In this latest episode, Lisa Smith joins Mustansir Saifuddin to dive into the world of SAP transformation and process improvement. Lisa shares how to leverage SAP to streamline supply chain processes, optimize business operations, and drive significant improvements. Listen in as Lisa dives into the importance of business objectives, alignment, effective change management and so much more.

Lisa Gonzalez Smith is a trusted global procurement leader transforming global end-to-end supply chain processes and driving organizational change management. Lisa is a seasoned source to pay executive with over 30 years in global automotive procurement (Direct & Indirect) and a proven record of delivering SAP Ariba global programs at Ford Motor Company on budget and ahead of schedule with state of the art, cloud-based technology

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Mustansir Saifuddin

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Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: Welcome to Tech Driven Business, Lisa. How are you?

[00:00:38] Lisa Smith: Doing great, Mustansir. How are you?

[00:00:40] Mustansir Saifuddin: Doing wonderful. Thank you. I'm so excited to have you on our show. And today we would like to talk about SAP transformation and process improvement and what other person can talk about that? , Especially in the context of supply chain processes.

[00:00:56] So I really look forward to this session with you.

[00:01:00] Lisa Smith: I certainly appreciate the invitation to do it, and I'm excited to be here, and thanks for the opportunity. I enjoy being able to share some of those learnings and have these these fun discussions, so.

[00:01:11] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. So let's get into it. You know we talk about companies leveraging SAP. When you talk about leveraging SAP to identify and eliminate, basically the idea is inefficiencies in the supply chain processes. How can they do that? what's your take on this?

[00:01:29] Lisa Smith: Well, I think, you know, first of all, great technology can be used to really drive change around how business gets done. So defining what's important for the business to have going forward. Defining what is important and what they need then allows for SAP's technology to drive how that gets done. But with that, there's a lot of change to those processes, or if you really want to transform the business, there should be and, but with that, you need to be mindful of the [00:02:00] change impact.

[00:02:00] That comes along with that. The change that impacts the people, be it internal employees, be it external with suppliers, for example, and you want to bring those folks along on that journey and get them excited about the change, right? One of the things that I find is tremendous is being able to leverage SAP's technology to streamline, commonize and simplify processes across the enterprise.

[00:02:25] And it has the great. breadth and depth in order to do that. And that process capability depth and breadth allows for that to happen. And so it allows you to then ask yourself as an organization, why can't we do business, for example, the same way everywhere, unless there's a legal or regulatory or tax reason why do we have to be different?

[00:02:48] How can we simplify this? How can we take some of that inefficiency out of the process? And the software can really help drive that.

[00:02:56] Mustansir Saifuddin: That's excellent point. I think what I'm hearing from you is as much as you can commonize your processes and be able to keep the system as simple as possible. Allows you to leverage the, the capabilities a lot more

[00:03:11] Lisa Smith: Yeah, especially with cloud technology to get the, the lifts and the upgrades and take advantage of those. Definitely.

[00:03:18] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. That kind of leads me into this discussion about, you know, everybody talks about metrics when we talk about SAP driven process improvements especially, what are some of the key metrics to measure your success in those scenarios?

[00:03:35] Lisa Smith: Well, I think regardless of what functional area that you're looking to improve be it in finance or procurement or supply chain you know, manufacturing, inventory, wherever, I think it's important to start with what are the objectives for the business? What is it that you're wanting to achieve and accomplish?

[00:03:52] Whether it is additional incremental cost savings, whether it is operational efficiency improvement, whether it's better [00:04:00] compliance and controls or faster days to close or better forecasting lower inventory levels, whatever those metrics are, I think it's important to use the business objectives to drive that and then determine what success looks like.

[00:04:17] What are those objectives? How are we going to measure those and determine those up front in your process in your, future state design? If I want to improve on time sourcing by 25%, like, let's say, or lower raw materials inventory by 10%. You know, that's a clear objective. Now, how am I going to measure that?

[00:04:39] What's my format or the actual calculation tactically to measure that? And then , you can understand those. And the reason it's important to understand those up front in the process is because that helps ensure as you're designing your future state business process in the software and the software starts to be configured that you drive those outcomes based on those metrics.

[00:05:03] So what are those metrics that are important to your business to achieve success and implement those very clearly with a way to measure and then use those to guide the future state process design.

[00:05:20] Mustansir Saifuddin: Interesting. So it seems like you're using your business KPIs and kind of molding it into what SAP can do for you in those key metrics.

[00:05:29] Lisa Smith: Right. And there's a lot of embedded , kind of inherent KPIs that are part of that process. And then, of course, with the incremental, A. I. capabilities and the analytics capabilities and so forth, you start to bring those metrics to light much much more quickly than perhaps in a, previous state, especially if that previous state was manual or very heavily reliant on Excel and things of that nature, which I'm sure there's a lot of companies that experience that.

[00:05:58] Mustansir Saifuddin: No, absolutely. I think you hit up on a [00:06:00] very good point over here. I mean, analytics is one of my areas and I know that it is so important in this SAP implementations that you have a very, I mean, there's a robust set of analytics that comes to the system. But based on your business requirements and your measurement or the KPIs that you're looking at it can play a huge role in your success.

[00:06:23] Lisa Smith: Yes, absolutely. It can jumpstart or serve as a catalyst for those metrics. Many of those metrics are already from a common sense point of view. There may be incremental ones that you want and the data exists to allow for those to be created. And so there's a lot of flexibility in that space.

[00:06:40] The quality of built in compliance exists because it is moving processes from one step to the next and doing so with quality and embedded foolproofing mechanisms, similar to an assembly line, For example, when you're doing quality checks, as you're assembling parts on a, product, for example, you have the ability to understand the outcome.

[00:07:02] The embedded process capability that exists, has a built in quality and with that the analytics that come along with it. So those analytics are being driven by quality information and quality and disciplined processes. If that makes sense.

[00:07:18] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. And I think I like the comparison you gave with the assembly line. It's so true. It's everything. It flows in a, in a very. seamless manner. So it's like you don't even notice how this next process is going to take over. It's just from a business standpoint. It makes it so much easier.

[00:07:35] Lisa Smith: Right?

[00:07:35] Mustansir Saifuddin: For folks who are dealing with it day in day out that not only the analytics part, but, the different functions being able to communicate freely

[00:07:46] Lisa Smith: Exactly. Yeah. And share the actual data, share the real time data. Allow the, source data to drive analytics, but it's a consistent set of source data. That is across the functional areas, [00:08:00] although their metrics might be different and what they derive from that data, it may be different.

[00:08:04] It's based on that same quality of source information. And I think that's a really impressive capability to be able to bring to the analytics table and and bring that discipline to the analytics.

[00:08:19] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. Kind of leads me into this next discussion. You know, everything needs change management. Change management is one of the big topics, right? When you are doing an SAP transformation, especially in a global organization, where you have to deal with cultures, where you're dealing with languages different way of doing things how do you go about doing it?

[00:08:41] Lisa Smith: Well, my first two words are very carefully. The change management aspect of any you know, implementation like this or call it transformation, the change management is as critical as the business process as the software, those other elements it is critical key to a successful adoption and a successful outcome, but it starts with having the case for change, because what you're doing is formulating a vision for folks to help them understand this is where we want to go. This is where we want to be, you know. In the future, so many years from now and so forth. So what is that case for change? What's driving us to need to move to this next level? And if people understand the why, okay, that case for change, they're going to be far more open to considering and actually start to get excited about it.

[00:09:32] And I think that. Is also very important to have that message in that case for change articulated by the senior leadership from what I call a top down perspective and a top down advocacy, because that message sets a tone for the organization and it filters through the organization and it's very important part.

[00:09:53] I had a very strong set of C suite leaders that were very much [00:10:00] advocating for this. And so they were able to articulate that message. And then we could take that and embrace it with what I'll call a bottom up approach with the affected stakeholders. So who are those stakeholders? Understand the different what I call personas.

[00:10:16] Are we talking about requisitioners, or buyers, or manufacturing operation people, or finance analysts? Who are, who are the stakeholders that are going to be affected or impacted by this? And understand their cultural differences. From a culture standpoint, whether it's across regions or countries, whether it's across functional areas, You know, how messaging and how that change is impacting someone , in Europe versus Asia Pacific, very different.

[00:10:45] And so how you package the information and package the communications is important as well. And to nuance or tailor that accordingly. nuancing and tailoring also for the functions. It's what. Maybe how manufacturing perceives it may be very different than how marketing would perceive it or IT would perceive.

[00:11:03] And so how do you tailor again to the nuances of a particular functional area as well? If you can understand that impact and what the technology is going to do to their respective business processes, then you can say, well, what input do I need from them to ensure I take into consideration what's necessary and , Now, how we do it, they look different.

[00:11:26] And we'll assess that impact and create a strategy around that, but I need to make sure I consider what is needed for their, you know, for them to do their job successfully. And so when that's understood, then you can help them understand the change, keep them tied into what's happening, keep the communication flowing.

[00:11:47] And it gets them excited about a new way of doing business. And you can start to get creative about the way things are communicated using. You know, animated personas to help illustrate the from and to condition or [00:12:00] communication broadcast. Various things can be implemented and deployed. To give one example, when we had a very wide span of, of particular personas in this case, requisitioners that had to be communicated to, and they were very different because every function in the company requisitions, we held virtual office hours and we held them in local languages.

[00:12:20] We had the training materials, in the local language because somebody on the manufacturing floor may not be proficient in you know, one, one language, let's say English. So we had the materials in local language and so forth, depending upon the personas. So those are the things that need to be considered to help re respect that input from , the folks who are impacted and then be able to, to communicate it in a very clear way that resonates for them.

[00:12:47] Mustansir Saifuddin: I think that's a great advice and a great takeaway, especially when you're dealing with the folks on, on ground, you want to make sure that you're able to reach , to them the way they can consume the information and be able to train accordingly. So now that's very helpful. On a personal note, how are you staying on top of changes, now we are talking in the AI age, both business and technology are, are rapidly changing. So how do you keep up with these kind of change?

[00:13:19] Lisa Smith: Well, my youngest son would tell me I don't, but in, in reality, what's important to me is understanding that the continual evolution and innovations that are happening inside of SAP's technology, for example, and cloud technology in general. And I think there's so much out there. Yeah. SAP has tremendous webinars, you know insights, podcasts, things of that nature that can be, very illustrative of what's going on. There's a lot of information in various media forms that I use. But there are webinars, and also I do a bit of Googling and, you know, YouTube demo watching and those kinds of things. Also I think , their solution integration partners, their solution integrators also bring. [00:14:00] A lot of insights around what's happening. What are the trends in the business? What's happening in this industry? What does that mean in terms of leveraging the technology? So it kind of brings the technology and the business together. To understand where things are headed, be it, what are some of the new challenges of chief procurement officers, for example, in a post COVID society. You know, very different than a pre COVID condition perhaps.

[00:14:26] And so those kinds of strategic understanding, as well as what is the technology doing to support that understanding is largely available. So I do a lot of that just out of interest,

[00:14:40] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, no, that's the only way right now to keep up is just be aware of what are , the mediums available to you and have that tenacity to go and get that information from wherever you can get and keep up with the changes in technology.

[00:14:56] S4HANA is top of the mind, a lot of companies these days. How can companies ensure a smooth transition to S4HANA? And especially when you talk about S4HANA, it's a big undertaking. How can you minimize disruptions to your operations? Can you elaborate on that?

[00:15:15] Lisa Smith: Again, I'll use that "very carefully" answer, but I think the first thing is it's important to prioritize risk mitigation first and foremost, you never want to jeopardize the business or disrupt the ability to provide the goods or services , that the company is charged with, providing.

[00:15:33] And you can't take it all at once either. How can I sequence this? If I establish a longer term vision or a view or a road map, okay, where I want to be, I have to take it in a series of steps. And perhaps some of those steps can happen in parallel. Some need to happen in a particular sequence because of interdependencies.

[00:15:53] Some may be able to, as you learn, you might say, gosh, I should do this instead first and then followed [00:16:00] by X. I learned a lot of those things as we went through deployment and the ability to kind of flex and be a bit more agile, I think is important, but sequencing things in order to try and gain the optimal value as quickly as possible, while you mitigate the risk. It's a delicate balance, but that's probably one of the , more important principles, if you will, to have top of mind in terms of how can I glean the value quickly while I de risk the business? And in order to do that, I think you need to have very clear timing milestones and deliverable milestones.

