my college years. But the difference between the path that I took to IT and most people is I didn’t actually study that through school at first. I took a more standard approach to college in that I just studied business. I wanted to really understand how businesses were ran, how the administration behind businesses worked, why there were certain departments set up and for what reason. And what I came to understand out of all of that, and this took me up until the end of the degree and getting that degree to understand was that when it comes to IT and how IT relates to business, I think that’s where I really started to see the difference. there’s very few people that even understand 1% of IT, and not only IT, but the data that’s being maintained and managed by IT. And so I recanted that personal interest as I graduated and said, well, if no one else is going to get into this, I will because I have this personal interest in technology. And I want to understand how businesses are being maintained by way of their data. Um, especially as it was becoming more and more relevant, you know, 10, 15 years ago. So at the same time,
Speaker 0 | 07:57.458
let me enter, let me interject for just a moment because you made a few, a few points there that I want to just make sure we clarify. So real quick, what, what is your degree in? So we, so the audience knows.
Speaker 1 | 08:08.428
I have a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a focus in economics.
Speaker 0 | 08:13.652
Okay. Um, so now, so now based on that, uh, um, I also, by the way, I also went to, my degree is in management information system, which is in the College of Business. The funny story there is that I actually went for computer science and then realized how much math is required in computer science. And then got up out of engineering, walked my way over to the business department and was filing ever since. But this is an interesting little thought because… Here you are, economics, business administration, going that path, and you identify that there is a lack of understanding about information. And one of the points, and this is so cool, because one of the points about IT, notice IT doesn’t… nowhere in it does it say computers right it’s information technology it exists solely because we are moving information from one spot to the other right and so exactly nation movers i love that you are so in tune to this uh concept um and this is probably going to drive most of the most of the conversation it’s interesting too that you reference jose in that in that podcast from before um very heavy on technical and how he got into it from a technical perspective and very different from how you landed into it. So it’s a great contrast. And by the way, that was a great episode. And if people haven’t checked it out, do check it out because if you listen to that episode and you’re going to listen to this episode, you’re going to have a really nice understanding of… the different widespread challenges you face in IT. So back to this, information technology, specifically in information, right? You identified that there was an opportunity, so to speak, to help companies harness their communication, understand, sorry, harness their information, understand their information. and then turn that into a strategy. So let’s continue from there.
Speaker 1 | 10:38.813
Absolutely, yeah. You kind of just nailed it in that I realized the opportunity to progress business and not only progress but help to realize the value that they’re missing. At the same time, the way of reading this data and the simplest way that I could come up with at the time, and I hate to use the simplest, it was more so the most convenient. Because again, I didn’t have that background in IT. So I kind of tried to pick my easiest route or most feasible route, I guess I should say, to the understanding how I could solve that problem, which in fact was learning a language SQL. So I picked up some courses on that. I got certified in SQL. And then from there, I joined as an ERP analyst at a business right after college. And I basically did… Just what I’m saying, I told them entirely how their business was being ran by way of their data, what their data was telling them that they were maybe missing out on, and kind of maximized on that while also leveraging other departments alongside this analysis to help boost themselves, which again, helps secure that kind of trust in IT, or at least in the IT department that I was in.
Speaker 0 | 11:59.411
Agreed. I think the interesting there is, did you teach yourself SQL?
Speaker 1 | 12:05.416
I did at first. And then I quickly realized that you hit a ceiling when you do that self-paced and self-learning. And you really need some sort of external learning platform or instructor, let’s say, to guide you and teach you. So like I said, once you get to that certain ceiling, you realize that. okay, I can maybe, you know, maintain a system. I can maybe read a system. Um, but I like to compare it, you know, to any other language, right? You know, you always know that friend that took three or four years of Spanish in high school and always says, yeah, I can maybe read it, uh, but I can’t write it or speak it. Same exact thing. You know, it’s, it’s, you know, I can, I could read it at that time. Uh, but then I realized, okay, I can’t really write anything from scratch and I definitely can’t, you know, explain a super complex SQL code to someone else.
Speaker 0 | 12:58.335
You hit the nail on the head with that. This is an interesting thing that happens in IT a lot, which is you can teach yourself a lot of things, but you will eventually hit a ceiling. And that ceiling, interesting, Sam, in my opinion, is the realization of how much is actually out there. Right. So. You can say, oh, I got a good understanding of what this does. And then at some point you reach the point in which you go, oh, wow, I understand that I don’t understand it all and that there’s so much more to learn. And I think that that is what you’re kind of talking about. Right. With the ceiling.
