Speaker 0 | 00:08.458

Hi nerds, I’m Michael Moore hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Tom Ferrucci, Chief Information Officer at Natco Home Group. Hey Tom.

Speaker 1 | 00:17.020

Mike, how are you? Nice to nice to be on. Thank you.

Speaker 0 | 00:19.241

I’m doing doing very good. Glad to have you on today. I’m gonna jump right into our icebreaker segment and then and then we’ll get into some details here. But This is an icebreaker segment called Random Access Memories. I ask a question and you just respond with whatever comes to your head first. Super fun. Have fun with it. Your first question is, if you could rename any IT device or software, what would it be and why?

Speaker 1 | 00:46.597

Oh, goodness. You know, early in my career, I spent a lot of time working with equipment from Digital Equipment Corporation. You know, just kind of giving you a sense of how long I’ve been in the industry. And they had… device names and it was almost like going to Ikea the way they named some of these device names the DECWA the DELQA there was so many odd named devices and to remember them all it was always a challenge right so you know maybe giving some of those older legacy pieces of hardware that I’ve had some experience on names of what they actually did the switch you know or some sort of you know actually back when it may have been a hub going back that

Speaker 0 | 01:27.368

for but these these unusual names that deck used to come with always used to amuse me yes true too i yeah i did have um uh i did have the uh you know i don’t know if it’s fortunate or unfortunate uh of of my earlier my career uh having to come across uh some digital equipment and uh and then have to run it and then have to learn the the crazy operating systems that they put on them like vms and stuff yeah i spent a lot many years you know i don’t know

Speaker 1 | 01:54.928

But enough years on VMS to the point where it’s still, I always consider it to be a rock solid, obviously very old operating system, but very, very rock solid for its time. Very, very well designed for its time. Obviously, that time is long since passed, but it was actually a terrific platform to learn a lot of things on.

Speaker 0 | 02:15.053

It was a testament that it was still running when I got to it. So I think that’s it. Yeah. If you could travel to the future and see any IT-related development or innovation, what would it be and why?

Speaker 1 | 02:30.663

Well, I think my answer probably isn’t going to surprise a lot of people if we’re sitting here at the beginning of November 2023. But what will AI look like? Artificial general intelligence, right? Not just the generative AI. What is it going to look like in the future? What’s it going to do for us? What’s it going to displace? But what’s it also going to enable? Right? We all have a lot of ideas. Right. We all have a lot of both fear and excitement, mostly excitement, but there’s definitely some concerns. So unsurprisingly, I think that would be the area I would look to now, probably because right now it’s such a hot topic everywhere. The conversations are fast and furious, even within my business units. How can we use it? What can we do? What are the practical use cases? And we’re all really trying to think of different things that would be of the most value for us. But it’s such. an early stage with the generative AI and what it could do, you know, as it advances, right? I think we’re just trying to get our arms around this. That, to me, would be the most exciting thing. You know, if you’d asked me this question a year or two ago, it would have been something else. And who knows, maybe in a year or two, it’ll be something different. But I still think that that’ll be the one.

Speaker 0 | 03:39.894

Well, it’s interesting, too, because I always wonder how many, how many.

Speaker 1 | 03:45.756

automated uh sorry i mean i ai generated ai articles are auto degenerating itself to to keep the buzz going right you may have an ai podcast with our likenesses up there i’ll be sitting you know somewhere else my podcast will be being recorded by my uh ai generated image they have that it was

Speaker 0 | 04:06.613

amazing to kind of see they’re taking artists now um different artists and and they’re collabing them you know making collabs together uh right so things that could never happen right like people that that have been long since uh uh deceased uh and just combining the two together just so you can see what what that collaboration would have looked like right yeah some amazing things that are happening with a with ai i mean you’re right this is just generative ai this is just like you know the the beginner steps yeah right i mean everyone

Speaker 1 | 04:37.996

you know the artificial general intelligence is the the big goal at the end of the road but uh you know how we get there when we get there if we get there uh you know there’s a lot of anticipation um and some fear as well but uh it’ll be very very interesting to watch and hopefully you know play a part in some of that stuff in its use cases and its applications

Speaker 0 | 04:59.054

Yeah, I agree with you. That’s a that was a great answer. And your last one, if you could merge any two IT related devices or software, what would they be? And what would be the result?

Speaker 1 | 05:11.259

Wow, that’s a that’s an interesting question. I really thought about that. So for me, you know, we spend a lot of time working on ERP platforms, right? So we always try to, you know, merge that to as we penetrate into Our warehouses and our factory floors. My background has been a lot of manufacturing, operations, warehousing. And there’s definitely tons of penetration between ERP and warehouse management systems and shop floor. But there are times when it’s a little bit siloed. And I think getting fuller penetration into the operational technology would be something that would be of great interest to me. I spent a lot of time working on that. And, you know, it’s always an effort and it’s always a lot of work. And, you know, the convergence of some of these platforms with more open integrations, open interfaces, you know, obviously is a lot better than it used to be. But to me, it has a long way to go. And I think that would be something that could really, you know, open things up for especially people in my role where we are supporting manufacturing, operational warehousing environments. And, you know, we can make or lose money based on how. efficiently we pick a product to go out to an e-commerce customer.

Speaker 0 | 06:29.701

It’s amazing. So I had a chance and I worked for a little over a year to work for a company that did manufacturing and do IT for them. And it was such an interesting experience. At that point, they were using Oracle.

Speaker 1 | 06:49.135

Yeah, many years on Oracle.