[00:16:37] And there needs to be a very good disciplined program or project management process, that is enabling that to take place. And you need to do that in order to ensure that the timing is kept. And also to contain the cost. Otherwise, you can start diverting off on different paths and the scope starts to creep and the money starts to keep moving, up you know, , on the scale and the timing continues to shift out.

[00:17:09] So it's really important to keep, the clear timing with the deliverables and have a governance of project management to control that very very tightly. And then the other one I mentioned is, is governance. That is critical as you're changing these processes. And you're perhaps completely eliminating a policy or preparing a new policy in order to do business a different way. Then what governance do I need to have in place so that I escalate those decisions quickly so that I'm not being. bound by or, you know, delayed by lack of policy decision making, lack of policy change approval, for example on the program. If I know I need that policy change in order to configure it this way, I better start having the governance or I better have the governance in place to be able [00:18:00] to escalate that quickly if it requires certain levels of approval within the organization. And then readying the organization for change. That's one of the key attributes to ensuring a smooth transition. Having a robust cadence of communication, a repeated cadence so that people know what to expect. It can be at a relatively high level.

[00:18:22] And as they get close to their respective deployments, it becomes more granular. The communications, the training materials, the virtual hours, things of that nature become more granular as they get closer to their respective deployments. And then , I employed something that Toyota taught me. They referred to it as PDCA and plan due check act.

[00:18:43] And so I have a detailed plan, not just about the program milestones and deliverables, but everyone's role and responsibility and all of the things associated with making that implementation happen or get to that achieved outcome and execute to that plan. Have the controls on the status through the project management or program management and the governance that I mentioned. Then act and adjust accordingly if, and when needed, which inevitably it will be needed.

[00:19:14] You have to adjust course, but it's really a PDCA continual loop of plan to check act as you move through the life cycle of a program.

[00:19:27] Mustansir Saifuddin: I like it. I think that's very useful, especially when you are In this cycle, if you want to make sure that every small piece is covered and the only way you can do it is having the right governance, having the right plan in place. And then, of course, the checks and balances at each and every milestone.

[00:19:44] We talked about a lot of different things. I would like to leave the session with what is the one key takeaway you would want to leave with our listeners today. Can you share that?

[00:19:56] Lisa Smith: Yes, I would. It's going to be 2. 1 is [00:20:00] embrace the technology to allow it to propel your business forward for a long term sustainable outcome. And do that with an open mind to changing process. And leverage that technology to drive that simplified process and understand the impact from a change perspective that comes with it and manage that in concert, because when you do, the success can be absolutely tremendous.

[00:20:28] It can be transformational. But the two go together.

[00:20:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. Great advice. Thank you for coming on our show. It was real pleasure to have you join us today.

[00:20:38] Lisa Smith: Well, likewise, I really enjoy the conversation and certainly it's an exciting space. There's tremendous opportunity for companies you know, that are looking to find whatever those objectives are, improved efficiency, cost reduction all the different things, the disciplines that , can really level an organization up to the next stage.

[00:20:58] And the next level in a, in a longterm way. So it's great fun. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to, to have the conversation. Thank you.

[00:21:07] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thank you.

[00:21:08] Thanks for listening to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Lisa shared valuable insights that apply to all areas of an enterprise. Her key takeaway? Embrace technology to allow it to propel your business forward while effectively managing the change impact to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

[00:21:34] We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or X. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this latest episode, Mustansir Saifuddin is joined by Barry Sjostedt and Julea Ferrera to take a look back at what has transpired since SAP SAPPHIRE 2024. Was it all hype or was the conference content applicable to clients and partners like them? Listen in for an engaging conversation on what still resonates months later and suggestions for organizations on how to navigate the SAP ecosystem and leverage conferences like SAP SAPPHIRE.

Julea Ferrera is the Founder of J. Ferrara Consulting Solutions, Founding Director of Techqueria x MKE and is on the America’s SAP User Group WI Board of Directors. She has worked in Business Transformation as a Technofunctional consultant in a variety of different companies globally throughout the years promoting lean process and operation excellence through community impact.

Barry Sjostedt is a Business Operations Consultant specializing in Finance and Organizational Excellence, having collaborated with numerous global organizations to drive lean processes and optimization through innovative technology solutions. His expertise spans various business areas, uniting teams for enhanced collaboration and future success.

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrysjostedt

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juleaferrera

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/midwest-tech-week/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/asug

https://www.linkedin.com/company/techqueria-x-mke

https://www.linkedin.com/company/isolutionpartners

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustansirsaifuddin

X : @mmsaifuddin

IG:@asug365 @midwesttechweek

Learn more at www.isolutionpartners.com

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: Welcome to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Now that several months have passed since Sapphire 2024, I invited Barry Sjostedt and Julea Ferrera to share their insights on the post Sapphire landscape, including the role of AI and best strategies for navigating the S4 journey.

[00:00:26] Listen in for the customer and service provider viewpoints to see how your team can stay ahead in the ever evolving SAP ecosystem.

[00:00:38] Welcome you both. How are you?

[00:00:40] Julea Ferrara: Doing pretty good.

[00:00:43] Thank you for having us.

[00:00:45] Barry Sjostedt: Yeah. Good seeing you both again.

[00:00:48] Mustansir Saifuddin: I know we were all at Sapphire back in June and it was a great event and I thought, Coming out of the event I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about [00:01:00] the experience and the reality. You know, that's what I wanted to cover in this show because I think it's always good to look back and see where we have come and where we are heading in the future.

[00:01:12] There are a few observations that I would like to share with you both and then like to open it up for your take on. How have you seen things unfold over the past couple of months and where do you see the direction in the future? So I know that the Sapphire event itself this year was full of learning and networking and it was great.

[00:01:33] And it was filled with opportunities as well as it was a bit of an overload of information as you can tell by the amount of information being shared and a lot of different things that were happening during the conference. Now, if I look back, it is in our rearview mirror. I think this is time that we talk about and revisit what we got out of Sapphire and see what resonates with different [00:02:00] people.

[00:02:01] Just like you, who touch the SAP ecosystem. Coming back to some of the content. Sapphire, we focused on Gen AI. That was like the the theme that was going on in different sessions, different conversations, and on the show floor, in the presentations, and those networking events.

[00:02:20] Gen AI, Juul, You know, SAP talked about some key partnerships with their hyperscalers like AWS, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft. I mean, you name it, right? We also talked about CleanCore, what that means, and a lot more. So, I know there was a lot of things were covered. And based on my experience, I would say some folks even thought that it was a lot of hype.

[00:02:47] So, that brings me to you both, and, this conversation today. And I'd like to start with what did you get out of the show and where do you think we are heading? So, let me start with you, Julea. You know, when you left Sapphire, [00:03:00] what was top of your mind? And what was your first action step after coming out of the conference?

[00:03:06] Julea Ferrara: I first went to honestly, LinkedIn, and I'm a part of BTP a lot of group sessions shared groups on there to kind of understand, like, different polls. A lot of people put a lot of different polls out there to understand the five different pillars with BTP and where we're at, and 100 percent across the board was on AI.

[00:03:28] These last few weeks, since Sapphire, it's been again, a big thing around the AI aspect. I think, yes, there's a lot of hype around it, which is exciting. But as much as I love A. I. I still believe we have to tell the A. I. what to do. So it's what I see missing is people having those general conversations in the S.

[00:03:50] A. P. space of how do we do that? What do we work with to do that? A lot of amazing tools. The problem is I don't think people understand like where to [00:04:00] go to get everything set up. So , I realized the importance of all working with all these partners and vendors to get, to understand and having really the ASUG network, the ASUG pre conference conversations were great to help you get

[00:04:15] those things set up for your data processes for the AI to work. Barry, what did you think?

[00:04:23] Barry Sjostedt: Yeah, I mean, it was a lot. I think, you know, going in there from a focus standpoint, you kind of almost had to know what you were looking for. My feeling is cloud is really the big initiative. I was trying to learn a little bit more about their positioning, you know, what they're really truly trying to accomplish.

[00:04:43] And, you know, at the end of the day is my strategy aligned with theirs? My view of it is slightly different from yours, from, you know, you're a customer, whereas I'm trying to assist the customer. So of course I had that slightly different view. AI, [00:05:00] I think. It's AI is more of in its infancy.

[00:05:05] It's here. It's evolving. It's quick and it's going to happen faster. So what they laid out is Kind of more as this is what's to come but we know having worked in the space for quite some time. It's It's really not super efficient today, and I agree with you. Where are the resources going to come from where?

[00:05:28] They're already trying to look for resources for people to transition and still transition over from ECC to S4. So from my perspective, we're looking, you know, at where SAP is going, and more importantly, where are organizations going? What's most important to them? Who's going to what sessions?

[00:05:51] As are they in the same sessions I'm in and who's in the sessions that are in, let's say cloud facing or cloud alignments, you know, and what's more [00:06:00] important to them. Because what's important to you is different than what's important to another organization. And let's say, you know, not all Molson Coors, but let's say something in a you know, a small manufacturer.

[00:06:17] So there's a big difference there, and I think it's layered.

[00:06:21]

[00:06:21] Julea Ferrara: Yeah, you do have a great point. The one thing I have learned by going to Sapphire over these years is everybody tends to take their IT department. And you have a little bit more understanding of, like you said, Barry, Hey, we're more concerned about the cloud aspect.

[00:06:40] When companies, customers send their people there, they need to send more of their business teams out there, business process teams, and that's not really happening. So the biggest encouragement I offer is you need to have more of your business functioning teams

[00:06:56] to attend because they hear, they hear all these [00:07:00] hype words and around AI, they're ready to go. They don't realize that we have to still do all this work. Ahead of time. And there that's the gap that I see is people don't understand, okay, you have this available. This tool can do all this stuff for us. And I see a lot of different industries keep buying the tools and tools and tools, but they don't understand all the data and all the business processing that needs to be done with that for that automation to work.

[00:07:30] So. My biggest takeaway for any customer and send more business functioning groups to those conversations. Sapphire being that.

[00:07:40] Barry Sjostedt: That's such a great point. It really is, working with all different aspects of businesses. And this is not just kind of in this circumstances, but just, you know, from years of experience.

[00:07:52] There is such a vast difference between the person who's in IT, who gets the complete and total understanding of, how it works, [00:08:00] and how I'm gonna put it into your system, to the individual actually using it, and is it functionally sound for their day to day. And it's almost, you know, sometimes I feel that the representatives that they send to some of the shows, it becomes that telephone game, when they get back to the organization and say, "I saw the coolest thing ever." And then the person sitting at the desk saying, yeah, but only one aspect really kind of helps me.

[00:08:27] It's great. But overall for the organization, does it fit the need for where we're going not just daily, but in the future? How are we going to accomplish that? So, yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I enjoy meeting several different people from several different areas. And I think that's kind of where I think I really like more from an ASUG point of view.

[00:08:50] When you start to get a little bit more granular in some of the smaller shows, you get to meet the users and understand where their difficulties is in that chain of how it can [00:09:00] go up and it can benefit the organization as a whole and not just one instance.

[00:09:06] Mustansir Saifuddin: You both made a great points on this particular conversation.

[00:09:11] One thing that I've seen, and this is what is going to persist going forward, especially when we are transitioning from the current environment customers are in, either you take your ECC environment or on prem or whatever the current situation is from their ERP to their data and analytics to any of the technology that they're currently using in their organization is having that path available to them.

[00:09:38] You know, having that advisory kind of role, someone who is capable of understanding their current landscape and then walking them through the path to the new technology, to the generative AI type of discussions because the path has to be clear. Because you're not jumping to the [00:10:00] new technology, you know, in the next move.

[00:10:01] You're going through those steps to make sure that you are getting to the destination in a way that is helping and benefiting the business, right? In the end of the day, a customer is looking at ways to make sure their systems are running flawlessly. You know, their path to technology and future trends is aligned with what their business strategy is.

[00:10:24] That brings me to my next question So Sapphire is in the back view mirror now. A couple of months into it and the dust has kind of settled down How has your outlook changed since you left Sapphire? Barry, I would like to start with you this time.

[00:10:41] Barry Sjostedt: For me, my outlook hasn't changed a lot . Having, you know, done a little bit of research prior to going to Sapphire and what we were looking to accomplish.