Speaker 1 | 13:38.789
Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly that.
Speaker 0 | 13:41.511
Yeah, this is this is common and in a really big probably do a whole other podcast on on just that, which is, you know, you know. understanding what you don’t know, right? It’s tough. I’m really interested in the thought here about you using SQL to analyze data and then explain to the business leaders what their data means, because it requires not only understanding SQL, not only understanding what the data is and what it’s used for, but also the processes that the company uses. and what they need that data to do to, from a strategic standpoint, to push their business forward. So I’m actually interested in this. And this almost is, I think, feel like we’re kind of diving out of ERP and going into business intelligence, but let’s do it, right? Because I’m actually, you know, I’m actually pretty interested. And I can, and I think we can move ourselves back to ERP as well. But let’s, let’s dive into business intelligence. It looks like your dog is highly, highly addicted as well.
Speaker 1 | 14:54.631
I’m going to go put her in that cage.
Speaker 0 | 14:58.053
Don’t worry. I guarantee the listeners love the additional. What’s the dog? What’s the dog’s name?
Speaker 1 | 15:06.723
Her name is Lucy and she’s just, she’s, she’s just been moved to a new apartment. So she’s still getting used to it. So I do apologize. No,
Speaker 0 | 15:14.545
Lucy’s a great girl. And, uh, and she’s a BI enthusiast. And, uh, forever be on this podcast with you. So there you go.
Speaker 1 | 15:24.628
Yes. No,
Speaker 0 | 15:25.468
but I want to get into intelligence, right? I want to get into this piece about, uh, you know, about the, what it takes to speak with.
Speaker 1 | 15:35.427
you know leaders and champions in an organization and actually get the answers you need to understand the data yeah i think uh in particular when it comes to understanding the needs of the department um the the step of of taking you know the next next the next step in certification and learning is is crucial um you know you can you can use what you’ve learned personally to to get to a certain point with that type of communication to other department leaders. But until you understand fully what you’re talking about and what you’re looking at, it’s going to be a missing picture for all. So I’d like to say that when it comes to maybe explaining to the business what you’re looking at, not only do they have to understand maybe where you’re coming from, but you also have to be at a certain level of experience and education to be able to accurately and appropriately depict that.
Speaker 0 | 16:40.387
Yeah. You know, it’s actually probably better that we’re talking about BI before we’re talking about ERP because it’s almost kind of the first step towards figuring out what ERP you’re going to get, right? Is understanding the business, understanding their data, and what their needs are.
Speaker 1 | 17:02.602
Exactly. I mean, I’ll give you a really good example. There was one company that I worked at without naming names that had used a Sage system, a Sage ERP system. I think it was maybe Sage 100. Very antiquated for the time that we were using it. And I basically, after learning SQL, came to realize that this was not the system that we should be using. It was a manufacturing business. There was no, or very little, I guess, manufacturing modules or programs built into the Sage system. And I came to realize as I researched that system very, very easily, and obviously that it was more so geared towards accounting and strictly accounting and financial service type businesses. And so that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make is before you get to that point of realizing, okay, what… What kind of ERP system do I need? Do I need dynamics? Do I want to go with something more common like SAP or Oracle? You need to get to the point of understanding what kind of data you have. And ultimately, that data is driven by what kind of processes you have in your business. So if you’re in a manufacturing business, you’re going to be producing large and vast amounts of data behind that manufacturing process. And you need to be able to maintain it and utilize it in a system that is capable of handling such data. and has a place more so to store it, right? And that system, that Sage system, I can’t remember entirely what modules were available, but very, very minimal, you know, in comparison to like a dynamic system that’s more so geared towards, you know, an operations-based industry. So, you know, understanding that data, I guess, would be the most important part to picking an ERP system.