Speaker 0 | 06:50.936

It customized. heavily customized Oracle. But what was amazing was the amount of things that you had to customize just to get an order through, to get it from one place to another, to make it, you know, and you have to think of the entire process, you know, hey, listen, they’re going to place an order. They’re going to take this order and someone’s got to make sure it’s correct. And then they got to move it out into, you know, assign those items and break them down and figure out, you know, let’s get them, pick, let’s pick them and put them up so we can ship them to where they need to go and stuff like that. Or sometimes even manufacture it first and get these items. There is so much that goes into this and I could, we could almost just spend an entire hour mapping it out, right? The amount.

Speaker 1 | 07:45.494

Easily.

Speaker 0 | 07:46.075

Easily. You know, the process, the processes that. you have to deal with in manufacturing is just remarkable. And

Speaker 1 | 07:56.861

I think that’s where things get very interesting, right? Because all of the operations are somewhat different, right? Everyone’s manufacturing process, whether you know that there are some standard processes, but because everything you manufacture, it has some variations to it. You know, it’s always going to be something that you are working on that’s new. I mean, it’s terrific working on, you know, many financial systems. I’ve done plenty of work on that, but you go from. Company to company services, manufacturing, you know, other industries, you know, finances, finance, you know, they’re all the same kinds of things. And that’s fine. That’s good work as well. But really, some of the most interesting things are when you start looking at that operation and how things are made or how things are put together. And what’s the best way to get the information to where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and make that product, that tangible product. make it become an actual product faster or more efficient or cheaper. That’s always a lot of fun to me.

Speaker 0 | 08:55.644

No, I completely agree. I’m going to rewind for a minute because we’re going to jump back in this conversation. But I rewind because I want to properly kind of help the audience understand the breadth of knowledge and experience that you bring right now. So you have over 35 years of IT experience. Is that right? That’s correct,

Speaker 1 | 09:18.114

right? That is correct. Yes. Yes. Wow.

Speaker 0 | 09:20.677

So I even saw that you had 22 years with one company.

Speaker 1 | 09:26.303

I did. I did. Yeah. My previous position to where I am now, I had spent almost 23 with a manufacturing operation here in Rhode Island. And we were an automotive supplier, automotive interior. So again. you know heavily geared towards automotive which is a challenging industry right the automotive oems and the tier one suppliers which we were considered sometimes a tier two occasionally tier one but there’s there’s definitely challenges associated with that but it was it was it was a long run but it was it was never boring it was you know If you had told me the day I started there, I would be there 23 years. I would have said, I figured maybe five, eight years, and then you move on to something bigger and better. But the challenges just kept coming at us, and there were just so many interesting things to work on. It was just a fast pace, lots of interesting things, and it just never stopped. It was actually quite a bit of fun in a lot of regards.

Speaker 0 | 10:21.602

You know, it’s actually, it’s funny because I was going to ask you a question and you actually answered the question before I could ask it, but I really want to go back and tell you what I was going to ask you. And what I was going to ask you was what keeps you working at a company for, you know, for 23 years, right? And I think you just answered it.

Speaker 1 | 10:40.010

I think that’s a big part of it, right? The ability to be doing new and different things and learning different things. I also think, you know, the team that you work with is a big part I had the ability there to assemble a really terrific team around me within the IT group. And that was great. They actually had some long-tenured people there as well. And the ability to rely on that team to meet our objectives and kind of move all in one direction, I think that was definitely great. And the fact that I had a lot of executive support from the C-levels, the VP-levels down, they all believed in the technology, which makes my job so much easier. We’re not fighting against the tide and we’re not. And I’ve been very lucky in my entire career in that regard. I’ve had a lot of support from the executive row, the VP level row. They’ve all believed in technology and it can be a differentiator. So that does make my job easier because, you know, there are things that are difficult to do. And having to, you know, deploy challenging systems, broad, deep systems or, you know, whatever initiatives you’re working on is just so much more challenging. if you’re fighting a massive battle against change management. So that’s been something in my career I think has been very lucky. You combine those things, and it’s been very, very rewarding.

Speaker 0 | 11:54.529

And I had a similar thing because I was at a company for 16 years, and it’s the same thought, right? It’s having that support from leadership. It’s having the… And, you know, the ability to work with a team of individuals that now you trust, but also are very engaging and everything. And you kind of play off each other. And it’s being able to be nonstop challenged with new things. And I think that’s a huge one. I’m glad you brought it up because I have seen before. And I’m sure you have where people have run out like maybe they, you know, a manager is not utilizing someone correctly. And then they leave and they had so much potential and you’re like, no, come back. Right. So this is something I know I’ve seen. Have you seen this?

Speaker 1 | 12:44.928

I have. And it’s it’s it’s happened to me as well. Right. I think, you know, as I learn and I hopefully become a better manager, you know, I recognize that kind of thing. But where we have definitely seen those cases where, you know, someone isn’t challenged enough or someone isn’t utilized in an area where they really could have a lot of value. And. you get the best from them, but they will definitely look for other opportunities. So I think we’ve all come across that. And I just try to learn from that and try to say, you know, what could I have done better to better engage this person? And, you know, I think I’ve done a pretty good job throughout my career, listening to the team around me and, you know, both, you know, from the user perspective, from the IT perspective, but definitely, you know, those are cases where you see someone and you know, they’re very good at what they do. And maybe I just didn’t challenge them enough for, you know, maybe they… The opportunity that was in front of them was also much bigger than I could have provided. I think that’s actually a win as well. If you can build your team and grow them, maybe sometimes they outgrow your roles and move on to bigger and better things. And I’m always happy to do that, too. And I hope I get the best out of them. But, again, I’m not going to hold anyone back if they have a vision of doing something bigger and better. And, you know, I hope that maybe I played some part in helping them grow and learning a few things. And hopefully they taught me a few things, too, which is.