[00:10:54] It's really kind of the same thing. My follow up from the show and the outlook [00:11:00] is, I'm a little bit more focused on some of the, the technology, obviously cloud was being one of them for us. The onset of BTP and trying to roll out the different portions of what they're, you know, trying to make it bigger and better, but really it's much of the same.

[00:11:20] How am I going to be able to help organizations and align with their strategies? And really try to help them to make these moves. I mean, we, you know, we've made mention, you know of some of the the people having to move over, whether it's just to S4 or being a part of the Rise journey, or Hana cloud for that matter, How can I help be a value and a benefit for the organizations to make these moves? I always turn back to my past experience of just working in operations. Operations is costly for [00:12:00] groups. It's a cost. How do you defray that cost? How do you make that cost as small as possible to help the profitability in the future?

[00:12:08] How can I make, that process more lean and a more efficient, saving more money for them to make this upgrade. Because these upgrades are costly. And that's what we see a lot of is, our focus is solely on this. And it's like, yeah, however, if you have terrible process today here, you can upgrade, but you've just upgraded to another terrible process.

[00:12:36] And you just paid a lot more money to do a terrible process. So again, it's getting that mindset. So for me, not a lot has changed in that aspect. I think it's just more of understanding what the messaging is and also aligning with the organizations to make sure they understand what the messaging [00:13:00] is and is it being, is it being relayed from that show to Julea, just like you said, to your business people, to your end users.

[00:13:10] If I'm at a slightly larger organization and I'm going to send people down to Sapphire, I'm going to have that mindset of a divide and conquer. And I am going to pick, do you know what I mean? Three groups. I'm going to have an IT, I'm going to have a finance, I'm going to have an end user group.

[00:13:28] Do you know what I mean? And I'm going to say this is what I would like to find out. And then All three groups collaborate when they get back. What did you find out? What did you learn? And then once you do that, I think you're really on the path to making the best decision moving forward.

[00:13:45] Do we do this? And in what order do we do this? What is most financially advantageous to the group? So we're prepared not only today, but we're prepared for tomorrow when we have to make yet another jump or do we do [00:14:00] it incrementally? That's smart.

[00:14:02] Mustansir Saifuddin: That makes sense.

[00:14:03] Julea, what's your take on it? I mean, have you seen any change in your perspective after this couple of months?

[00:14:11]

[00:14:11] Julea Ferrara: Generally, you don't. Again, it's all hype. It goes back to more the cloud perspective and automating. Different aspects and going to the AI route because again not everybody understands that you're putting additional costs onto the problem you already have of upgrading and everybody's too worried about the maintenance side of things.

[00:14:33] Instead of fixing the issue right now, everybody's more focused on the tool . The business sees, Hey, you have all these awesome tools. They push and the business gets what the business wants. They have the money. They can say , Hey, I want these tools. And then you have these complicated webs.

[00:14:50] I liked the point that you said, bring your finance person, bring your business person. People forget, is bring your data people . Your data people need to be a [00:15:00] part of these conversations. That is one group I do not see a lot of, data people. Yeah, maybe on the analytics side, but you need your master data governance team there.

[00:15:10] I think security is another one.

[00:15:13] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. This is very good to hear the two perspectives. And that was the whole idea of this conversation was to get what you have seen from your point of view, and then how it has progressed since that event happened.

[00:15:29] So from your purview, where do you see SAP customers heading when it really comes to this S4 journey we all talking about and a 2027 deadline from SAP?

[00:15:39] Julea, what's your take on it? I mean, this is coming up quickly.

[00:15:44] Julea Ferrara: Yeah. I see a lot of people scrambling. Again going back, they just, what do we do? Are we taking all the initial steps that we need to, all the checks and balances ahead of time? It kind of goes back to what [00:16:00] I'm previously referencing is people are scrambling.

[00:16:03] They're focusing on the tool to get it done and not really understanding that they need to be more involved. And this is where I plug in the ASUG: ASUG plug is even part of your S. A. P. membership is the customer excellence team that you can tap into to help you. And that's where my recommendation seeing those pre conferences, I was like: if you want to work with bigger, like Deloitte and Accenture and EY, to help navigate these things, you still need small providers to come in, to really understand your landscape a little bit more, to help guide those teams.

[00:16:41] Those are the disconnects I'm seeing, and I think if you get the mapping and all that stuff done ahead of time, you're in, you're aware of what maintenance fees and stuff. People are there to guide you through all that. And not enough customers know about those benefits. [00:17:00] As being a part of an ASUG membership where you're amongst a group of all these subject matter experts who can guide you, you know, it's, it's full of customers, partners, and vendors, not everybody realizes that.

[00:17:13] I mean, I'm still. Been trying to get that out as a champion myself.

[00:17:18] Mustansir Saifuddin: That is great.

[00:17:20] Barry Sjostedt: Well, pressure's on, isn't it? Right? I mean, that clock has been ticking. There's been that push and I think that some of the early adopters obviously had some pains and let's also remember COVID was slammed right in the middle of this.

[00:17:38] So I know that they went from, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was 2025 was the original date. I think they're two years out considering the COVID and I don't know if that's enough. The last time that I checked, I want to say that there were still 68 percent of [00:18:00] organizations still on ECC.

[00:18:01] I could be wrong on that number you know, obviously, but that's quite a bit. So now we're going to have this mad dash in two years. My concern becomes resources. These organizations if they're not adopting earlier and stuff, are they doing the right thing? Piggybacking off what you said Julea too is you know I couldn't stress enough of using, you know organizations like the ASUGs and the education. And more importantly the peer to peer contacts and I can't tell you how many people I have talked to here in the new england chapter. Use the people who have already moved over.

[00:18:39] What approach, what would they do different? If they had to do it over again, spend time on this, clean up this, don't do this. And there I agree again, Julea, it's just that I think that the smarter organizations are taking a step back, they're taking a look and doing just kind [00:19:00] of what I said before.

[00:19:02] Thanks. What we have internally. Clean up. I mean the clean core concept is really kind of what I was talking about a little bit more about being lean. let's clean up what we have now clean up some dead data clean up some stuff that we have to do so when you actually make that transition You're not bringing over junk.

[00:19:23] You're actually starting and think about the cost and I mean we promote that a lot here. As we're doing our projects, is that working with a documentation, organization, and optimization that we do is if we can assist you to clean up that whole entire area within your documentation, you're not bringing that stuff over.

[00:19:46] I mean, I know we've saved organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in just migrations and think about that. That can go to what you're moving over. This is just one small piece, one small [00:20:00] area of your SAP ecosystem. Think about where else you can clean up. So again, I think that the smarter organizations are really taking a harder look at that move and what makes sense.

[00:20:11] And does it make sense if I'm going to do just do S4? Do I do S4 cloud? Do I do it all at once? And how do I do that and how do I go about it? So. Yeah. I think really organization is the key and communication is really big, internally and externally, and who works best for your organization.

[00:20:33] You have some of these larger groups, they might be more suited to work with you. But there are a lot of smaller groups that need kind of more boutique, more hand holding, more understanding, and more experience in that area. Someone working on a multi billion dollar corporation, might not be the best fit for a smaller organization.

[00:20:58] You know what I mean? That's revenue under a [00:21:00] hundred million. And there are all different levels for that. I think it's going to be interesting to see over the next couple years. I'm starting to see a smaller shift kind of on my end from an interest standpoint of I think that people are learning from the smaller groups and that peer to peer contact. And I actually couldn't encourage that enough from my end. And Julea and Mustansir and we're being part of these organizations is where you kind of get the most benefit.

[00:21:25] Talking to each other, get an understanding. And it's amazing how willing people are to help each other in this capacity. I really enjoy that part of the, the group of the organization.

[00:21:37] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, totally agree.

[00:21:39] Julea Ferrara: I've seen different industries who rely on SAP education to only be in the IT department. You talk to business departments and they're like they solely rely on IT creating the documentation, putting everything together, and really not going [00:22:00] in to do transactional work or understand what they're doing versus they're relying on the reports that are coming out. And my biggest takeaway to customers, the ones that are successful is you have SAP education throughout your whole organization.

[00:22:18] Not just your IT department. So if you're doing integrated business planning, it needs to be a part of the whole integrated business planning teams conversation to, like you said, Barry, going back to that documentation, cleaning up the data, cleaning up the process to then move it all over. The hard part is people don't know how to educate others.

[00:22:44] And that's why we have great groups like ASUG. I said, you don't have to leave the company to learn other best practices. So focus on educating your people and having that organizational change management process set there for [00:23:00] everyone.

[00:23:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: I think that's a great takeaway, I think, from both of you, and you touched upon it, right?

[00:23:03] I mean, it's all about peer to peer education, just learning and utilizing the resources available to you to be more prepared before you get on the journey. And the journey is going to be challenging for folks who have not gone through all the work that you folks mentioned about doing the homework, cleaning up, getting your house in order.

[00:23:24] All those things are important for you to be successful in this journey, right? And I know we covered a lot today. What would be one key takeaway that you would both want our listeners to leave with? Julea, please start from your perspective.

[00:23:38] Julea Ferrara: I know a lot of people are going in the AI route and we're talking data, process and then, big key takeaway is utilize the networks that you have, to come together, share. When it comes to the A. I. aspect of it all: to have the greatest prompting you can. Describe your [00:24:00] scenarios as descriptive as possible when you are building out the AI for these tools. If you leave things very blank, if you leave things very from the box add your operations to that, consider your operational changes, consider the process, and then consider what the software does.

[00:24:22] Cause you can customize to that and utilize the SAP excellence center, utilize ASUG. Get some smart, smaller partners in to understand your landscape. If you're a big company to help get those SOWs going in the right direction that work for you and you're not just putting money out the door and out the door and out the door. And you're creating more webs of Disarray, focus on those avenues and I think you'll do, you know, do do really well.

[00:24:54] Mustansir Saifuddin: Great. Barry, what's your take?

[00:24:57] Barry Sjostedt: I can't stress enough the [00:25:00] peer to peer, partner, collaboration, communication network. I think that's the most helpful. People like to talk about their accomplishments. People like to talk about what works, their successes and how it works. The more you get to know people and the more you kind of get yourself out there and you get more in these groups, you know, they're not afraid to talk about, yeah, we tried this and it didn't work.

[00:25:29] And they explain why. Then that relationship continues. And between reading and trying to collaborate on linkedin, which I try to use a fair amount. I try to share as much as I can so that people can learn more about their space . Whether it's the people that I follow or the people that I am connected with I think there's a lot of value in there. But again, it's that research And I agree with you Julea.

[00:25:52] It's just vetting out What is best for your organization? What I've seen a lot of is that you have organizations that [00:26:00] come in and say, Oh, don't worry. We have that. We have that solution for you. That's in our portfolio. Well, great.

[00:26:09] Does it work? Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's great that you have it in your portfolio, but is it a right fit for us today? At the end of the day, if you actually have something in mind and you have a project in mind, take a step back and say," Hey what are the best ones out there right now?"

[00:26:26] And let's look at three, four, five and find the best fit with your organization. You know what I mean? We're a good fit for you as you are for us because that means we're setting you up for success.

[00:26:39] We're a valued partner and we're going to move forward with you. And I think oftentimes it gets lost because people are trying to sell. People are trying to put stuff in there. It's all great if I put something in your system, But if a year or two later, it doesn't work,

[00:26:54] it's bad. It's bad for both of us. Bad for business. Bad for reputation. And it doesn't work. That's [00:27:00] no good. So the combination of that peer to peer contact and understanding and having a true understanding Of your organization and what fits best for your needs for your groups and that comes with communication and collaboration.

[00:27:13] Julea Ferrara: I say there's a lot of as for supply chain groups. There's a lot around the finance groups. There's the latest and greatest, and that's where I'm getting a lot of my information from. So I suggest customers do the same as well. Go in those groups and learn, like you said, peer to peer.

[00:27:30] Barry Sjostedt: Well, you know, and that's funny. When you mention the latest and greatest here, it's great, right? You take a look at it, and is it a good fit for you today, right? Maybe not. But I think the key is, is that by looking at the different organizations, who is set up the best for you to make that move.

[00:27:45] So if you are in fact on ECC today and you want to fix it, is that next step for you S4 and will that solution or that particular idea move over to S4 in an easy [00:28:00] transition.. Or is it more of a, well, since you're going on this version, the next version is going to be twice as expensive to make a move.