Speaker 0 | 18:57.341
Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good point. and understanding that data and not only understand that data, right? And I think probably the next thing we’re going to chat about is understanding the processes and then how people work with that data in that organization. One of the things that I always kind of tell people when they’re looking for a new ERP system, as I say, hold on a second, you know what? You have reached a point in which you have an opportunity here. And the opportunity is to reevaluate every single process that you do in this company and see if it’s still valid or if there’s a better way to get it done. Anytime you’re replacing any technology, to me, that’s the time that you can spend with the business leaders and the champions around the organization to say, hey, let’s relook at this stuff. Let’s figure out if we’re actually being efficient. You know, so I would love to chat about, about that and let, and, and some of your. uh experiences in that regard because it’s such a tough thing to be in it and then have to have a conversation with leaders of the organization in different business units different competing departments um and let them know that what they’re doing may not be the most efficient way to do it yes that’s definitely a tough
Speaker 1 | 20:33.378
challenge that if you’re new to it, which I have, was recently, can be difficult to explain, especially when you have a team or personnel, let’s say, that have been doing this for several years. And especially in a situation like myself, again, relatively younger guy coming in, telling them how to basically make their job better, do their job better. you know and it’s not to say that you know it’s it’s entirely to replace their job you know and i take the example of something like edi uh where you know it’s it’s you know more antiquated businesses more um uh historically you know run-type businesses have any sort of edi implemented but if you were to talk to them about edi their first thought would be you know you’re trying to replace me the same way that the screens and mcdonald’s are trying to replace the cashiers um and that’s just not true The point of bettering an IT process and system and bringing in new technology, like you just mentioned, is to ultimately create more value and give more value to the personnel for them to realize. So by eliminating those mundane tasks of data entry, you’re now free to actually manage customer service and actually manage a relationship. I’m not saying that it wasn’t being done before, but at the same time, it gives you more time to do so. It gives you more ability to do things that are not able to be automated. And that is truly where people have value is things that and processes more so that are not able to be automated in any which way. It requires a human touch. Those are the things that we should be maximizing on as a business. And. in every other way when it comes to, like I said, the example of data entry. If you can automate it, why not? You know, anyone can pick that up as a skill. It’s not a personable trait to be able to type, right? It’s not a unique trait anymore, at least. So, you know, at this point, it’s… It’s hurting you to keep doing that and continue doing that as part of your daily task.
Speaker 0 | 22:59.558
You make a great point. And this is an interesting one because I’m going to kind of circle back to something you said before. Remember when you were learning SQL, you hit a ceiling and businesses do this. They start off and they’re doing a bunch of stuff and then they hit a ceiling. And then when they hit that ceiling, they turn inward and they say, OK, well. What are we doing internally that we can make better, right? Before we do any type of, you know, improvements in, or sorry, adding any different additional money and funds and different pieces, let’s look internally and see what we can do better. This is not to say, and I’m glad you made this point, this is not to say that anybody’s doing things wrong. This is to say that what you’ve been doing up until this point has been adequate for the businesses. But now we’re moving into a different… um a different spot you know we have to evolve and part of that evolution is finding things that can uh that can be automated just like you mentioned and automating and that doesn’t mean displacing people that means um freeing them up uh so that they can work even harder to into the business to do other items and make the business grow and growing the business means additional jobs and additional pieces so uh It’s almost like a pause. Let’s rework what we’re trying to do and then set the business up to grow again, which everybody benefits from. In my opinion, I think that that’s probably the way that it should be looked upon.
Speaker 1 | 24:41.763
Yes, you’re absolutely right. And at least in my opinion, you’re absolutely right. Change is not only good, it’s necessary for a business to thrive. And if you’re not constantly looking inward to realize this change, you’re doing business wrong. And it’s only a matter of time before it will fail. And that’s proven. That’s the time theory, right? That if you don’t change with the time, if you don’t change with the ways, it’s not going to last. So I like to use that as an example that, you know, if you’re complacent with where you are, that may work for the time being, but it’s not going to get you to tomorrow, you know, in theory. So I think when it comes to IT, especially, it’s almost a duty of ours to highlight the change and highlight. uh, that the need for change, and this is probably more so that the business degree and speaking than anything, um, to, to, to bring forward, uh, you know, reasons for change. Um, and especially because most change nowadays is driven by technology. I mean, it’s just a matter of fact, we don’t, we don’t drive change, uh, in many other ways at this point.
Speaker 0 | 25:56.148
You know, you know, the next, I’m going to kind of move into a next piece based on, uh, you know, what we’ve talked about. When we’re in college, we learn how to do things and we learn the process, the right way of going through and doing things and stuff. But sometimes we don’t and we’re not taught. And I was lucky to have a few really good teachers and professors in college that actually did bring some of these pieces up. But sometimes we do not learn. All the ins and outs of what could go wrong, the political ramifications internally to the organization, the challenge you’ll face from funding, doing everything by the book the right way and setting it all up rarely actually ever happens. There’s a, you know, there’s, hey, we can’t do this because of cost right now. It needs to be pushed down the road. So you kind of operate in this mode of. Let’s do as best we possibly can with the funds and the processes that we’re willing to change at that moment and then look to the future to keep improving it. And I wanted to get your take on this because so often when we have conversations, we keep them kind of general and we say this is the way to do it. And then people go out and they do it and they don’t and folks don’t know how to react to some of the. problems and issues and unknowns that are definitely going to get your way in any project, really, but especially in ERP and business intelligence and almost certainly in digital transformation. So I’m going to let you pick, but I want to hear some specifics about any of the challenges that you’ve really… uh faced in any one of these projects and again like i said i mean any which ones uh erp bi digital transformation i want to hear the challenges that you faced uh and i want to really dive deep into how you overcame those challenges um what were the you know the concessions and the uh and you know how the political uh pieces uh went went down uh that allowed you to continue to be successful and move the stake, uh, you know, the goalposts, so to speak, uh, down the road. I’d like to hear some of that.
