Behind The Product

Unexpected changes and multiple stakeholders make building user-friendly software a challenge, to say the least. Zotec's Joan Santiago and Don Kane know this first-hand after developing the ISDH's COVID-19 testing and vaccination scheduling application. In the midst of the chaos, they were grateful for their team's Agile approach, which has allowed them the flexibility they need to make important updates to the product.

Of course, the Zotec team weren't expecting the pandemic to hit and didn't have this product planned ahead of time. Thanks to their solid foundation as a team, they were able to reimagine an existing product to work for COVID-19 test scheduling in a matter of 10 days. Later, they pivoted the product to accommodate vaccination scheduling.

Zotec's goal was to create a seamless solution, not only for patients and healthcare providers, but also for the regulatory and reporting needs the State of Indiana would have. Don and Joan share the unique challenges they faced during this process, and Joan emphasizes how she's seen her team exceed what their perceived expectations time and time again.

Joan and Don also share about Zotec's transition from being a pure services to being a technology-enabled services company. They discuss the importance of a championship culture, trust, and honest conversations to their long-term success.

Join us to hear the full story of how Zotec empowered healthcare professionals to focus on healthcare in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In recent years and especially throughout the events of 2020, employees want to see authentic philanthropy from their employers. Josh Driver, Co-Founder and CEO of Selflessly, joins us to share how Selflessly empowers employees of small- to medium-sized companies to give back.

After founding Selflessly in January 2020, Josh and his team had to quickly pivot in response to the pandemic. He shares the creative ways that the Selflessly team served the Indianapolis community with their new product. He emphasizes the importance of including thoughtful features even if they aren't revenue generators. Josh also explains how Selflessly's acquisition of Employee Vitals allows them to provide personalized philanthropic opportunities.

Finally, co-host Traci Dossett gets cheesy and shares how she sees Selflessly as a lifeline to the nonprofits they serve and the employees they connect to meaningful opportunities.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Join us to learn about The Last Mile, a program that prepares incarcerated individuals for successful reentry through business and technology training, from Jen Browning, Technical Program Manager at Indiana Department of Correction and Jacob Briggs, The Last Mile Graduate & Apprentice Software Engineer at SEP.

Jen shares the origin story of the Last Mile, how they've grown from California across the US, and how they created web development curriculum that doesn't use the internet.

Jacob walks us through a day in the life of a Last Mile student. He shares the unique challenges The Last Mile students face both in the program and after being released and explains that those challenges have made him a better software engineer.

We wrap up the conversation by discussing the ways The Last Mile is healing returned citizens and their communities, the perseverance of the students, and the robustness of the program's curriculum.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Tim Lancaster, Indigo BioAutomation's EVP of Strategy and Technology, joins us to share his thoughts on integrating deep domains, the importance of organizational development, and the ways he's driven innovation in regulated environments. Tim's background in life science automation gives him a fresh perspective on problem solving, strategy, and continuous improvement.

Tim emphasizes the importance of humility and structure when integrating deep domains. He shares that he's found over-communication, setting expectations up front, and iterating has led to successful collaboration across domains and disciplines.

Finally, Tim explains his problem solving framework, including diagnosing the problem, digging deeper, and deciding what needs to happen next.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Learn about the evolution of Experience as a Service from Genesys' VP of Product Management, Jack Nichols. Jack discusses prototyping with regulatory constraints, ways Genesys hopes to apply AI to their product, and innovation within a large enterprise.

Throughout our conversation, Jack explains the growth of experience as a service. Many companies have customer touchpoints fragmented across multiple systems, leading to poor experiences for customers and employees alike. Jack believes that a single customer engagement system is the way to go, ensuring that all touchpoints with the customer are connected to provide a great experience. For example, as a leader in the customer engagement space, Genesys uses AI to route calls, creating customer and representative match-ups that are most likely to achieve positive results based on the attributes of each customer.

Jack shares about their growth from product discovery to finding product-market fit to scaling the product, to now - enterprise maturity. While it was a hard decision to make at the time, Jack explains that the team's decision to focus on the security and stability of the product before moving on to building new features allowed them to scale successfully.

We also get a glimpse into prototyping and scaling telephony products at an enterprise level within regulated environments. Jack shares the pros and cons of these challenges: the process of releasing new features is time-intensive, but it also leads to confidence that what's been released is rock-solid by the time it gets to users.

As we wrap up our talk, Jack shares the importance of listening to customers and Genesys' plans to gather in-depth user feedback on the product.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

On this episode of Behind the Product, Ryan Larcom of High Alpha Innovation joins us to discuss innovation through startup creation. After beginning his career in industrial and automotive product development, Ryan became frustrated with the lack of customer voice in the design process. So, he moved into the tech world with a focus on building products people love.

Ryan believes that one of the best ways for large corporations to innovate is through partnering with, or, better yet, building startups because of the learning opportunities they afford. Ryan shares how High Alpha Innovation helps established organizations do just that - create startups. They don't have a secret formula for this complex process. Instead, they have a high-level roadmap they adapt to the contexts of their customers, a toolbox to pull from, and an always-learning mindset.

We dive into the lessons Ryan has learned from years of building startups. Ryan explains how to avoid "innovation theater," and instead create real value. We discuss what keeps large corporations from innovating, the importance of identifying a startup "sweet spot" as a large corporation, startup staffing strategy, and measuring success based on learning milestones.

We wrap up our conversation with Ryan's bullish perspective on the Indy tech scene, overlooked opportunities in the Midwest, and how the pandemic has shifted our perspective on launching and running businesses.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Wes Winham joins us to share his journey to building Woven, a powerful hiring assessment product. He explains how his own painful hiring experience led to the creation of Woven and describes his team's experience as they grew the product and company.

Wes reflects on lessons learned and the discipline it took to stick to a no-code approach to building the product. His non-traditional approach to growing a startup, hiring, and working with investors give Wes a unique perspective to share.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Jaki Clark and Casey Cumbow of Lessonly joined us to share their journey of adding a Design Practice into Lessonly's well-established engineering and product development groups.

While Lessonly had design capability prior to Jaki coming onboard, she brought a more strategic and integrated approach to their teams. As engineering and design leaders, Jaki and Casey talked through techniques, practices, and systems that have helped the organization level up over the past 18 months.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Jeff Cunning and Charlene Tay from Pattern89 join us to talk about how they use AI to help marketers build creative content that resonates with their audiences.

They discuss the challenges of explaining the outputs of AI models in a way that provides customers with actionable data, and how they've had to quickly develop product offerings from initial proof of concepts. Charlene shares her technical perspective as a data scientist, and Jeff speaks through his lens as Pattern89's Chief Product Officer.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Duane Musser, Engineering Leader at DoubleMap, joined us to share about his experiences in just about every stage of the product company life cycle, from startup to enterprise.

Duane's journey has given him a unique perspective on how to build and lead an engineering group focused on delivering products to their customers. From the importance of culture and mentorship to his transition from engineer to leader, Duane shares the things he has found to work as well as things that haven’t.

You can find more information about this podcast at sep.com/podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!