[00:28:08] And I see that a lot too. Whereas, you know, and it's nice part about stuff that we will do here is that it doesn't matter what version you are on and it's an easy transition. You can just bring everything over once you're ready to move. And I feel that's a true valued partnership. Is that we're, we're looking to move forward with your roadmap and we are aligned with all versionings of SAP.

[00:28:33] There's that nice collaboration, right? We're collaborating with the organization. But we're also just going to be right along with the roadmap. If they're going to move forward, we have the capability of moving forward with you and it's not at an outstanding cost. A better ROI at the end of the day.

[00:28:50] And ultimately that's what you want. You got to look hard at that.

[00:28:53] Julea Ferrara: Yeah. What people don't do is discuss the how together.

[00:28:58] Barry Sjostedt: Right. Yep. [00:29:00] No, that's exactly right.

[00:29:02] Mustansir Saifuddin: I think this is great and great takeaways from both of you and I think that this is where the real value comes in from sharing this kind of format with listeners so they can get, Hey, what is really out there and what should be focusing on in order for me to be successful in my organization and in the future I want to move forward to.

[00:29:24] Thank you again both of you for joining the session and it's been a great conversation. Look forward to talking to you in the future Thank you again for joining us today.

[00:29:34]

[00:29:34] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thanks for listening to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solutions Partners. Barry and Julia shared their unique perspectives to give a 360 view of SAP Sapphire. As we heard from both of them, the key to success in navigating the SAP ecosystem lies in collaboration, [00:30:00] communication, and a focus on business processes.

[00:30:03] Don't hesitate to leverage the resources available within the SAP community and seek guidance. from experts when needed. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or X. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. 

In this latest episode, Carla Sarti, former VP GBS - Lear Corporation, joins Mustansir Saifuddin to share strategies on how organizations and teams can succeed with any IT implementation. From teamwork to fundamental project management, to supplier relations, Carla highlights what's she learned across her storied career path so others can make an even bigger impact with their IT projects.

Carla Sarti was most recently the Vice President of Global Business Services at Lear Corporation – a position she held since April 2018.  Prior to this position she was Vice President of Non Production Purchasing and Director of Shared Services.  

Prior to Lear, she served as Account Executive at ACS, a Xerox company (now Conduent) where she acted as chief strategy officer and Director of Sales for many large accounts in the Finance and Accounting Outsourcing area.  She spent five years at Delphi Corporation in numerous roles of increasing responsibility including managing the SAP environment after implementation and working as a Lean expert for the Cockpits business.  She also worked as a plant and divisional financial analyst at TRW and an operational auditor at the Budd Company.

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Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: Welcome to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Carla Sarti, a seasoned executive, shares her insights that any team can use for leading successful IT projects. From understanding business processes to the importance of transparency, teamwork, and supplier relations, Carla reveals the key ingredients for project success.

[00:00:30] Welcome to Tech-Driven Business Carla. How are you?

[00:00:33] Carla Sarti: I'm great. Thanks for having me. Great to see you.

[00:00:38] Mustansir Saifuddin: It's great to have you on our show. And I'm glad that , you took the time out to share some of your thoughts and leadership with us today,

[00:00:46] Carla Sarti: Absolutely.

[00:00:48] Mustansir Saifuddin: so our topic is going to be Secrets to successful IT projects. How does it sound to you?

[00:00:55] Carla Sarti: Amazing. It's 1 of my passions.

[00:00:58] Mustansir Saifuddin: I know, I know. And I think that's going to be something that it will be very helpful to our listeners, especially in this day and age where technology is changing so fast. There are so many different options available. And I. T. Is in the middle of all of this. Let me start with this. You know, I want to set the stage.

[00:01:15] So let's begin with this. Can you share some background on how you How did you find yourself leading I. T. Projects you started your career in a totally different arena?

[00:01:29] Carla Sarti: Absolutely. So, yes, I have a business degree of my MBA. I started in audit and very specific businesses, purchasing finance, et cetera. But technology was always something that I was very curious and passionate about. When I was a co op at TRW, the vice president of finance came to me one day and I'm going to date myself a little bit here, but we were on Lotus 1, 2, 3, and he had a disc in his hand and he said, Carla or little kid or whatever he called me.

[00:02:00] Here's a disk of Excel. I would like all of our reports moved from Lotus 1, 2, 3, put on Excel and let's review them next week. And I said, okay, let's go. And so I taught myself Excel and I really started to understand the power of technology. And that's just such a basic example. Right. So while I was still a co op, I got involved in an SAP implementation and That really opened my eyes to what technology can bring, and I've been into it ever since.

[00:02:32] So different functional groups I've been in, I've always brought best in class processes along with the technology side, because I think it is, it goes hand in hand, but I've done everything from SAP, Coupa, SharePoint, RPA, and now dabbling in AI.

[00:02:50] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. You know, it doesn't matter matter where you start? You know, even having a business degree, like you mentioned technology is always with you and it's around you. So you got to either embrace it and you got to go with the flow or you're going to fight it, right? So I, I like the approach that you mentioned that, you know, your first inital foray into this whole technology area was just, you know, just of the iceberg, right?

[00:03:14] You got into this thing and now Years later, you are much ingrained in this whole technology stack. So, let's talk about your experience. You have decades of experience. What do you see as some key factors that contribute to the success of IT projects, which is so important?

[00:03:33] Carla Sarti: So I'm going to start with the assumption that before you implement any sort of technology, You've really understood your business, right? And where are your business processes? What needs to be cleaned up? You're not just bringing in technology to bring in technology because I don't think that's ever usually successful, but so you've done that and then you've really understood again, the current processes.

[00:04:01] The gaps that you have and what is your success criteria? I think a lot of people, a lot of companies don't look at what success looks like at the very beginning. And they say, Oh, okay. Yeah. We're just going to implement this. We heard it's the best solution and they don't think through, what are we trying to achieve?

[00:04:19] That, that really starts dictating what a successful project looks like. Then you through the whole. Project. You obviously have to have the right team members on the project, having an executive sponsor that can break down roadblocks. I've seen projects that the best ones typically have a business person leading them.

[00:04:44] Because they understand what's trying to be accomplished. Not that IT can't lead projects and they are definitely very integral to the process. But typically, when a business person runs them, they're implemented quicker. The understanding is there. The right process mapping has been done, et cetera. So you've got the right people.

[00:05:07] Probably have suppliers in the mix, because what company has all that skill set on hand? So you have to have the right suppliers. And then through the course of it, you have to have the right governance. So the communication process, the transparency of where the project truly is, because as you know, IT projects are not a hundred percent foolproof, right?

[00:05:33] Something always happens in any kind of project, whether you're building a house, you're, you're baking a cake or whatever it is, something goes wrong and you've got to have the right transparency and communication. To understand what to do next, then obviously you could have the best tool in the world.

[00:05:51] The best project. It's going great. You have to have change management methodology and processes embedded in the project because if people aren't going to use it. What does it matter? Right? And I mentioned Excel when I was a co op, a lot of people still use Excel and you could put in the best shiny new toy technology.

[00:06:13] People are comfortable with Excel. So you've got to explain to people how their jobs going to change and give them the appropriate training to make it a true success. In the end.

[00:06:25] Mustansir Saifuddin: For sure. And I think you touched upon a lot of it. Some very key points. You know, starting with a champion, you know, has to be a business. How do they currently do the job? How can they do it better? You know, governance, such a key piece. You need to have that in place, change management, you know, I've been in technology field for so many years.

[00:06:44] That's one thing that we know. If there is no good change management in place, It doesn't matter what technology, what kind of resources or what kind of supplier you're using, it doesn't go well. The end user needs to be on board. They need to really be part of the whole implementation process in order for them to adapt and then be the voice of the new tool because they are the ones who will be actually living with it, doing it on a daily basis.

[00:07:15] So great point.

[00:07:15] Carla Sarti: And people get scared. I mean, they get really nervous when a new project's coming, right? And especially in the age of AI, people think they're going to lose their jobs and companies need to do a really good job explaining. No, no, no. So you do this today, but tomorrow we need you to do that. And actually you'll probably be more fulfilled doing.

[00:07:36] The new, but it's just that, that way of explaining and coaching them through it and not just dumping something on their lap.

[00:07:45] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. And that's the key, right? How is it helping the real users of the system that this implementation or this piece of software doesn't matter? You're doing an E. R. P. implementation. You do some kind of data analytics project or any other systems that you're putting in place. It is there to help the business move to the next level.

[00:08:08] How can we be more profitable? How can we make it easier for our customers to deal with us? different scenarios, right? And this and all of these are bundled together to give you the next level of the best, right? How can you do your job a better way than what you're currently doing? So totally agree with you. Now you touched upon one key fact, right? The idea of finding the right supplier. So how do you find the right supplier to support your initiatives? Can you share examples of successful IT projects? Where your supplier collaboration was very effective.

[00:08:44] Carla Sarti: Finding the right supplier is key to the equation. I've always looked for a valued, trusted business partner. And. You know, there's, there's a lot of ways to get there. And I think a lot of it is being up front in the initial RFP process.

[00:09:03] And you've got to have as much information for the supplier as possible to bid on because what you don't want is. Death by change order later because they didn't understand the project. You didn't understand the project as the business. That breaks down a relationship really, really fast. So again, more of that transparency, the collaboration. Some of the best projects I've had and I can't go into a lot of detail on them, but we implemented a tool in 18 months at one of my companies and really the success of the project was a lot.

[00:09:39] on the supplier side. We brought somebody in with a great skill set in the tool that we were building. They had a road map. They had this amazing design methodology and the right questions were asked. The right people were brought by us as the company and, you know, we got off to a great start when things did go wrong.

[00:10:02] They were very, very transparent. They said, okay, we need to get together. Let's pull everyone together. Let's get these questions answered. And they didn't hide things. We didn't hide things. It was probably the best project I've ever implemented. And that's what it takes. Again, that collaboration, transparency, and that win win from both sides.

[00:10:25] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. I think you touched upon all the things that a successful project should look like, especially from a practices point of view, the strategy point of view and the relationships standpoint. Right? All of these work together and. You know, I, I just use the example of many different projects that I've done.

[00:10:44] And, you know, especially when you're working with clients, transparency up front really helps. It sets the stage and make sure that both the client and the supplier are on the same page. And when you start off with that approach, things, like I said, things can go wrong, but you have a plan in place how to mitigate those issues, how do we get on the same page and make sure that whatever things that are an obstacle to the project are taken care of working collaboratively versus, you know, us versus them.

[00:11:18] Carla Sarti: Right. Exactly. That's the last thing you want to get into in a project. It's already complex enough,

[00:11:24] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah. And, like you mentioned earlier, right, that always something that comes up. You, you have the best of the intentions, but it can be a business challenge. There can be a technology challenge. There can be integration challenges. All different factors play a role into things can go in a different direction very quickly.

[00:11:46] Carla Sarti: right? Oh, we didn't know this site had this approval process in here. And oh, this one has a different one. You find things as you get the project going and you have to be agile. You have to be flexible. You can't have. You know, the last thing you want is a supplier that's like, Oh no, you know, this, this is what we were brought in for.

[00:12:06] I mean, we can talk about commercials, but you know, let's just all collaborate and get it done. That's where you need that trusted relationship because you don't want the supplier thinking, Oh, okay. They're going to ask me to do this for free. And you don't want the customer to be like, okay, they're not going to be able to do it.

[00:12:23] So you've got to have that open dialogue going.

[00:12:26] Mustansir Saifuddin: For sure. So, on a personal note, how do you stay on top of this fast changing pace of technology? What's, what's your secret sauce?

[00:12:36] Carla Sarti: I've always been a constant learner always right? I mean, and I think being a co op at 18 years old, really drove that in me. It was the time, I kind of want to date myself it was the time when computers were kind of just starting to be used and I saw people just fumbling with the mouse. I mean, think of that in today's day and age, right?

[00:13:01] I mean, back then people were fumbling with mice. I was like, oh my goodness, I never want to be in a position where, I'm not kind of at the forefront of technology. And I'm just a learner anyway. So, you know, whether it be books podcasts really from a technology standpoint, I think is what keeps me up to date.