Speaker 0 | 13:59.126

pretty much always the case i think a lot of my team um you know maybe they’ve learned from me but i’ve learned a lot from them hey that’s that’s a i i love that that viewpoint because it’s such a great um it’s such a great way especially in i.t right because i.t is just constantly changing constantly about waiting i have a lot of respect for the fact that you have 35 years experience in i.t because uh um i’m at 22 years i think right And I feel the, okay, it’s changing again. All right. You know, and you’re just constantly shifting and trying to keep up. And it feels like you’re riding a wave that never ends, right?

Speaker 1 | 14:40.070

It does. In some ways, I look forward to some of the changes, though. It’s like, what does it do? And I think it would be, and I’ve seen this in IT people as well, who become very set in their ways. They’re very tied to a certain platform or they’re tied to a certain system. And making a change is definitely getting you out of your comfort zone. But I’ve done it more than a few times, and it’s usually worked out pretty well. It’s tough. for a period of time. But boy, you come out of it much stronger, much smarter, much more able to adapt and grow and really help whoever you’re working with. That’s my opinion on a lot of that. So I’ve come to the fact that, hey, this is being updated. Let’s take a look at this. This is something new that’s coming at us. Let’s not push it off to the side. Let’s try to figure out what it can do to help us. And sometimes it can. Sometimes you look at it and you say, this technology. It’s maybe not for us or maybe not for us today, but at least we didn’t shut it out immediately and not even evaluate it.

Speaker 0 | 15:43.280

I agree. And, you know, kind of kind of brings me to a thought here. You know, we’re constantly changing. We’re constantly, you know, adapting to this to these things. And we constantly want to innovate. And I saw. As I always joke on here, I always research folks and cyber-stalk them ahead of time. I go through all their posts on LinkedIn and everything. You had a theme, and one of your themes was innovation, heavy on digital transformation, heavy on innovation, heavily on using the merging of IT and ops to gain efficiencies and stuff like that. Before I dive into all that, I want to ask a question that I’ve always been puzzled with because… When I see great executive leaders, right, they always seem to know that they’re not there yet because it never ends. But they always have a plan in place. This is the next thing we got to do. This is the next item that we need to address. This is the next piece that we need to go for. And it always seems to be. a, it always seems to be that they have a plan in their head. Well, of course I know in making it to that level, right. That it’s really just like, I got to find the next one. I got to find what is it? What is it? What’s the best way to, you know, explain to our audience, at least from your perspective, how you handle that, how you make sure that you’re always keep things moving and you never stall out.

Speaker 1 | 17:28.323

Well, that’s a great question. So I think one of the things that really helps me is kind of listening to the people in your environment, right? What are they dealing with? What are they being challenged with? And what can you get out of them? We just did a scenario very recently at work where, you know, we’ve got some platforms we do some development work on and something came across my desk that was a very simple task. It didn’t, but this is something I felt that maybe that user community should have said, hey, you know, within your team, you’ve built these sorts of applications on these platforms. This was perfect for it, right? And how did I not get that out of them? Right. So that’s kind of the challenge. You know, what what am I doing? You know, not listening. What did I hear when you have this challenge? I think listening to the people around you will definitely help build your vision. Obviously, in IT, we’re always looking at what is new, what is different, what is coming at us. And being able to merge that together with what you’re seeing the business around you struggling with or what they’re challenged with or what their vision is. Right. Where do they want to go to? And how can I get you there? Or sometimes the other way around. Hey, these are the kind of things we can do systemically. These are the kind of things that we can do with technology. I can take you here, I think. And the ability to hear what they’re saying has really helped me generate that. I think the other thing is, I had a colleague who sent this message a long time ago, and it’s kind of one that sticks with me. Sometimes you will go down the path, and it maybe isn’t the right path. This person had said, you know, a couple of times, I remember this very vividly, fail fast, fail cheap. No one to cut it off, right? Knowing that path that you’re going down is not the right path and then when to cut it off and when to pivot or when to go to a differently, you know, road altogether. So I think that’s the other one is you have to recognize that when maybe, you know, every decision we’ve made is not, you know, the right one. We’ve definitely made some decisions that you look back on and we could have done better. And that’s where you learn the most. But, you know, I think if you. pursue it so much and you just try and try and try to the point where you know that it’s not going to come to fruition. I think the ability to, like I said, this person said fail fast, fail cheap, and then you’re onto the next thing that can add value.

Speaker 0 | 19:40.508

And that’s, I mean, I love that because There’s a sense of and this is, I think, an important piece, too. There’s a sense of vulnerability that you need to accept when you work in IT,

Speaker 1 | 19:52.257

which is you are humble at times.

Speaker 0 | 19:54.959

Right. You you will be humbled. It will happen. Right. You you you have to understand that there’s no way that you can keep up with everything. Right. And that’s why I love your answer about the listing, because you that’s why we hire individuals. Right. Because we hire smart individuals. to help us all as a team kind of get there, right? And I love that you said, hey, let’s use the individuals that are around us, not just the ones we hire and stuff, but our team members too. And this kind of gets back to kind of something I want to talk about, which is the merging of IT and ops, right? And kind of marrying those two. That to me sounds like that’s a pretty big listening exercise that has to happen there as well, right?