Speaker 1 | 28:34.893
Absolutely. Yeah. Um, so, so with business intelligence, I’ll start there because that’s, that’s somewhat of an easy one. It’s almost in the name, right? Um, it’s an intelligent, you know, product slash service, whatever you’re using to, to form that, that intelligence. Uh, so in that sense, you know, it’s, it’s intrinsic. valuable to everyone. Something that’s intelligent is by nature smarter and who doesn’t want a smarter process, especially if it’s within your own responsibility or within your own scope of work, right? In that sense, and I’ll use the example of reporting, because reporting is something that a lot of people nowadays are starting to move towards a more intelligent approach. style of thinking. But especially with reporting, you see that a lot of businesses are starting to turn from using what I like to refer to as static reporting, which is something like an Excel report that you open it up today, you open it up a year from today, it’s going to have the same data, same model, nothing’s going to change. It’s going to look the same exact as it did a year ago. Whereas business intelligence is really geared more than anything to make data readily available to you. And in that sense, you can think about business intelligence as a dynamic version of reporting, and at least when it comes to reporting, that is. So, and again, I use an example of something like a service like Power BI, where, you know, it offers essentially a way to model your analysis. And instead of having to recreate this model and having to recreate, you know, your cut and copy and paste across your Excel spreadsheets, it can model that and kind of frame that in a way where it basically just needs a new set of data to represent and visualize that model. So at that… point, it’s very easy to highlight the value to the rest of the business and say, Hey, you know that thing that took you 10-15 minutes to run twice a day? Here’s a way that’s going to make it so that you just have to click refresh. And it’s no longer going to cause you to think about it. That’s going to be a model and instead it’s just going to feed, have data fed into it, new data fed into it. So from that perspective, the sell of business intelligence is actually very easy. But I want to also point out that the sell of business intelligence is almost necessary to drive ideas like digital transformation. And that’s where it becomes entirely more valuable because business intelligence is really not doing anything, not providing you anything that you didn’t already have. It’s just providing you. it to you in a more intelligent way. Digital transformation is taking that a bit of a step further and providing you additional value in your business that you maybe didn’t have or you did have but weren’t maximizing on. And again, I use the example of something like business intelligence as a driver of digital transformation. By way of highlighting the value in that, people then intrinsically realize and realize on their own time and space and whatever. hey, this had saved me X amount of time doing something smarter this way, using a better technology this way. I wonder if there’s a better technology for this other process that I have. And that, in a nutshell, is what digital transformation is. But in a more realistic sense, digital transformation at the heart is utilizing data to drive business decisions instead of human intuition, instead of intuition. And instead of deciding… and making a business decision based on how someone’s feeling or an emotion. Primarily, that is. Now, that’s not to say that some businesses aren’t using a combination of both, but instead using purely data in a pure data sense to drive these business decisions. It varies by industry. You think about the fashion industry. It’s probably hard to utilize something like digital transformation and get that kind of value out of it, right? Because it’s hard to predict trends. It’s hard to predict analysis to the trends and make models for those analysis, right? So it’s a little bit more difficult. But you take something like an industry that we’re in, that I’m in, like manufacturing, and you say, okay, I’m getting a ton of data here. And more data than anyone. person or any one department is going to be able to tell me by themselves. Therefore, you know, the more data the better, I’m going to be able to make a better decision now that I have this data. So again, it varies depending on the industry, but digital transformation, again, at the core is utilizing that data to make your business decisions instead of relying on certain human intuitions.