[00:13:21] I love the podcast. It's called All in One it's for billionaires that. Actually have very different views on things, whether it be politics or technology or science, and they talk about everything under the sun. Nvidia actually has an AI podcast. It's called the AI podcast, and then there's AI today.

[00:13:44] And then being in GBS and shared services, a lot of my career, I stay on top of those things with SSO next. And they talk about technology, tons of technology within that realm as well. I read tons of articles on LinkedIn, the Wall Street Journal, and then definitely leadership books. I know that's not necessarily technology, but.

[00:14:05] When you're talking about leading people again through change, and, you know, the best way to be collaborative, I find that to be extremely helpful. Patrick Lencioni is one of my favorite authors The 5 Dysfunctions of Team, one of my favorite authors. Favorite books. And he writes very much like fiction.

[00:14:23] So it's really easy to get through. I don't know if you've ever listened to or read Jocko Wilnick's books, but he has extreme ownership and a couple others, phenomenal books, right? I mean, just kind of look at yourself in the mirror and it, it goes to project management, so extreme ownership. Am I doing everything I possibly can to be successful?

[00:14:44] Have my team be successful. So really good one for project management. Mustansir.

[00:14:50] Mustansir Saifuddin: Nice, I think you've got a whole slew of resources available at your fingertips that's good. I think like one thing that I really liked about your approach, I mean, you've seen it all, you've played different roles, It's refreshing to see someone like you in your space that you still find yourself as a student, you know, still keep on learning and be able to keep yourself ahead of the curve.

[00:15:12] And I think that's the key, right? The different roles we play depending on what you're doing your daily job, but at the same time, looking around and seeing what else is going around you. We live in the space of, and the times of Gen AI. AI being disruptive and how it will change our lives. It's already is changing, you know how do you stay ahead or at least keep up with the technology?

[00:15:39] I think is the key to your success. So that's what it seems like you you've been very much in tune with it.

[00:15:46] Carla Sarti: Absolutely. One of the coolest things I ever did was reverse mentoring. So I had someone younger in the organization mentoring me, right? And then it helps you get into their shoes and understand what drives the next generation. What tools and technology are they using? It's really fascinating. And of course I, I use my kids too.

[00:16:08] You know, I have a 19 year old and a 17 year old and just understanding: How they think, what they're looking at, what they're using, chat, what's GPT 4 all about. You know, you got to stay on top of things.

[00:16:21] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, they are the best teachers. I mean you think about technology I mean this younger generation is amazing and how they are adapting and all that. Let's get into the conversation about you know, we talked about successful supplier collaborations very key, right, important but what are some of the common challenges companies face?

[00:16:41] With IT suppliers during a project. Can you share some ideas on thoughts on that?

[00:16:49] Carla Sarti: I think one of the ones I've seen is where someone's oversold their capabilities, right? You've got a supplier, maybe they did a really good job on one project and they're asked to bid on another. And as a company, and again, trying to find that trusted supplier, it's very easy to fall into, well, let's just use these guys that were successful before.

[00:17:13] You've really got to evaluate, are they going to be successful for this project? And of course they want business. Everyone wants business, but you've really got to look and say, okay, can I deliver on this project? Because if I can't. I'm actually going to ruin my reputation within the company. So just being honest and making sure again, from the company's standpoint, you're choosing the right supplier and that the suppliers.

[00:17:42] Again, understanding the project that you're trying to implement and maybe they don't understand at first and they think they can deliver on the project. So, as a supplier, I would say, make sure you ask the questions. Be curious. Why are you doing this project? What exactly are you looking for? Oh, okay.

[00:18:02] It's in this space. Okay. We don't have people in that space. Well, I can maybe bring people in to do that. You know, really understanding, that side to me, can really change the dynamic there. And then again, I'm not gonna, I'm going to keep talking about the transparency. If the supplier cannot be transparent when there is an issue, it's not going to be good.. I've always told people whether they work for me or a supplier, Bad news doesn't get better with time. You've got to bring these things forward. We've got to come up with solutions together. I don't care whose fault it is.

[00:18:38] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah,

[00:18:39] Carla Sarti: Like, ultimately, I want this project to be successful. So let's work together to get that done.

[00:18:45] Mustansir Saifuddin: absolutely Absolutely. I think and and that's where I my question to you is how do you mitigate those issues? Everybody wants a smooth and successful implementation. It's just Everybody thinks that's how it should go, but we all know there are challenges.

[00:18:59] Carla Sarti: Mm hmm.

[00:19:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: you maybe share some ideas, thoughts on how do you mitigate those issues or something that you may have seen in the past?

[00:19:08] Carla Sarti: So we, a lot of times, use just basic project management. Fundamentals, right? You've got your project plan. Are you on plan or not? Then you look at what can go wrong. Okay, you list out all the things that you think could go wrong and you start putting mitigating plans together on that, right? And having meetings around those things.

[00:19:31] Okay, guys, how are we doing? Are we getting the data? That's going to be a big thing here. Did we get it? Did we not? What do we need to do? And again, having the right people on the project. So do you have somebody who can go in, break down those roadblocks if things aren't getting done, building the right relationships, again, you got to have the right people who can build relationships.

[00:19:53] Project management, as you know, It's almost more about being a psychologist than anything else. I mean, you've got to bring people together that maybe don't normally work together. They have very different personalities. You've got people on the IT side that have different personalities than the project side.

[00:20:11] So you've got to make sure that you understand those factors and use project management methodology. It's there for a reason. I mean, I've seen people, they're like, Oh, we don't need a project plan. Yeah. Like what? What are you talking? How do you do a successful project without a project plan? You don't even know what's coming next.

[00:20:31] You don't even know where you are in the cycle. Are you on track? Are you not? So I think those things, honestly, like don't overlook the fundamentals.

[00:20:41] Mustansir Saifuddin: No, I think that's a great advice. I one thing I, I, I like about your approach or your thinking is a project manager being a psychologist. You know, how many times you go through these, these iterations of projects after projects, you know, being a.supplier ourselves. I mean, I, I really appreciate your thought process on that because there's so many different stakeholders in any given time and project where you may have one stakeholder on board, but you may have someone else either business, I.

[00:21:11] T. Whatever else you're working with. They may be either lost. They don't agree with your approach or there's something else that in this space. And you needs someone who can actually mitigate all those different pieces of the,

[00:21:25] Carla Sarti: Mm

[00:21:26] Mustansir Saifuddin: puzzle and bring it all, all of them together in a way they see the value.

[00:21:30] It's all about value proposition and making sure that the end product is what the customer is asking for. Can we deliver? If we can deliver, what is the game plan? How do we go about making sure that we are all on the same page? Because at the end of the day, Once it is delivered correctly, It's a win win, you know. so

[00:21:48] Carla Sarti: Hmm.

[00:21:49] Mustansir Saifuddin: Do appreciate that insight into it and I know we talked about a lot of different things. I like to ask this one parting question.

[00:21:58] What is that one key takeaway? You want to leave with our listeners today.

[00:22:05] Carla Sarti: IT projects are very complex. So again, I would say the fundamentals are key. Understand what you're trying to accomplish. That is number one, understand the processes, get the right team involved, the right supplier, and set yourself up for success. So fundamentals. Use project management. Methodology for sure.

[00:22:33] I mean, it's there for a reason and have the right, the right people on the project is key. I know I'm doing like five different key takeaways here in Mustansir, but really again, it's just so complex and the fundamentals, the right people and, and the right methodology, key,

[00:22:51] Mustansir Saifuddin: No, thank you. Great advice and great takeaways. And I think once we have all these different pieces of the puzzle together, it's a recipe for success. So with that I'd like to conclude our session and I'd like to thank you for coming on on our show It was a pleasure having you.

[00:23:08] Carla Sarti: likewise. Thank you for having me.

[00:23:10] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thanks for listening to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Carla shared valuable insights that can be used immediately by your IT team her main takeaway, focus on the fundamentals that include understanding your objectives, involving the right team of staff and suppliers, and stick to solid project management methodologies.

[00:23:33] We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners. com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this latest episode, Geoff Scott, of ASUG, joins Mustansir Saifuddin to discuss what is required for businesses to be successful with Gen AI as they prepare for the future. With more than 20 years of leadership and technology experience, including seven years of extensive SAP implementation and operations experience, Geoff understands the impact of Gen AI in digital transformation. Listen in as he also highlights how ASUG is supporting the SAP ecosystem on the Gen AI journey.

Past positions include CIO for TOMS Shoes, where he led the implementation of SAP: CIO at JBS; and senior leadership positions at Ford Motor Company. Before becoming CEO, Geoff was an ASUG member and served on the board. Geoff has served on several philanthropic boards and is the founding member of the Denver CIO Executive Council. 

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. I'm honored to have Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG, joins me to discuss what is required for businesses to be successful with Gen AI as they prepare for the future. He'll also share valuable insights on how ASUG is supporting the SAP ecosystem on the GEN AI journey.

Welcome to TechDriven business, Geoff. How are you?

I'm wonderful. How are you today?

I'm doing great. Thank you. Thank you for joining our show.

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Or I should say, you can make that decision after we're done today.

All right. Sounds like a plan. Hey, it's always good to have you, Jeff, especially meeting in person every year, either in the volunteer meeting or at Sapphire or other events. It's always fun to have that conversation with you. Glad to have you on our show.

What a pleasure to be here. I want to thank you for your connection and commitment to ASUG, your commitment to the Michigan chapter, one of our most wonderful places to be in all of the United States. I have close ties to Michigan, so it's always wonderful to hear Go Green, for those who are Michiganders, my alma mater. I think that being part of ASUG and being part of this The SAP community is really a tremendous thing. I've been doing the CEO job at ASUG for 10 years. Every year, as you mentioned, we get all 300 volunteers together to plan the year and celebrate our successes and talk about our challenges. It's a tremendous things. So I encourage everyone to be part of ASUG. If you are an SAP professional and you want to be at the top of your game of SAP, there's no better place to be than being an active part of ASUG, which you are. I want to thank you for that.

I second that. Thank you. Thank you. So today, we will be talking about how digital transformation in AI is changing the business landscape. How does that sound to you?

I think that sounds like a tremendous conversation.

It absolutely is, and it's going to be fun. So let's start with the basics. Jeff, you have been around for a long time, not counting your-Original dinosaur. Hey, it's all good. But your extensive background with SAP. Can you share with our listeners a brief overview of your career journey?

Well, I would love to. As we just spoke about, 10 years as the CEO of Asug, and I don't love the CEO title. I like to think of myself as the Chief Community Champion. My job is to rally us as a community around this SAP software and make sure all of us are getting the most value from it. The organizations that are purchasing the software, we as all professionals in investing our careers into this amazing ecosystem, it's very important that we feel like we make forward progress. We feel that this is a place where we can learn, connect, and grow, which are three of our very important ASUG pillars. That's been a tremendous journey for me for the last 10 years. I didn't come into this intentionally. Prior to that, I was a CIO. I was at Tom's Shoes in Los Angeles. Prior to that, at a beef company, small beef company, only the third largest in the world, in Greenley, Colorado, where we were also an SAP shop. That was where I cut my teeth on being a full-time SAP advocate. Then prior to that, in your neck of the woods, in your backyard, in Deerborn, Michigan, doesn't take a lot to figure out what's in Deerborn these days.

So I was there for almost 10 years doing lots of different IT work. And then obviously prior to that, consulting in college and being a teenager and things like that.

That's a wonderful background, Jeff. It's okay. I think the best part about this is being in your role, the role that you're playing at ASOG, your background or your history really brings that tremendous amount of knowledge and technology know-how, which really is what a lot of ASA customers or in general, SAP folks who are dealing with technology on a daily basis can utilize your know-how and your in-depth knowledge of what's going on in the industry versus someone with a background in business. You don't really have that depth in terms of what you bring to the table.

You're very kind. You're very kind. In my career, I started off when I was going to college, just a little bit west from where you are. Again, go green. Then that's the last I'm going to say that today, maybe. My degree's in accounting, and I chose that field because I really wanted to understand how business worked. I figured the best way to figure out how business would work is to understand how the money moves around. Accounting was actually a fallback for me. I started I started off in finance, and then this will date me tremendously. Then the stock market collapsed back in the late '80s, and I went, Oh, wait a minute. I don't know I want to be on Wall Street anymore. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, so I had this delusion I would go back into New York and be on Wall Street. I said, I don't think that's going to work so well. I went to accounting, and I found I liked it better. A little bit more pragmatic. Finance can be fairly esoteric. I came into consulting in IT because I always thought about IT as a way in which businesses can be more efficient.