Speaker 1 | 20:41.702

Oh, definitely. I think if you look at early on in my career, obviously, I took a path that a lot of us in IT have taken application development. And, you know, we’re writing applications and using a waterfall method of, you know, developing the applications, a very tried and true process for many years. And, you know, we know these are your requirements on day one. And we’re going to kind of go into that back room and we’re going to produce something at the end of the day that hopefully is what we’re looking for. And that was a. pretty common practice, right? But I also know that, you know, I worked with a couple of companies that were very highly engineering driven, right? So I had some really strong resources on the technical side of things, right? They were able to get in. And when they’re talking about doing, they were doing their own development work, but on manufacturing equipment, whether it’s a highly sophisticated press, or whether it’s another piece of equipment, you know, anything that you bought in the last… 20 years or so is going to be IP enabled. So we can now make these equipment talk to my network. Right. And what can we do? Well, first thing we’re doing is we’re sending programs, how to program these machines and how to create the products that we’re making. And the ability to do that is great. But it’s also a two way conversation, right? Because a lot of this, all of these pieces of equipment generate tidal waves of data. Right. And I was always telling the team this. They said, we now have this just Like I said, it was a tidal wave of data coming at us now, right? We have the ability and we’re kind of scooping it out with teaspoons, right? So how can we make this work for us, right? And no matter how much we did, I always feel like we had so much more to do, right? And we did some, you know, pretty interesting things in a couple of positions I was in where, you know, we were get to the point where some of our equipment, instead of having an operator on the floor, who’s maybe managing 10 or 15 machines, would have to say, they don’t turn a light on, something was malfunctioning, a maintenance person would come over and work on the machine. Well, the sensors and the equipment would initiate tickets in a CMMS system already. So there was no operator intervention, right? Those are the things we were doing early on where we could say, all right, let’s eliminate someone having to try to find a problem and then trying to initiate a support ticket with a mechanic or a maintenance person and then waiting for them to get there. Well, all of a sudden we have sensors that are now opening and notifying the people that need to work on the machine. So before someone even noticed it, someone’s, you know, working on it. And those are the kinds of things that really can reduce things, especially, you know, in manufacturing, we’re looking at reducing waste and scrap, right? So instead of producing, you know, X number of units, you’re producing one small, like one tenth of that, that’s bad, or even a smaller fraction of it. It’s very quantifiable in some regards too. And when it comes to the merging of IT and OT, operational technology and digital transformation, and it’s one of those love-hate terms, digital transformation, because some people ask you, what’s digital transformation? But it’s different for everyone, right? What is important to us and what are we trying to transform is different than the company that’s a couple of blocks down the road from us. But obviously, writing the name itself, trying to digitize things, right? Is it paperless? That’s part of it, right? That’s definitely part of it. It really is the ability to use this technology to help you react faster and smarter. You can still write on a piece of paper if you want. Obviously, we’re using a lot of technology to enable this. But again, I think that the opportunities when you look at that merging of the IT and the OT worlds are almost limitless. Again, go back to my example of working on finance systems, which are always a lot of importance there. Obviously, the way… People look at the information and report the numbers. Everything eventually rolls up into the finance group, and they’re telling us how well we’re doing or how well we’re not doing. But no one ever walked into your front door and said, boy, you’ve got the best looking P&Ls in the world. That’s the technology behind that. It’s great. They’re going to go to your shop floor and they’re going to take a look at what kind of technology you’ve integrated into the floor. And that’s kind of a wow factor at times. And that’s kind of the way I looked at it. Because again, it can really be a differentiator and potentially a competitive advantage as well. Especially I’ve been in my career working like mid-sized businesses. So we’re not… The Fortune 500, we’re sort of in that next space or the smaller space down. So in times, it’s tough to compete with those big guys at times because they have the resources that are not quite limitless, but they’re significantly greater. But you can have advantages in these small to midsize businesses where you kind of leap over the competition because maybe you are doing things a little better and a little smarter and they got to catch up with you. Or if not, you’re catching up with them because these guys were all pretty nimble, right? You don’t have layers of. bureaucracy to get through. And, you know, we don’t, one of us is going to be doing it faster and better. We might as well be us.

Speaker 0 | 25:41.679

I love, you know, seconds matter. And this is huge. And it’s actually getting even worse than that. I think it’s like, you know, whatever, microseconds, whatever, milliseconds, let’s go down even further. Because that does, I mean, in especially in manufacturing. Because every time that you find something that you can automate, you take the process down even more. And manufacturing, what I love about that is it is such a game of who can design something more efficiently and more quickly. All right. You know, you’re always trying to get quicker and more efficient at it and still produce. a good, solid thing, right?

Speaker 1 | 26:33.279

But here’s where it even gets more interesting, I think, because you’re right. It’s not just seconds or microseconds that matter, but now we want to predict, right? We want the predictive to make it matter. So before it happens, we want to start reacting to it, right? And that’s when I think, you know, some of the AI pieces are going to start to kick in. A lot of people do the predictive analysis now and the predictive work now, which is great. I think that is going to become much more. important because the people that are reacting in seconds and microseconds, they’re going to be left behind.