Speaker 0 | 33:53.421
So two things on that. One, uh, jokingly, I almost now want to get somebody with fashion on, on, on the phone to understand how they use business intelligence, uh, because now I’m curious to see, you know, how many people ordered this many shirts versus, so no, but, uh, but more on a, on a, on a more serious note, the something you said just struck me is kind of a, you know, one of those, uh, aha moments, right. Where you tied, um, you know, the digital transformation and business intelligence to operating out of logic and less out of emotion or intuition. And what was so interesting about this is there have been so many times in which I have spoken about changing something within the company, either to reduce costs or improve efficiencies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? Whatever the different changes is. And- Sometimes I’m met with fantastic. What a good idea. Right. And other times I met with, but this is what I use. Right. And I’m not willing to move and change. And when I met with that emotion, I never try to match it with emotion because that’s a losing battle. You know, people will you know, when they when you hit emotion, it’s such a it’s such an innate, instinctual, you know, piece of us that it’s hard to. You know, it’s almost like logic starts to move out of the way. And I want to get further into that. But for this example, I wanted to explain in the aha moment here is moving people away from emotion and back to logic is such a big deal because that’s where you start to get, you know, decisions that are based on logic and that and not on on emotion. And I. I’m not going to discount that there’s a lot of people out there that just have the intuition needed to run businesses and get stuff done. And that is not a knock on anybody. But when you start to grow and you start to get big and you start to have a lot of data, why not start to use that information to your advantage? And also kind of combine it with what you’re saying, which is, let me get all the information on this so I can make a logical decision. And if there’s something open to interpretation, let’s use instinct on top of that, you know, to get moving. So, but now I have a more informed decision and not just a pure instinctual decision or pure emotional decision about what’s going on. So, and so now I’m going to, I’m going to toss it back to you. But when I toss it back to you, here’s what I want to really dive into. That instinctual, that emotional response to changing things. How… Well, it also creates what a little bit of a political and when I talk about political, I’m talking about internal struggle in between different departments and people about what what should happen next. Right. Because people have a lot of stake in the company and they have a lot of pride in what they do. And it’s tough to tell them, you know, I know you’ve been doing this, but we should really look at doing it a different way. I want to understand. And I think. the audience and the business leaders want to understand how they can cut through that the best way, retain the talent that they have, not upset them, and then get the processes changed. I know, by the way, that’s not an easy task, but that’s why I got you on. So you can share your experience and enlighten people.
Speaker 1 | 37:51.432
That’s a great question. And it’s something that you know, I continue to learn. It’s a never-ending process and how you, let’s say, convert, you know, an individual to think more logic and data-driven than intuition and emotion. But I will say, going back to the point about business intelligence, it starts with representing a value to the person, right? It’s always going to seem, as a leader in the business, when you’re going and facing downward, that you’re trying to make a change for your own benefit or for the leadership’s benefit, right? Rarely is it seen where leadership is pushing a change down and only highlighting the benefits to the lower level. So I like to use that point, especially when it comes to business intelligence, like I was saying, where when you introduce a new technology, you need to be entirely highlighting and explaining the value from their perspective. And then that will buy them and get them on board with change. I’ll use a very good example that I’ve recently been dealing with at my current company, which is we’ve recently adopted and by adopted, I mean started to heavily use our CRM system. We have a sales team that utilizes it. And, you know, up until a certain point, you know, maybe a year ago or so, we really didn’t. We honestly really didn’t use it to every degree and every angle. And, you know, I kind of came up with certain ways to highlight that value, right? It’s taking, you know, an example of creating a company with some records and some data against it in CRM and highlighting, OK, this is going to give you readily available information. This is going to give you reporting at a moment’s notice. This is going to give you relational data compared to your customer that you may be looking at. like maybe the appointments, the emails that you’ve had against them. It’s going to give you it all in one space. It’s highlighting that value to them, not to yourself, and keeping on that. Because again, that’s what’s going to drive them to think, well, maybe I could use this. Maybe I could use this system. Maybe the way where I have to search through my inbox every single time I want to remember when last time I visited them was is probably a bad way to do it. Maybe there’s a better way to do it. And it does take some time. As I found in the last couple of years, it takes time to drive that point home. And that may be, again, an age difference, an experience difference, whatever you want to call it. But at the same time, I don’t think that’s the biggest factor. I think the bigger factor is, like you pointed out earlier, the way that business has always been ran, quote unquote, is probably what’s driving people to not want to change. But again, highlighting it, what that value is to the individual and not to the leader or maybe to the whole business is going to make that individual want to change. And that’s ultimately what you need to start driving it. Once you have them bought into that degree, you can implement training methods and training programs that basically just take that inkling to change and exponentially grow it. You say, okay, well, you want to start using CRM? Here’s a… ton of classes on how to use CRM, you know, and you throw it at them and they then want to learn more about it because they know it’s going to be more valuable to them. And that’s ultimately what starts that process of digital transformation.