I was always intrigued by how we could use technology to drive business outcomes. That has served me throughout my career. I really think about business outcomes first and technology second.

Absolutely. I think that's what really counts, how business drives technology. That takes me to my next discussion point. Ai. Ai took the business world by storm last year. We all know that. How are ASOG and ASAP supporting their clients with navigating AI and Gen AI in particular. Everybody is about Gen AI, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think that generative AI and all the things related to AI, nothing new to that, Mustache. We've been around in the SAP ecosystem. Ai has been around for a long time. What was new in November of 2022 when ChatGPT first came onto the market was this thing of generative AI. Well, that was different. But most SAP practitioners, the people you and I are talking to today, would say, Hey, we've been filling around AI for a long time. Understanding PDF documents, understanding pictures, converting pictures to text, scanning documents, scanning invoices, making sure we can convert all that. None of that is terribly new. I think generative AI made it mainstream. What was back office technology that was used to achieve business the outcomes all of a sudden became available to the masses. And it became available to the masses in a very simple way. I can sit down, I can write a sentence into a computer, and it will produce paragraphs of very eloquent text. We can have a whole conversation about how accurate it is, but I could finally get this star tracky type of thing, or I could type a sentence in and I would get this back.

And I could do cute things. Tell me how to bake a cake in Shakespeare in English, and it would do it. I think it became a piece of technology that everybody could connect to, and that everybody includes the board of directors, the CEO, the rest of your business peers who can now say, I get it. I understand how this works, and I want that for my business. We can make this work for all of us.

I think it's a very interesting point you mentioned, Jeff. We always talk about C-suite, right? And you know that in this-I'm one of them. Yeah, exactly, right? So we talk about, I still get involved with a lot of implementations and boots on ground. And I know that a lot of these technology implementations, you have this gap between the C-suite and folks who are actually involved in the technology day to day, right? Do you think Gen AI is going to close that gap? What is your take on that perspective? Bringing these two worlds together.

I think generative AI is going to be an incredibly interesting diversion or departure for all of us in the sense that we've talked about for a long for a long time, the importance of some things in the SAP ecosystem that are near and dear to our heart. Master data, accuracy of data, archiving, things that warm our hearts that make the business run for cover. You want to watch paint dry? Have a conversation about archiving. The challenge with all of that is if we really want to get the most value from a generative AI solution, whether it be SAP's Joule or ChatGuard, GPT or everything in between, our enterprise data has to be lined up correctly. I think this is where we're going to see a tremendous amount of energy and effort to understand how this enterprise data will form these models and make them work. There was an article in the New York Times, I think two weeks ago, and this is topical because last week I was in Las Vegas for a few days at Google Next. And I always go to Google Next, and I also like to try to make it to AWS and Microsoft's events as well, because it refreshes me and it makes me think about how to tackle these problems from different perspectives.

And that, coupled with the New York Times article was very interesting to me in that it appears we're running out of trainable data for these models, that our models now are demanding so much data that we can't fill them. And And so there was an interesting topic in Las Vegas about synthetic data, which I'm still wrapping my head around and what that means. I'm trying to understand how we get to the levels of data. We do know one thing that these generative AI models require a lot of data in order to give very effective answers. And even when they have a lot of data, they can still hallucinate. I mean, there's no greater data source than the English language over the last 300 years. And the cool thinking about it is it hasn't really changed all that much. I can take all that stuff and I can pour it in. And yeah, there's different dialects, but the English language or pick a language, French, whatever, it hasn't moved all that much. So the data is fairly stable. Sure. Is that true when we think about our enterprise data? And the problem that I see coming is if we have lots of historical data, what does it really mean?

How accurate is it? And then the second big question is, how relevant is it? And if both of those are not at the top of their game, you run a huge risk that your model is being trained on data that isn't accurate, isn't relevant, and then you expect it to give you amazing results. The thing that makes me chuckle is the notion of saying to a model running on top of your SAP data, Hey, what's the best product I should sell? And it spits back a product that you made 15 years ago because it might have been at the time the most profitable based in parts that you don't even have access to anymore. And the model doesn't know that. I think there's another really important part of this whole equation, and that is something that I call gray data. And gray data is the data that's in our heads, in our minds, which is what we use to make decisions that the AI models have zero knowledge of. And the only way long term an AI model will be able to replicate what you do, what I do, what anyone listening today does, is it has exactly what's up in your head.

And it's not going to. We still know today in you're involved in SAP implementations all the time, that it takes someone interpreting that data, oftentimes, to understand what it's saying and what cues it's giving. Ai doesn't understand that because it's missing all the stuff that's in your gray space. And if that's the case, and how much of the data that you use to run your enterprise is gray data versus bits and bytes. If the answer is greater than 50 %, 60 %, 70 %, wow, we got a lot of missing data, and the model is not going to be that effective.

For sure. I think it's an interesting point you mentioned about historical data and the quality of data. And that leads me into this next conversation about, I'm an analytics person in data focus. And it's all about good information will produce good results, right? So from that perspective, I'm curious, what are you seeing with ASUG members as it applies to their approach, especially to real-time data and analytics, and also the move to the cloud? Because a lot of things are happening in the cloud. So what is your take in this whole space?

Well, certainly, I believe that if you are going to want to participate, play in in a generative AI, AI space, and you say, and probably before you make that conclusion, you have to ask a question, which is, where do you and your organization want to be on the innovation curve? Do you want to be on the very front of it? Do you want to be in the middle of it? Where do you want to be? Now, if you want to be on the very, very back end of the innovation curve, continue doing what you're doing today. If you want to be to the middle of the innovation curve or the front end, and I think about it as a bell curve. If you want to be to the middle to the front end of that curve, and most people don't want to be at the front, you need a lot of courage and a lot of strength to be. That's the scary place. But there are organizations that are there. Let's say you want to be safely in the middle. I don't want to lead the pack. I don't want to trail the pack. I want to be right in the middle.

It necessitates three things, I firmly believe. Number one, you have to be in the cloud. Number two, you have to really think about your software investments as software as a service. You're moving the requirement for changes and updates to the software vendor in this world SAP. Number three, as little customization as possible. If you can If you can do those three things and you can do them well, you have the greatest likelihood that you will be able to take all this innovation, absorb it and go. Which to your question is, when you talk about analytics, when you talk about predictive analytics, that's what you're going to For many, many SAP customers, that is a tectonic shift in perspective. And certainly, the longer you have been an SAP customer, and the more customizations you have made for whatever reason. Your business process doesn't line up with SAP's. Sap didn't have a solution for you at the time. We talk about this thing of technical debt, and where I quibble with some of the leading thought people is We tend to say and infer the technical debt is bad. Well, I don't think any of us as SAP practitioners wake up in the morning and say, Today is the day I'm going to build a lot of technical debt.

There are some good reasons for it. There might be some bad reasons for it, too. I don't know how to do something, so I'm just going to code it. I get it, but I don't necessarily believe that the technical debt is something that we all strive for. Motherhood and apple pie, as few customizations as possible. The problem now is the stakes are way up because we've learned that you have to be in cloud, you have to be in SaaS, and you have to be almost no customization in order to adopt fast. And that means that we have to be super careful about customization. That creates another problem inside most organizations, and that is how do you handle change control and how do you handle organizational change management? So the IT folks say, Hey, this is good for me. No customization. I'm good to go. And the business says, Well, wait a minute here. I have to retrain thousands of people across 16 time zones in 32 different geographies, and that's hard. And it is. And it is. So how do we find that necessary balance? And I think if you've been on SAP a long time, that transition is not going to happen overnight.

It's going to be multiple years, maybe even a decade, dare I say. And if you haven't started your S/4 migration yet, you are fastly running out of time. And so there's no time like the present to start working on that, because absent that, you are going to be perpetually behind. And I don't want to be Cavalier here, Mustanzer, because what I just described is an epic undertaking. But if you get there, predictive analytics is super interesting, right? We have got to figure out a way to take our technology professionals and find ways for them to have more time. Because if we really want to do predictive analytics, it requires us to jump into data sets. It requires us to look at data, plant floor data, log data, all these other things where we haven't traditionally looked for things. In order to find those patterns and those indications and those clues that help us sell more, get more efficient, do other things. And that requires time. And in order to get that time, we have to be more efficient. So if we're going to spend all of our time working on customizations of SAP, we are not going to be doing predictive analytics.

For sure. And I think that's one of the key points you mentioned about that, right? Stop spending time on doing things that are not adding any value, especially in this fast pace, changing constantly on a daily basis. And you put AI in the middle of all this, all of a sudden, your stakes are different, your challenges are different. And at the same time, the time to make those decisions is shrinking for you. So for organizations to be nimble and be able to act quickly, I mean, all the things you just mentioned, I think they go hand in hand, especially a lot of times folks think about analytics as a byproduct, right? It's after the fact. And then What we're thinking or what are you talking here at this point is put analytics in front because that will drive that whole behavior of change of exactly what is important to me. Predictive is one part of it. There's so many different aspects of information which you can put your right brains and your geeks. I mean, everyone has got geeks in the organization. I mean, you want to put those folks to good use. And the best way you can do it is having that Get ahead of the curve, right?

Don't wait, basically.

That's what I'm hearing. A hundred %. And I'm excited about the potential of AI to help us migrate systems faster. I'd like to see us use AI to help understand quality in data, to help us understand how we lift and shift business processes out of legacy systems into new systems. I'd like to understand how we use AI to drive business test cases, quality assurance. I believe that we are at a massive inflection point where the upgrading of these systems, you asked a question earlier about digital transformation. We have to move to the next generation of SAP software. I believe that unlocks the gateway to everything we're talking about today. That cannot be a five-year project. We have got to figure out as technology professionals how to automate it, how to make it faster, how to do it and how to make sure we can get an unlock value faster. It's my biggest ask of SAP, and in conversations that I have with their CEO and their leadership team, please stop making new SKUs for new software licenses. I implore you to make your software easier to migrate and uplift and move to the next generation.

And can we use some of these AI ML tools to achieve that? It's essential.

For sure. No, for sure. And I think talking about all this technology and SAP, let's come back to our conversation ASAG. Asag is a great start in 2024, right? I mean, personally, I know we had over 150 people at our Michigan Chapter meeting back in February. That is absolutely amazing. So what can ASEC members expect this year from their membership? Can you delve into that?

100 %. First and foremost, I think you said the most important thing where we're seeing the most interest, the most excitement is in our 39 chapters. So if you are an SAP professional and you want to be at the top of your game and you want to learn, connect, and grow, you don't have to jump on an airplane. And of course, we're welcoming you to do that. You don't have to spend hotel room nights. Go to your local ASUG chapter and become involved. You will meet people like you who want to get ahead and understand how to solve problems using SAP. And you're You're in the middle of the Michigan SAP scene. It's amazing. So go spend time there, which is a huge pitch for what you do and why you volunteer is because you want to be part of what's happening on the ground, real-time in geography. And that is what the chapter organization is here to do. And I would really like to see that over the next three to five years grow to epic proportions. I have a challenge. I want to see your Michigan meeting not be just 150 people. I want it to be 350 people.

That, to me, is exciting, which is a very different change of perspective from us. But I think in a post-pandemic world, what a great opportunity to get out from behind your laptop. And whether you're back in the office or still working remotely, go spend time with your friends in an ASUG chapter event in Michigan or in California or in Florida. Pick a place and just go and have fun and meet your peers. It'll be so wonderful for you. If that's not good enough, then And enjoy some of the other events that we do. Get online and do some research and education there. We have ASUG annual conference and SAP Sapphire coming up in June. In the fall, we have SAP for utilities. We have ASUG best practices, which is a whole source of industry-based events. And then we cap off the year. This is my most exciting event. We cap off the year in West Palm Beach, Florida, November 12th through 14th with ASUG Tech Connect. It used to be called TechEd, but we've reconfigured TechEd with SAP. So TechEd is a virtual program. But in North America, it's ASUG Tech Connect. So if you want to wrap up 2023, sorry, 2024, getting my years all confused, and get ready for an amazing 2025, ASUG Tech Connect is the place to be.