Speaker 0 | 27:02.327

Well, I love what you said, Tom, because, um, so I had a really interesting, you know, kind of fateful, uh, thing that happened to me one time I was on a plane and, um, uh, a person in uniform was walking by and I said, Hey, you know what, here, I said, move to my middle seat. I said, you take this, uh, at the seat here on the end. And, uh, and he did. And and this was at the time one of the cybersecurity folks over at CENTCOM. Right. I’m not going to say the exact position of it, but, you know, and and I had I had a lovely two hour discussion with him picking his brain on cybersecurity and what and what the government was doing at the time, as much as he could say. But what came out of it was almost exactly what you just said, which was. um hey listen you know we’re you know we’re in a war back and forth with all these folks he goes um he goes now it’s to the point where we’re using predictive analysis to figure out where the hot spots are going to be and we can attack first right and i was like you know blown away by that that was years ago but i was blown away by that was like what a great idea and this is far beyond you know ai at the time was not even a buzzword you know what i mean you And of course, the government is already working on knowing it. But it’s amazing because what you just said is exactly the concept that’s deployed over our government on cybersecurity now, which is this predictive analysis of how do we get… Okay, listen, it’s not about reducing the amount of time. It’s about getting there before it even happens now.

Speaker 1 | 28:46.762

Yeah. And predictability, it’s been around for a while, right? Obviously, in that realm, definitely, and even in manufacturing. But it is just becoming, you know, stronger, and you’ve got to be better at it. Again, because if you’re not, your competition is going to be better at it than you, if that’s the case. So you just got to.

Speaker 0 | 29:03.969

Yeah. And, you know, innovation is such an interesting thing. You mentioned on here, you were saying, when you’re talking, you know, and you were alluding to the fact that innovation. uh and you said in digital transformation but it’s the same thing with information um is specific to the company or to the organization that’s using it and that’s such a great thought right because um i think i think folks try to measure innovation by looking at other people and look at all this stuff but really um and and i what i always kind of tell the uh the folks that that work for me or work on my team uh um i say Hey, listen, don’t measure yourself to other people, right? Measure yourself to who you were the day prior, right? And then do that and then try to get better, right? I said, and that way you’ll actually will because then you go, okay, here’s what I did now. Here’s what I can do now. And you’re constantly kind of improving yourself, right? It’s the same kind of concept with innovation with a company, right? Because it’s like, you know, obviously you got to be aware of what your competition’s doing, but… also let’s look at what you’re doing and focus on improving that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 30:14.607

And I think it’s interesting because you may look at an industry and say, well, innovation in this industry. So I come from an automotive, but it was automotive interiors. It was like leather and vinyl. And you look at that, how do you innovate there? But that’s where your greatest opportunities for innovation could potentially be. Obviously, we’re not making microchips. We’re not writing software that’s going to be used by consumers. But if you look at that, there’s… come to the room for innovation there right and you need to take advantage of it and understand how you’re doing getting innovate right it’s not that traditional path that someone coming out of school oh yeah i’m going to go work for you know google or amazon or someone the innovation that can take place there or intel right but the innovation that can take place here um is it’s going to affect consumers as well right you know making uh you know the products that you make better and and making them faster again i i think you don’t have to rule yourself out just because maybe you’re not working in an industry that’s traditionally thought of innovation, right? I’m not, you know, creating, you know, chat GPT. I’m not, you know, working on a platform like that, but you will be using it and you will be using those tools to innovate in the particular area that you are working in. And that is going to touch everyone and everything, right? I think from our C level at the corner office down, you know, through our executive level, our management level. Right down to the shop floor and how we’re managing that. And I think even the people that we have, you know, working in our warehouses and we’re really or on our manufacturing floor, we’re really looking, you know, for them to to embrace some of the technology as well. Right. We think that that’s a big part of it. Right. We I can’t succeed without them embracing the technology as much as we can drive it from the corner office. You know, I think they have to buy into it as well. And, you know, I think that’s that’s you have to look at it like that. And, you know. how you innovate and where you innovate from don’t necessarily look at, our products don’t lend itself to that. Of course they do. Everything does.

Speaker 0 | 32:14.994

And you’re right, too, is everybody is starting to get into it. I mean, yes, AI is the buzzword, and it’s easy to talk about. But what I’m more interested in, and I think what you are more interested in, is how this is going to play out in… a multitude of different industries. There are going to be some very innovative ways that this is being used besides just using it to write an email. And actually, I was joking with a colleague today about if generative AI ever just shut it off, right? Emails are going to be like, hi, I don’t know how to write an email now. The amount of emails I get, I look at, I’m like, wow, that person became a really good writer overnight.

Speaker 1 | 33:06.982

I know. Or you have something. What’s a better way to explain this? And then, ah, that’s a generative AI. That’s a pretty good explanation.

Speaker 0 | 33:16.770

No, I mean, it’s funny because it’s actually getting to a point where if you’re not using it, then you’re wasting time. You’re falling by. It’s become a process. It’s become part of the process now. Right.

Speaker 1 | 33:33.380

So and rapidly, rapidly, rapidly,

Speaker 0 | 33:36.262

rapidly, rapidly. And and if you’re not using it in a way to and not looking at and that’s really, I think, where we’re getting at. Right. If you’re not looking at it to figure out ways to either cut off seconds or predict. Right. Then for the various company specific processes that you have. then you’re falling behind right now, right? Is that’s kind of what you’re saying.

Speaker 1 | 34:05.245

It is, it is. Yeah, I truly feel that, right? If you’re not doing that, you are getting further behind your competition. You’re eroding your profitability. You’re, you know, things that you don’t want to happen are going to start happening if you are not, if not at least ahead of the curve a little bit, riding that curve.