Speaker 0 | 41:43.477
That’s such a good point. That is such a good, so many good points in that. I mean, as everyone knows, I mean, we’re all employees of organizations, unless we have our own business, but then you’re an employee of yourself. Um, but even in that regard, understanding what the changes are for, understanding how they will impact you, that internal communication from leadership that would be initiating the project, and trying to explain that information off to the employees at the organization in a way with which they explain it. so that the benefit to the folks there is known is so huge. That is such a, you take away the doubt, you take away the worry, the questions, all of that can be addressed upfront. And now you have, what have you done? You have increased the champions in your organization just by talking to them. And another point that maybe you’re gonna get to is that through this, conversation, this internal conversation that you have, you may learn that there may be great reasons why things are done in a certain way. There may be additional new ideas that come from the people that are doing the work on a day-to-day basis. And you may factor that into new ways to do it from a process standpoint. Now, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how to get business leaders. who are tied up in meetings, trying to run the company, pulled eight different directions at once, trying to keep external clients and trying to keep internal operations running, keeping the finances correct, all of these things that are just compound the C-level. How do you get them to understand and communicate effectively? to the employees of the organization? Or is there some bridge that needs to happen there that will help that?
Speaker 1 | 44:11.551
That’s a very good question. And to be entirely honest, this is quite literally what we are in as a business in the middle of, is trying to highlight the value that we’ve presented by way of our products and services like business intelligence. to help lead the charge for digital transformation. We’re in the middle of a transition for that. But that said, I can just briefly speak on some of the successes we’ve already added to that degree and highlight in particular, we are an employee-owned business. We always have been, and we’re very trustworthy people. I trust most if not everyone I work with, and that truly has… been reciprocated and I’ve felt the reciprocation across every single site I’ve been to, all over the world. So there really is no factor of, no, I don’t believe what you’re trying to do and trying to support change for is not for me. Because again, employee-owned, everyone’s in it for the same reason. We’re all trying to get each other’s support to help drive and build our business to be. more profitable, more successful, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s an even easier sell, at least from my perspective, when I can say, okay, you know that business intelligence program that I introduced? Here’s another program that is going to be similarly valuable that I’d like to introduce as well, and here’s how it works. And again, because we’re employee-owned, the business leaders are somewhat seen at the same level. As in, I can go talk to a business leader and I can explain something like Power BI and the value of it. And they will listen to me. They will listen and give me feedback on what they think about the value. So I’d say, if you don’t already have it within a business, find a business that you can absolutely trust. And it doesn’t have to necessarily be one that’s employee-owned, but you should all be on the same page as far as your goals and where you want to head as a business. So if you don’t have that, yeah, if you don’t have that, it’s going to be entirely more difficult to drive a change, especially at a higher level.
Speaker 0 | 46:32.340
Very fortunate to be at a place you’re at. It sounds like a great atmosphere and a lot of people pulling together, you know, for the sake of the greater good. Right. And and that is tough. You’re right. That is tough to get in every type of business. Having that is extremely critical and crucial to the project’s success, because not having that will have massive delays, and you might end up putting things together with some customizations that don’t make sense. And later on, if people leave, it will actually cause more trouble in the ERP system or whatever you’re implementing. It’s really interesting when you talk about, you know, understanding those, you said, understanding the value that the change will make towards the individual and the organization. Because it’s not usually how things are done. Usually it’s This is how the change will impact our organization to make us more profitable or us more efficient or us more, you know, or tied to the strategy that was created by the C-level and that we’re all trying to move towards, which are great things you definitely want to make sure you tie your project to. But often not talked about is addressing. individual needs within an organization and making sure that the employees, you know, are often a better position. That can be as simple as making sure the employees have a more efficient way of working, time-saving, collapsing very complex processes into more simple processes, and making that… life a lot easier uh day-to-day um where they can focus and i think you made this point uh focus on actually doing things that will push the business forward um and value driven yes yes and not not mundane it’s exactly i i agree with you here and this is an interesting uh an interesting thought and um i would like to spend a little more time on it real quick because I think this is huge and I think this is kind of a big deal for both business leaders and every person listening in this audience to this podcast. Understanding that individual, you know, the individual needs of the organization, you know, even in the organization. Can you expand upon that a little bit?