And I think those are fine. What else can you do? First Five newsletter comes out every Monday morning. It's an amazing place to just get a recap of the top five articles that happened in the SAP ecosystem over the last week. Podcast, you and I are in a podcast Today. Everyone's doing podcast. Aseg does podcast. Be there. Let's get together at Campus Connect. Citadel University, University of Texas at Dallas, Fayetteville State University, and then my favorite at Michigan State University. There's my last plug for Go Green, are all very much in the Campus Connect program. What a great way to have this next generation of talent, get excited about the careers that we've been so fortunate to have in the SAP ecosystem.

For I think there is a lot to learn. And the best thing about it, like you said, there's so many mediums. You pick what makes sense to you, what really florts your boat, especially after the pandemic. A lot of folks are open to coming out and meeting others and getting to know what's coming exciting. No, put it this way. Excitement is one thing. You get to meet people and either it's online, either it's in person or you're traveling somewhere else. Or like you mentioned, June. June, big event. A lot of new things are being shared and you understand and know exactly where SAP is going, where ASAG wants to take you in your journey. And as an organization, you want to learn from your peers, right? And That's the best opportunity. And one thing I like about your plug for the November event, you cannot go wrong with it. Exactly. You end your year on something that you really want to take into next year, and that and search your basis for exactly what you want to do. A lot of opportunities. I really love the whole platform that you explained so well.

Thank you. There is a lot going on inside the SAP ecosystem. It is a wonderful place for professionals like you, me, and everyone else, 130,000 of us in North America, to make our home, to learn, connect, grow, to thrive. And all you got to do is just raise your hand and go to a chapter meeting, meet with people outside of your your standard core team that you might be working on SAP for, and the whole world will be unlocked for you. And it'll make you feel like what you're doing has value, that the things you're learning can have a place in this broader ecosystem. We are going to need a lot more talent who stands there in the next 10 years than we have today. It frightens me about how much change is happening, and I believe we all find very rewarding careers inside of SAP.

Now, I think the future is really bright And I know we can talk for hours, Jeff. I mean, your knowledge, your passion for technology and SAP. But I do have to finish our session, our talk for today. I'd like to leave with this one question for you. As far as topics and discussions you covered, what is the one key takeaway that you want our listeners to leave with?

I believe the key takeaway today is generative AI is real. The faster you get in and start contemplating what it can and can't do. We are trying inside of Asug lots of different technologies, and we're fiddling, and we have this experimental culture. Let's go try some stuff. It's good. And I think we We're doing a lot with video to text, recaps, things like that. I think there's a ton of upside to all of this. Go get yourself immense in AI.

Yeah, for sure. I think that's a great advice. And It seems like a lot of folks who are still on the edges, it's time for them to move on and get on this bandwagon because this train has started rolling and there's no stopping. At least I don't see it in the near future.

Today is the worst day AI ever will be. It will get better from here, and it's going to be on an exponential scale. So don't wait another three, four weeks or months or years. Get in now.

Great advice. Thank you. Now, this is an awesome conversation. Really enjoyed the talk, and I would love to get you back in the future. Whenever you need. Feedback on how things have settled down once we traverse through the 2024.

We are here for you, and I appreciate greatly everything you do for the community, for the SAP community, for ASUG, and everything you do in Michigan. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Geoff delved deep into the transformative power of Gen AI shared valuable insights on how organizations can transform business with Generative AI. His main takeaway? Generative AI is real. Go get yourself immersed in AI as today is the worst day AI will ever be.

We’d love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our You Tube channel. Information is in the Show Notes

In this latest episode, Mustansir Saifuddin delves into the ever-evolving landscape of Gen AI with Todd Kackley, Vice President and CIO of Textron. Todd shares how his team implemented their inaugural generative AI solution and the crucial role leaders play in crafting scalable, well-governed, and future-proof data analytics and AI infrastructure.

Todd shares invaluable insights into striking the balance between leveraging third-party capabilities and developing in-house models, shedding light on the dynamic interplay between proprietary solutions and open source technologies. Whether you're a seasoned leader or a budding enthusiast, understanding the nuances of Gen AI and its implications is key to driving innovation and staying ahead in today's digital landscape.

Todd A. Kackley is vice president and chief information officer for Textron Inc. In this role, he leads the business unit chief information officers and the Textron Information Services (TIS) organization. He oversees Textron's Information Management Council and manages Textron's information technology supplier and outsourcing relationships.

Prior to his current role, Kackley was executive vice president and chief information officer for Bell where he developed and executed IT and digital strategy, aligning business systems, infrastructure, cybersecurity and development capabilities to the needs of the business.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TechDriven business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Today, an old friend, Todd Kackley, Vice President and CEO of Textron, joins me to delve into the ever evolving landscape of Gen AI. Todd shares insights into implementing their inaugural generative AI solution and the pivotal role leaders play in crafting a scalable, well-governed, and future-proof data analytics and AI infrastructure.

So thank you for joining the session today. Today, we will be talking about any organization's readiness to embrace Gen AI. And I would like to get your perspective on this topic. So with that, I would like to get into our session.

Let's do it.

Awesome. Great. So let me start with, as you lead your organization in these times of quicker adoption, we see this across the board, across technologies. When we talk about AI-driven solutions, how are you and your team striking a balance between leveraging third-party capabilities versus developing in-house models?

Well, Mustansir I think that's a very good question. And this is also something very relevant for us at Textron. We recently implemented our first production generative AI solution, and that solution leverages a third-party proprietary generative AI model. And part of that decision making was certainly there's a lot involved in developing artificial intelligence models as a technology company as well at Textron. We've dealt with AI, and it's been part of our product offering and some of the things that we do around geospatial analysis and other things. And we built models in the past. So the decision to make versus buy, it wasn't necessarily one that we had to approach when it comes to generative AI, because I think this is an area where it's certainly a buy, leverage third-party models because of the capability and the massive amounts of compute and investments required to go off and build a model, the capability that we're We're seeing coming from third-party proprietary models that are secure. And certainly that's something that's very important to us, making sure that we leverage a third-party model that is secure and allows us to be able to work within the confines of our data tenant and be able to leverage the benefits of the OpenAI, but at the same time protecting our sensitive data.

Now that makes sense. I mean, let's fast forward, right? Are you even looking at in-house models sometimes in the future, or is this something that you think a third party will give you the leverage that you're looking for as far as technology as well as security? One of the big question marks right now with Gen AI.

In our defense businesses, it's something we're certainly possibly kicking around where there may be smaller scale opportunities for us to build lambda-based models or others using Compute technology that's not massive data center type of the computing horsepower that you need to be able to do something as large as an Open AI or an Azure AI type of experience. I contend that most of the use cases that we're seeing right now, I think there's a difference that people need to look at when they approach this question, and it's what What outcome are you trying to achieve? And if the outcome is, I want quick analysis or summarization or content generation and so forth, recreating that wheel and trying to build that model may not make sense where those third-party proprietary models already exist to do that. In fact, I'm seeing even in the ecosystem of development of workbenches and use cases around these third-party models, there are several developments already in place that have the turnkey copilot for a contract's evaluation or proposal generation or service centers and doing things like help desk. Those are accelerating the ability to implement quickly and get value quickly. And even the model itself, I read something yesterday that It just blew my mind that the evolution of ChatGPT 3.5 to 4.0 to 5.0 is at a pace that it's reinventing itself about every six months.

And that's 4xMaur's law. If you think about that, the pace of Maur's. As a technologist, that just blows my mind.

For sure. I think that leads me into my next question. When we talk about proprietary solutions versus open source, How does that affect your strategy?

Well, I certainly appreciate how open source really drives innovation, and it really OpenAI is a good example. Openai is a good example. The release of ChatGPT a little more than a year ago as an open source technology has really fundamentally changed the perception of artificial intelligence and pretty much put the technology technology in the hands of the everyday consumer. You don't need to have a PhD in neural network to go off and understand how to interact with artificial intelligence. In fact, I think that has really accelerated. It's the fastest adopted technology hitting the 100 million user mark in less than two months. But at the same time, as a technologist, I think we've seen over time that there are certainly risks with some of the open source technologies, whether they become proprietary at some point or they get consumed by some player and they now become a fee-based application, and you've already committed to the technology. We've seen that across some of the major players that consume other open source technologies, and they turn around and license it. That's certainly a risk. It's certainly something that you can't undermine or underestimate the amount of patching and keeping up with the vulnerabilities of open source technology, because I think they're a little more susceptible to one of the vulnerabilities.

But it's certainly something we have to weigh out when we make decisions around using proprietary technologies versus open source.

Yeah. I think what I'm hearing from you, it seems like a lot of that is dependent on your business model and your individual needs as an organization, right?

Absolutely. It's not just, let's go find the lowest cost solution always. You have to take into consideration many aspects not just is it the best solution? Is it a secure solution? Is it one that's going to endure, that's going to have a life cycle that is going to sustain? Because you don't make a technology investment. You hope not to make a technology investment and expect It's like that they only have a couple of years life cycle. You want it to endure a little bit. Sometimes what we've seen in the ecosystem, even in the larger players, in the consolidation of certain applications of the stacks and so forth, and the reinventing of those stacks, it's really forced us to stand back and look at all of these investments to make sure that there's going to be viability in the solution provider to continue to support, do investments, and continue to evolve that product set, whether it's a small individual capability or a larger enterprise-wide program.

Yeah, for sure. I think longevity and durability It seems like it needs to be built in the solutions that you're looking for, right?

Absolutely.

So thinking about from an experience perspective, you got years of experience, both in business and technology. What are some of the good use cases of AI-driven solutions that you've seen deliver tangible business value? I mean, it's all about providing value to business and then at the same time building trust with the business. What's your take on that?

Well, we go back a long ways Mustansir. I appreciate you not actually stating how long I've been doing this job, but it feels like much longer. But it's interesting. The whole generative, as I just said, the whole generative AI thing, if you think even a year and a half ago, this wasn't on the radar for most CIOs or most technologists in general. And now it's pretty much consumed most of our discussions. For sure. So we decided here at Textron to take a look at an applicable use case. And while there are lots of analysis on where these capabilities actually work well or maybe provide the best value, we focused on our service center area of opportunity. And when you think about a services business where you have large volumes of data, not just on how you support, sustain that customer's product and the history of sustaining that customer's product, but you also have the combination of data around all of your All of your technical publications, all of your engineering specifications, everything known. And many of our products are in a regulated business, like commercial jets and so forth, or helicopters. So you have a lot of data that you need to maintain, and having that in disparate sources or even trying to make it accessible to a maintenance technician or a service center, call center resource, sometimes is a challenge.

So we sought to try to accelerate the access to content internally for our maintenance technicians in our service centers, and it certainly provided an opportunity for them to have a capability, allow them to quickly either troubleshoot or identify content and point them to the the latest publication, latest operating procedure, latest set of instructions, and give them some insights as to how they should consider approaching either troubleshooting or diagnostics types of activities. We're certainly seeing that that's going to drive a measurable impact in the time that these maintenance technicians normally spend in front of a computer. They would rather spend time turning wrenches and doing the work to repair the aircraft and get our customers back in the air. And that's where the value is, having our customers' aircraft not sitting on the ground in our service centers, but in the air. So we see that not just in our aircraft industry, our business. But we also see that opportunities across anywhere we're providing a customer support type of solution. You think about even in IT, The help desks, we have... Most large organizations have a level one, level two, level three type of help desk.

And as questions go from level one to level two, and level two to level three, the cost of that answer continues to get higher. So bringing the information and the ability to solve that person's question closer to level one, or maybe not even needing level one at all, if you're bringing it to the user, it And yourself, most people that I know, when you have a general household issue, you go to YouTube. How do I solve this? How do I fix this? And before you call the service technician, everything, you try to figure out. And I think users are more inclined to do that if they have access to the right information at their fingertips, and it's useful and current and timely. So I think those are really applicable use cases.

No, I think for sure, what I'm hearing from you is time to delivery, right? And the example you use of YouTube is so real. Every day we do this, we look up things and we are trying to find things. How can we apply the same approach in a business scenario, in an organization which has got all these different levels of teams and support systems in place? The time to delivery to a customer, either internal or external, makes a lot of sense. I And this whole use case, especially when you talk about what Gen AI can do, seems like it's just helping get to the answers much faster than we ever comprehend it in the past.