Speaker 0 | 34:21.877

So right now it’s real difficult because, you know, we have big players in AI, right? So I feel… a little stable because you have Microsoft with the partnership with OpenAI, you have Google and Lambda or whatever the new one’s called, right? And you’ve got players that are pretty big. that are leading this this charge but the government regulations still haven’t uh uh dropped on this um we know that uh the white house is actively looking at uh um governance controls on on ai um we know that the um uh that the uh european union still hasn’t weighed in on this and and given their uh um privacy laws we’re we’re you know we’re wondering what’s gonna happen

Speaker 1 | 35:44.390

a disruption. Definitely, right? I mean, we’re watching closely to see what comes up. And, you know, I think the hope is that they put guardrails on it for safety and making sure the measures are all properly taken. You know, obviously, there’ll still probably be concerns, you know, how far they go, how far they don’t go. But without limiting the ability to use it as a tool that will, you know, become useful for us. And, you know, I don’t see that happening. I think it is going to be more around guardrails. But you’re right, the EU hasn’t weighed in yet. And we know that they’ve kind of been… I want to say heavy handed in some areas, but they definitely have gone further than we have maybe with some of the regulations here, especially around privacy, GDPR, things like that. But it’ll be interesting to see how that regulation all plays out and then what the impact is to our ability to drive that tool to work the best for us.

Speaker 0 | 36:31.054

Yeah, I think that’s a I think it’s a good answer. It is. I think it’s a normal thing anyway within technology.

Speaker 1 | 36:40.102

uh that new technology we just don’t know what’s going to happen with it and we try our best to navigate it so you always underestimate the near term and always on you know always overestimate the near term but always underestimate the long term um on what it can do so you know the next two years we’ll probably think you know it’ll be flying cars and we won’t have to you know ai will be doing everything but in 10 years or it always it’s always it’s probably accurate right um you know if you came back to this conversation in 10 years and we’ll do a podcast in 10 years There you go. Yeah, we’ll see what it looks like. And probably it won’t be much like we thought. There’ll be probably much more interesting things that have happened that we haven’t even thought about today.

Speaker 0 | 37:20.072

So that’s true. I mean, you know, I think we all it’s funny because AI is one of those things that we always knew was a possibility. And I’ve actually I’ve had some guests on before that pointed out the fact that we’ve been doing AI for quite a while now. Actually, it’s just the mere fact that now it is it is. come to the point where we can interact, right?

Speaker 1 | 37:39.238

And it ends with many people too.

Speaker 0 | 37:40.759

Yeah, yeah. And so that’s, you know, and on top of that too, they’ve used that data over time to compile and get to this point. So it’s not like it’s an overnight, like we just, hey, we learned how to do it. No, we’ve been doing it for quite a while. It’s just technology’s finally caught up and all this stuff’s finally caught up to a point where we can actually disperse it out to the public so that they can keep training it. So, so, um… But but no, the the remarkable thing about about this, and I think you touched on it well, is it you know, it will be some it will eventually be something else. And we’ll get back to that in a minute, because, you know, I have a segment that that’ll come up that I think I’m going to we’ll focus on addressing that a little bit. I want to jump back a little bit to talking about process, especially when it comes to. operations, because I’ve touched a little bit on how IT can help in the financial realm so much, right? And I tell folks, if you haven’t become friends with the finance department or accounting department, you need to go do that because they’re the people that are going to help fund your adventures, right? So they’ll help you find the money, right? And then the other piece of the puzzle, though, is operations. And I’ve had the blessing of working with some really, really good COOs in my time. And one of them, who I just talked to the other day, was fantastic, had been with one of my earlier companies that had been there for 16 years. And I have great respect for. These are… These COOs, the good COOs, they know the business inside and out, right? And partnering with them. It’s just, it’s like, if you’re not doing it, why? Right? Explain a little bit why that’s so important for our audience.

Speaker 1 | 39:54.429

Well, you know, I think you nailed it right off the bat. I think they have the insights into a lot of the business. And, you know, I think one of the advantages of doing what I do and being in IT, you do get exposed to a lot of the pieces of the business where, you know, every business has some silos and some are better at, you know, cross functions, cross training. But within IT. You do, especially in a leadership role in IT, you’re not pegged to a certain department or, you know, maybe you’re just an infrastructure or whatever. But I think, you know, we do see all of the business and we are the good and the bad. You know, we hopefully, you know, help with some of the good and we see some of the strong processes. We also see where the weaknesses are. But you really will get a much stronger sense when you work with a COO who really understands the business as well. And I’ve been lucky in my career, too. I think the COOs that I work for have… really a strong understanding of the business, business in general, the market conditions. And getting their insights is invaluable, right? I mean, they have a vision too, right? We have a vision in IT and as an IT leader, you have a vision. They have a vision too, what they think the operations should look like, right? We shouldn’t be competing. We should be harmonizing the best that we can. And I think that’s really where it becomes strong. But I think your point as well on the financial side of things. you know, obviously, you’re right, you want to be able to fund what we’re working on and be able to give resources as needed as well. So I think that that partnership is important as well. And again, in a manufacturing environment, a lot of times you will find the operations folks and the finance folks kind of joined at the hips, because they’re working in concert with each other on efficiencies and profitability and lots of that. Insert yourself into that, right? Because if you’re in the middle of that mix, you’re going to see everything. And you’re going to see their vision and they’re going to see your vision and what you can do to help them. And hopefully when you talk to them, the light will go on with you, what you can do. But also you will shed light onto what their vision is and they will come to you and say, you’ve talked about this, Tom. We want to be able to do something like that. How can you make that happen?

Speaker 0 | 41:59.026

I love that. Let’s set set the stage of what could be. So when they’re ready, they’re they they have a path to go. And that’s essentially what you’re saying.