Speaker 1 | 49:36.208
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, well, like I said, it starts with understanding. at an individual level, what people want. And that truly begins with having a trust in your employee base. So again, if you’re not employee-owned, which is a very easy way to garner trust, because again, you’re all in it for the same reason. then I would say find a business that is. But once you have, let’s say, a trust and common understanding between yourself and maybe a couple other people or other departments of your business, and you’re all on the same page with, okay, this is how we’re going to progress the business to move forward. It’s about looking inward and constantly evaluating yourself. I go back to the point about change is not only good, but necessary. You should be having… if not every day, regular meetings and regular sessions to determine what needs to change. You should never feel somewhat complacent, or like I said, even somewhat complacent about or feeling good about where you’re at. Unless you’re a market leader like Google or something, you don’t have the right. And I hate to say it in that way, but as a smaller mid-sized business, you just can’t afford to feel like you’re doing enough. So the constant need to change and to evaluate yourself should be, you know, self-apparent in that, in that fact in itself, you know, and this is, this is the economic degree in me talking that, you know, you’re just not that big. Right. But, but at the same time, it’s true. It’s true. You’re not, you need to, you need to put it in a realistic sense and think, well, you know, I’m, I can’t afford to you know, did not change i can’t afford to not adapt um in a similar way that these larger businesses are because i will i will just lose to them you know at the end they’ll adapt to what i’m doing uh and and i’ll be left then out so again and and digital transformation is one of these ways that you can you can drive these kinds of changes um but it needs to be driven in from the top down uh so so when you when you go to make you know again you’re talking about smaller mid-sized businesses but When you go to make change and you go to make rationale or reason for change, it needs to be driven from the top down or else no one’s going to buy in. It’s one thing to explain the value to an individual and say, okay, this is going to make their life better and here’s how. But if their boss isn’t bought in on that idea, if their manager isn’t bought in on that idea, they’re not going to do it because that’s not their job. Their job is to do what their manager… tells them to do and cares about. And at an even higher level, if the CEO of the entire business is not bought in, then even worse. The managers are not going to want to change because he’s not going to want to change. So you need to have a buy-in from the top down. And the top needs to be the absolute highest level it can be while also maintaining that individual value.
Speaker 0 | 52:54.914
No, that’s a great point. There needs to be clear, constant communication from members of the, well, the business leaders, right? To the people that are making it happen in the organization. It is a, it’s an interesting and tough piece. And, you know, you had also kind of chatted with me. you know, kind of prior to this about the IT department and the way that it’s viewed sometimes, you know, and I wanted to give you a second to kind of chat about this, because we’re going to go into another segment here in just a moment. And I’m going to use that to kind of lead into the next segment. But I want to talk about your experience real quick with how the IT departments may sometimes in some organizations be used and what your thought is and how they should be used.
Speaker 1 | 54:03.861
Yeah, no, I’m happy you brought this up because it’s something that I am definitely trying to change. And I believe I will. And that IT is in a historical sense and in a general historical sense, not with every business, right? But with most… most again smaller to mid-sized businesses make up most businesses nowadays are are not looking at i.t as um a uh a value-added department they’re looked at as an essential department a necessary department sorry a necessary department but not an essential department meaning you know if we had to outsource it we probably could um so so i think changing that mindset is is something that i’m i’m very actively trying to do uh because it’s it’s quite the opposite without it you wouldn’t have the foundation um to move forward as a business you wouldn’t even have a foundation to begin with So I think, you know, with that being said, ideas like digital transformation are not only so important to the leaders, but to IT. This is the door into that window of acceptance, right? That layer where, you know, we fit in and can relate at a, and I hate to say it in this way, but at like a layman term level, right? With the rest of the business, you know. IT fits in with digital transformation because you need to understand how technology works, software, hardware around digital transformation to drive it. But at the same time, the leaders of the business need to tell you what they’re wanting to change and transform. So this is basically bridging that gap between the rest of the departments and IT to say, hey, actually, we’re providing just as much value as everyone else. And here’s how it’s relating to every single one of you.