Speaker 1 | 42:08.782

It is, right? I mean, we’ve done a lot of things where, you know, we talk about it today, but nothing happens for a little while. But, you know, six months from now, nine months from now, that conversation comes back around. Tom, you remember when you said this? I think we’re ready to look at that now. But you planted that seed of something that could be done, right? And a lot of times it’s because I listened to what they wanted to do. And I think about what I can do. And, you know, it kind of formulates from there. So it’s happened many times.

Speaker 0 | 42:34.856

And I love that. I, you know, I love that. And I also… So, you know, we talk about, you know, absolutely referenced COOs, right? Because the normal place to start, you get the vision there, you get that type of stuff. But early on, too, you did mention actually going out and actually having conversations and having listening conversations with many of the other folks, right? And I always found this interesting that when you started diving into… uh different uh or different parts of the organization you found uh uh extremely knowledgeable folks uh um you know that were that would exist in different pockets that knew a lot of information knew a lot about how things work and uh and they and they just people would come to them right you know all the time asking questions about how things are going they’d do great at their job and then they’d be sitting there asking questions on it yeah you gotta do it like this oh change it this way you know You know, you got to do it this way because it’s it doesn’t going to not going to work, you know, twist it right twice and then tap on everything. That’ll work. Right. That kind of knowledge.

Speaker 1 | 43:42.289

Yeah. No, I think you’re right. I think up and down the organization, you’re going to find people that are really going to be able to give you insights into, you know, what what can be done better. Right. I think don’t again, COO is great to partner with the C-level or VP level, but all the way up and down the organization, you’re going to get people with insight because. That COO that you’re working with, he was at that position at one time. He has seen that. Well, maybe I got a future COO who has a nice vision of what can be done and understands that. And he’s just starting out his career now. Or someone, even someone, a legacy employee who’s been there a long time. And sometimes you’ll think, boy, they’re going to go with the flow and do what they do every day. Maybe no one listened to them, right? But I’ll listen to them. Maybe the idea is better than anything I’ve come up with for their particular vertical application. The worst thing I’ve committed is a little bit of time and that’s it.

Speaker 0 | 44:33.855

I love that. I love that. So, you know, before we get in the last segment, I want to jump I want to jump back just to the ER piece, because. This is something that we touched on. We touched on Oracle. We touched on a few things. And there’s, you know, they’re the staples. There’s some big staples of ERPs, but they are so important within a, you know, within manufacturing to marry all the different processes together. And as we talked about all of these processes working, they have to be going, right? Because anytime that IT stops.

Speaker 1 | 45:16.176

in a manufacturing company you’re losing money we we calculate downtime to the minute and you know basically lost sales lost productivity we quantify it and uh you know hopefully that number doesn’t make us nauseous when something happens right that’s but it’s it’s a it’s a quantifiable uh impact keeping the lights on i mean again we don’t talk much about that i mean we hopefully do that part of the job pretty well but um if you don’t do that part of the job well then It’s tough to get traction in the areas where you do want to innovate.

Speaker 0 | 45:46.834

So, and I see this, I see folks when, and this is like, I’ve seen multiple businesses do this. They come in and somebody says, we got to switch out this ERP, right? Does that ever give you a heart, like a mini heart attack when somebody says that?

Speaker 1 | 46:03.707

Yes, sure. I think, look, we got to put a lot of thought on a decision that is such magnitude. Again, You put a new ERP in, you’re working at least 10 years into the future, right? You’re not switching ERPs every three years or five years. You know, 10 years or more in a lot of cases, unless it is a total failure and a total bust. So you really need to evaluate what you’re going to be doing, what the impact is going to be, what the disruption is going to be, what the change management is going to look like. Look, a lot of systems will manage the process reasonably well, right? I think, you know. When you look at areas that are a little more generic, like finance, right? You want to pay the bills, you want to collect the cash. You know, those things all kind of work very similarly. Are there any particular verticals within your industry where some ERP systems work better than not? The big guys like Oracles, SAPs, you know, InfoWars of the world, they handle a lot of scenarios. But yeah, it can make you very nervous, right? Especially… the hot new system that someone read about, and boy, this thing is going to be the best thing in the world. You know, I think when I’ve done some larger ERP implementations, selections and implementations, and, you know, one of the criteria is sustainability, right? It’s got to be. It’s one of the four pillars of IT I consider, right? Sustainability, value, security, functionality, right? Sustainability. And whatever system you’re looking at, do you think in five years or 10 years from now, there is the significant… or reasonable potential that it will be acquired or you could be orphaned or whatever platform you’re looking at, or are you not going to be able to get resources to do any sort of work on that platform? That’s a big factor. I think much more so than the bites and the bits because a lot of them handle a lot of these things very well. And I have never seen one that is so miles ahead of anyone else that the business would run poorly with one. And no, it’s the people, the process, using the system the right way. and the ability to sustain it, right? I think, you know, there’s a lot of factors that go into it, but I think those are some of the bigger ones. Well,

Speaker 0 | 48:09.472

I’m glad you said that. And now I have a question for you because this is the real, so, you know, you talked about failing fast, right? Failing fast and failing cheap, right? And replacing in the RP, starting that process, you better fail quickly and stop it before it goes, right? Because it’s almost hard to do, right? And then on top of that, you think, is there ever really a time?

Speaker 1 | 48:32.564

uh um where replacing an erp is a strategic advantage for a company i i think that is yeah you know the scenarios could be if you are significantly behind and you have a significant amount of of technical debt that you haven’t upgraded in so long that you are really missing significant functionality or you are so inefficient in doing things i think that’s definitely a driving factor um but in terms of failing fast and failing cheap which i I firmly believe, you know, a lot of times these ERP systems will have implementation partners that may not be the company that you’re buying the software from, right? So I think that the person walking through your door, or most likely now working remotely but helping you out, but that’s going to make all the difference in the world, right? That partner that you choose to implement whatever system you’re looking to is really probably going to be the most important factor, even more so in a lot of cases than the actual system that you select. And if that that is an area that you probably want to make sure where if you’re going to have a failure, you don’t want that to go on too long. You may want to evaluate that quickly. Hopefully you’ve gone and vetted that group enough and you have enough confidence in that group. And you also have to understand, and I think everyone does, but maybe not to the degree of what the disruption and the change management piece is. It’s going to be difficult and it’s going to be difficult to implement. And there’s going to be a period even after you are live that you need to stabilize. And that period could be up to a year at times, right? If you are a big environment, right? Hopefully it’s not that long. I’ve seen someone go through it recently and they’re about nine months into it and they feel like they stabilize now. you know hopefully you can do it sooner than that but you know there is significant disruption and i think it needs to be recognized that you know the change management piece um and the part that you choose to implement is going to have a bigger role than you imagine and

Speaker 0 | 50:32.863

so that leads itself to process right the ability to design your process to uh um to be most efficient and then make sure that the technology can handle that process appropriately. That sounds to me like that’s where the real benefit of the replacement of the ERP is the redesign of the processes.

Speaker 1 | 50:55.762

Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, we try to adhere to these systems are built a lot around the best practice in certain processes and the ones that are repeatable across industries. Right. So we always try to encourage us to be as vanilla as possible in some of these processes where. you know, the impact of being heavily customized wasn’t as great. Again, you know, there are areas, especially as you hit operations where everything’s done a little bit differently, we’re manufacturing this, you’re manufacturing that. So the processes are a little bit different, but that’s where you do need to have the flexibility, but it’s a tough balance, right? It’s a very tough balance, right? How far do we want to go in that direction versus how far are we going to go in the standardization direction, right? I mean, you got to balance that. It’s never a perfect answer. And you just have to understand where that sweet spot is for you.

Speaker 0 | 51:43.856

So we’ve reached IT crystal ball, which is the segment where we say, what is the future of IT? Right. And we’ve covered a lot of stuff in here. And we’ve actually covered a little bit of the future possibilities that could happen. I, you know, I think the question here that we really need to tackle in this IT crystal ball is what is the future? for companies to stay ahead when technology is going so fast? What does that future look like?

Speaker 1 | 52:21.214

Yeah, well, that’s a great, great question. You know, again, I kind of go back, you know, fail fast and fail cheap is maybe, you know, where you can, you know, but you can look at it from that approach. you know, probably a little easier for small to midsize businesses to be a little bit more nimble, but also we have less ability to absorb risk, right? So, you know, you do need to be very careful with that. But I think, you know, just continuously getting that feedback loop from your teams as the business changes. I mean, you know, it’s just, it’s always dynamic, right? Nothing stays the same. You know, I mean, I’m not the first person to say, if you stay the same, you’re going to die, right? You just need to continually evolve. And how do you insert my IT team into that so that we understand that faster than maybe someone else does. And that’s probably the best advice I got. Kind of listen to this team and what the pain points are and try to figure out how we can best solve some of their issues. It’s a huge challenge. I think it’s the air shark. You never stop. You’re always in motion.

Speaker 0 | 53:34.548

Back to our earlier conversation, do you think that prediction may help here at all?

Speaker 1 | 53:39.310

I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, obviously we’re just scratching the surface on what this AI looks like and how does that work with ERP, right? How is that going to help in this process? There’s so many things that, you know, it’s looking at doing now. And, you know, you think about it, well, it can do simple things now very easily. Let’s, you know, you get a chatbot or where. Hey, let’s work with our finance team to do customer collections. That stuff is easy, right? Relatively easy. But really, when some of these processes get a little more intricate, how much more is it going to evolve to help us manage that? But let’s use our brainpower to do the more profitable things, right? Let’s try to get away from… And that’s the whole big piece of it, right? That’s what everyone’s trying to get to is more, I don’t want to say mundane, but more the routine. things, getting away from that, and then using our creativity where we do well, where people do well with that and drive that into the business and try to become more profitable, more, you know, just become better through that process. Doing what we do best and maybe trying to… leverage where the AI is best now and where it’s going to be best going in the future, not eliminating jobs or people, but trying to leverage what people do best.

Speaker 0 | 54:58.407

I love that answer. It’s, hey, listen, the future itself may be automating a bunch of stuff, but that’s really freeing us up to do what humans do best, which is be creative and come up with things to make things cooler, right? I mean, that’s really the…

Speaker 1 | 55:13.618

You said it much better than I did, but that’s where I was going with it.

Speaker 0 | 55:16.660

No, you did a good job. I was just trying to figure out. I love to summarize things and put them into the words and go, oh, yeah, this is what he’s getting at. But what a great way to come around to that. That was a tough question I threw at you. And I was wondering where you’re going to go with it. And it ended up with a great answer. Wow. What a way to take technology and then go through a huge conversation of technology and end on a note where. we come back to, but we’re humans and we’re always going to be doing what we do, you know, being creative. I love it. Nerds, this is Michael Moore. I’ve been hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’ve been here with Tom Ferrucci, Chief Information Officer at Natco Home Group. Thank you so much, Tom, for coming on. I really appreciate the time here, and it’s been an absolute great conversation.

Speaker 1 | 56:08.964

Michael, thank you for having me on. It’s been fun hour. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.