Speaker 0 | 56:01.857
Yeah, that’s a great point. And I’ve seen a lot of successful people be able to help business leaders by letting them know the questions that they need to start asking so that they can get the right data. And then taking that information and communicating it with the workers in the organization that. uh, are doing the day to day and explaining to them, you know, how that, you know, how these things are going to affect them and then listening to them. Right. Cause it’s kind of a back and forth. I feel like, uh, it’s, you know, you go talk to talk to one and then you get some information, you talk to the other, and then you kind of work your way into a consensus of what needs to be done based on both of those conversations. And sometimes they go up, they have happened more than once. Um, our next segment. last segment, IT Crystal Ball. And why I started including this segment is because what I found is that we’d often go and have these great conversations, but then we didn’t understand where to take them, right? And so, and we didn’t theorize what the possibilities were going to be moving forward. And I really wanted to start taking some of these conversations and then gearing them towards setting up what could be coming up in the future. Not necessarily predicting what’s going to happen, but the best of your ability, seeing the patterns that are happening and where those patterns are going. And I specifically wanted to talk about this in regards to what we talked about, which is businesses. They have gone through so many changes over the past several years. So many different things have happened, and they’ve had to work with the IT department to do it. IT departments have just been almost burnt out in some regards with all the changes and things that have happened in the past several years. However, the job doesn’t end. It keeps moving. And now that we’ve… had all these massive changes and things and movement um i feel like the there’s a there’s something upcoming there’s a there’s a next thing you know whether it be with digital transformation or business intelligence or uh or trying to combine them all together uh uh you know and and finding a better way to get it get things moving but i really wanted to take this piece that you had which was uh talking about the way to use IT correctly, right? The way to use their talents and their thought processes and the way that they think and really harness that as a strategic initiative moving through the company. I wanted to see what the IT crystal ball was for the future of IT in organizations and what your thought was on that.
Speaker 1 | 59:22.292
Sure. That’s a good way of putting it. I think you might have to use that for yourself when I ask the same question to my employees. No, but I think to put it in a simple sense, it is digital transformation. But in a more broader sense, it’s the idea that IT is what drives transformation in a business nowadays. I go back to my point about growing up. with technology. There wasn’t a period where I didn’t grow up with technology. So and that’s not not going to revert. So the idea that technology is not going to be driven by business is just not going to happen. It’s at the forefront of how businesses are being driven and only increasing. And so that being said, the sell to, let’s say, be the driver of how business changes is entirely and readily available. Because you basically are taking… everything that you are using in a personal sense and just converting it to be in the business sense. And if you’re not doing something, if you are doing something personally, but not for a good reason, why are you doing it personally? So I think when you talk about IT and maybe where it’s going in the future and how it relates maybe to other departments in the business, it will be seen at not a background, a little bit at the forefront. and seen as kind of a driver for change. I truly believe that, you know, in the next five, 10 years, these, especially in the industries like, you know, that I’ve worked in, like in manufacturing, where, you know, it’s entirely critical that, you know, to succeed in comparison to other manufacturing businesses, that is to utilize data and technology, that they will be reliant on IT. But again, it starts with utilizing these systems and processes that are somewhat new, such as the business intelligence and programs that support that idea to highlight that kind of value. But yeah, like I said, I think in the next five, 10 years, IT will not be anything like it is now, as in be seen as a background task. but more so at the forefront and kind of drivers for change in a business. And if not drivers, then vehicles for the drivers. If not drivers themselves, which to be fair, I don’t think IT should necessarily be the drivers entirely, but we should definitely be the vehicles. And I’ll kind of end this with an analogy that I stole from an event that I attended where someone had basically said that IT is and only should be a clean water source to the rest of the business. And that you shouldn’t be directing how you use the water, you shouldn’t necessarily be providing bad water. Your job really is only to make it available, one, and two, clean. And then as long as you do that, the rest of the businesses, you know, the rest of the business will use, you know, for their own for their own purpose. You know, they’ll use it to drink, to shower, whatever. Right. So it’s it’s entirely up to the business departments, apart from IT, to decide how to use that that that data and that technology. All IT is is really meant to do is to be that that clean source of that technology and not. dirty in a sense that it’s not clear how we use it or how we train to use it, or it’s not clear who uses it and why it’s being used. That is what IT, if nothing else, should be entirely responsible for going forward, is highlighting in a perfect way what technology is and what technology is available and how to use it.
Speaker 0 | 63:47.950
Wow. Great insight, nerds. It’s Michael Moore, and I’ve been here with Sam. uh nastiger it manager at ripple usa uh on dissecting popular it nerds sam thank you so much uh for uh being with us today and uh and please come on again absolutely
Speaker 1 | 64:10.753
i’ll have you anytime i’ll be on anytime you like to have me and uh thanks for having me today i really do appreciate the opportunity it was great talking with you as well um i i’d love to chat with anyone else that would love to game up with me if you’d like to reach out to me i’m on linkedin and I’m available that way.
Speaker 0 | 64:26.801
Yep, and we’ll put your LinkedIn details up on the site. Thank you guys.
Speaker 1 | 64:30.843
Great.
Speaker 0 | 64:31.603
Have a good one.