I agree. I do think it's going to transform how knowledge workers and beyond that, even the example of the shop floor of workers that we're having, the maintenance technicians, they're very excited because if you think about it, we have a... Most organizations have a challenge around keeping talent and skills and the continued evolution of having to provide them with the training and the knowledge. And the generative AI opportunities that allow us to use content generation for training or just the accessibility to the information levels the field a little bit from somebody that maybe 20, 30 years of experience to somebody that has less. So they all are leveraging the same resource and getting that expert information to help them accelerate their jobs. So I'm excited about that. I think that's going to help, particularly help us bring in the next workforce in the future and prepare them for the skills.

No, totally. I totally agree on that. So taking a little segue over here, on On a personal note, where do you go do your research? What are some of the readings that you're currently doing? Would you like to share?

So particularly on the topic of generative AI, there's a lot to stay on top of. I certainly follow most of the leading business journals and tech journals, and stay on top of that. I've got a lot of flags in my search criteria to be able to pop up new things that are coming up, and certainly look for those articles. And I follow several podcasts and tech leaders, spend a lot of time talking to systems integrators as well. And then I have a very large network that I belong to a number of professional organizations with technical leaders, CIOs, and we have a lot of discussions on this topic as well. It's an evolving topic, and I find that not just generative AI, there are several disciplines when leading an information technology organization that one needs to stay on top of. And then I try to find time also to read self-development books, things certainly leadership and books on organizational change and leading large organizations and working across generations. So there are tons of resources. I think the most valued resource is in your peer network, having an opportunity to sit with peers in the same type of role that you have and have those discussions, whether it's a chief information officer, Chief Information Security Officer, CTO, even an analyst in a business function or a technical function, having that ability to work with their peer group and understand what's going on day to day helps them develop their self-awareness and their knowledge of their skills.

Yeah. It seems like your time is filled with all these different areas where you're pulling in the information and making sure that you're applying those your day to day operations as well as your learning that you're going through.

I can't profess all of it sticks. I mean, there's probably more content going in that actually I can retain. But it's one of these things I find that having conversations about it and checking your understanding, this gener AI, going back to that quickly, my having to understand how all of this works and feeling comfortable with the solutions that we're looking to bring forward and how those operate safely, securely, and understanding how we explain that to the users and leaders as well. That's a big piece of that, being able to understand the capabilities and technology enough to assure key stakeholders and leaders that we're making the right decisions as Absolutely.

Absolutely. So let's talk about from a Gen AI perspective, right? It is so new. It's a developing area for both business and technology. How do you see leaders such as yourself establishing a data, analytics, and AI infrastructure that is both scalable, well-governed, and at the same time, future-proof? It's a lot of things in one, but I-Yeah.

That's a really good question. One of the things that we're still having a discussion on is there's been several years in the data and analytics, and I know you and I go back several years in the data analytics space originally. And organizations have spent a lot of time and money and effort putting together large data lakes or a focus on structured data for the purpose of data and analytics, for the purpose of dashboards, for the purpose of possibly maybe even more impactful data sciences and driving more value out of predictive and prescriptive type of data analysis and so forth. And that's all part of this evolution, I think. And we're still getting our arms around this. There's And maybe I'll just say this, and whether people think I'm right or wrong, we'll let them be the judge of that. But I think there's a Venn diagram here where data sciences and data analytics overlaps with the generative AI, and there's something in the middle of that Venn diagram. But the difference is when you're really focused on the predictive and the prescriptive repeatable model of a data science model where I need this machine learning algorithm to drive a very predictable output, understanding whether or not my machine on the shop floor is performing predictably, and I can identify when it's varying off of its function versus the generative AI type of experience where I need very comprehensive analysis with structured and unstructured data versus the data science, which may be more structured and curated data.

I've often described it to people. I see data sciences as I'm looking for the needle in the haystack, and I see generative AI is what's in the haystack? And oh, by the way, there's a needle. So there are two different ways to look at it. I think when it comes to making decisions around the whole data side of this, data governance and data ownership is going to be a key piece of that, and it always has been, because ultimately, neither side works well with bad data. So that's certainly going to be something that's going to continue to drive the discussion. But I think a bigger piece of this is going to change the The way we think about architecting our data, whether or not it needs to be as structured as we've had in the past. We were just having this conversation the other day with our senior leaders in the past to build something like a chatbot or to build something like a very large search engine, you had to spend time creating the database, creating the indexes, creating all the special keys, doing all the tables and everything you to do, and then do all the programming around it.

With generative AI, it doesn't matter really what structure your data is in. It's really about the prompt and how you ask the question and interface with the model to get the answer. So I do think we have to make a clearer distinction on what tool sets are used for what purposes, because you can't always use one or the other to solve the same thing. But that's going to be the challenge for technologists as they look at, do I need a data mart? And one of the risks here also When you're dealing with data, this is ultimately replicating all this data over multiple places and paying for it in multiple places and so forth. So you have to think about that. What's the architecture? Does it sit natively in the application and AI works around it. So we'll see. It's still too early to tell, but I think those are things that we have to directionally think about.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's an evolution, and we are just getting into it, finding ourselves right in the middle of it. Great discussion so far. But based on all that we have covered so far, what is that one key takeaway that you want to leave with our listeners today?

Well, if we're talking about, since the theme has been largely generative AI, I think the key takeaway is that There may be a few, but I think when you're having the discussion around generative AI, it's important to understand that many organizations have been doing AI for a while. Data sciences is part of that evolution, building an algorithm and building a model and so forth. So I've seen peers in my industry and others, even not in my industry, their immediate reaction was, we've got to shut this genervate eye down or we need to go slowly. And the reality is, I think it's an evolution of what we've been normally doing with It's things like machine learning and algorithms and so forth. And it's something that regardless of whether or not, and I'm finding here, regardless of whether or not you have a position on to go fast and forward or to be more risk averse and hold back, the users are going to find a way to use this capability. And that's probably the big message here. If you're a technologist listening to this and you think you've got ChatGPT blocked or you're shutting down and saying, We're going to go slow.

Trust me, your users are finding a way to use this technology to help them with their jobs. And you're going to have to figure out how to make it part of your business processes going forward in a secure manner that meets the requirements of the business and the need. And and embrace it because it's not going to go away.

Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Todd shared valuable insights on how organizations can transform business with generative AI. His main takeaway, Gen AI is here to stay. If you are a technologist, know that users are finding a way to use this technology to help them with their jobs. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

Meagan Knoll and Tom McGinnis, long-time collaborators and educators rejoin me to dive into what it takes for employers and universities to succeed with the SAP University Alliances program. Although employers may find it daunting, Meagan and Tom share valuable tips on how employers can engage with universities and students alike to develop a qualified talent pipeline.

Meagan Knoll has been a member of Grand Valley State University Faculty for the past 16 years. In addition to her longstanding dedication to academia, Meagan has achieved a new milestone as the Vice Chair of the SAP North America Academic Community Board and as the Co-Chair of the Partnership Committee. Meagan's commitment to student success extends beyond the classroom. She takes great pride in her extracurricular role as the advisor of the university's SAP student group, a community that serves as a crucial bridge connecting students to professionals within the SAP ecosystem. Outside of GVSU, Meagan remains deeply involved with the ASUG Michigan Chapter, where she currently holds a position on the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).  

Thomas McGinnis has industry experience as a Software Developer, Business Analyst, System Administrator ERP Consultant and Project Manager. Tom also has 20 years of experience in academia.  He has a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in the field of Business Information Systems; he is an SAP-certified Associate Consultant and TERP10 academy instructor.  Tom has developed and taught courses in Enterprise Resource Planning (using SAP), Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.  He is active in his local ASUG Chapter; frequently presenting new and developing aspects of Business Intelligence at chapter meetings.   Tom’s research work has appeared in peer reviewed journals, in book chapters and numerous conference proceedings. 

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Mustansir Saifuddin

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TechDriven business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Meagan Knoll and Tom McGinnis, long-time collaborators and educators, rejoin me to share how SAP University Alliances is impacting the IT industry talent pipeline. Listen in as we uncover the value of UA programs, how employers leaders can connect with universities and the key takeaways for fostering successful partnerships in the ever-evolving tech landscape. All right, So let's start with the very basics.

When we talk about University Alliance, what is the real value of the UA program in building a talent pipeline overall from an IT industry perspective?

Well, let me get started with telling you some of the unique opportunities that the University Alliances offers, and I think that will really segue into some of the value that comes from it. So the University Alliances has a lot of different initiatives behind the scenes. They offer training and workshops to faculty so that we're always on the cusp of new technology and emerging technology. They allow us to have hands-on access to SAP systems so that our students can explore and learn really the basics and the extended knowledge of being within the SAP system. They offer a lot of curriculum resources. How can we impart this knowledge onto the students in a very hands-on way? And a curriculum that is pretty standardized across the University alliances, so we can pool our talents to troubleshoot and provide these really in-depth curriculum opportunities. Then one of the best, I think, when it comes to connecting SAP employees or SAP users, is it helps faculty and students collaborate with those experts. For new emerging technologies or maybe a specific line of business, they really help make that connection so that we're talking to the right people and having the students learn the right content.

Then they offer certifications and badges, which is really great for the students to not only leave with a degree from a university, but with a SAP certification There's many different ones that can be taken, but a value at the student level is that that certification has tangible learning objectives that they can take from their degree at the university and then apply them to those certificates and badges.

That sounds incredibly awesome. I hear a few things when you talk about this at length. One is that not only the students are getting benefit, but even the teaching staff has got that breadth of knowledge by going through this program.

Tom, from where you said, what do you see the value?

What is that comes to you when you talk about UA program?

It's the continuation of exactly that. With the students and the faculty getting together, it provides a great deal of value for the employer that's going to be hiring those students. You have students who are arriving on site on day one that have a process understanding. They understand, if you will, the of SAP. They know what master data is. They know what the org structure of the organization could be. They understand the transactions. That fundamental knowledge of all those pieces really adds a great deal of value. Usually In the UA, a majority of the schools are worried about the make-buy-sell process. The value is not that the new hire has the company's specific business processes in mind, but But they know how to translate what they got out of the UA program into the organization and translate that into reporting, data sourcing, data-driven decisions. It really lets them hit the ground running, and the businesses can get a great deal out of that. At the same time, the students get a great deal out of that as well because they understand the value of what this means to business. Normally, speak to students about what's important, and they accept that.

When they see the University Alliance and how it partners with business, they now get a real value for that, and they're no longer passive in their education. We see students really jumping on board and augmenting skills more and more. So it improves both the business side as well as the student side. It's really fun to watch.

For sure. I think I can totally relate to it. I mean, you would Your choice of words, especially when you talk about translating, translation, it is so much important. When you talk about a business, there are certain parameters they run and they use certain terminologies, technologies, and then everything is coming together to make up a business environment. And a student who is exposed to it very early on, they now are able to simulate in the new system because it's just natural to them now. That takes me to my next question, which is, look from an employer's perspective. Where can employers find a university they can connect with who has got the UA program?

The University Alliances, of the schools that participate in the program who offer some SAP courses, they always have one point person that's called the Faculty Coordinator. This point person is a great go-to as a person to learn about what offerings they have, if they have any student groups, if they have any needs or things that they want to connect over. There's also some great advisory board opportunities. A lot of local universities who offer the SAP program have advisory boards where different companies can sit on those advisory boards and help direct the curriculum choices. There's a really good touch point, which is Career Services. Contacting a local university's Career Services to see if they have an SAP program, if they have a University Alliances program, and getting your foot in the door with Career Services can then open not only the doors to the courses that were offered and the student body that makes up those courses, but also ways to really get engaged when it comes to maybe taking the students on for internships or taking the students on for an entry-level career.

Wow. There are so many different aspects and avenues for employers to interact with a university that has got the program going, right? Now, looking from a different angle, what do you expect from prospective employers? What is that you guys want or the students are looking for?

There's a couple of things. Part of it is being active or participating with the faculty and the students. It also brings together the folks to talk about what the requirements are and expectations. I know Megan and I have worked with a lot of students in bringing companies into the student group to just talk hiring practices, talk about what's the average day in the office. That opens up their eyes. It also gets the employers in to help assess the program, if you will, because Not all programs are made equal. Some schools will have larger programs than others. Sometimes a school will have dedicated SAP coursework, meaning a full 15-week course dealing with business processes. Activities, dealing with configuration, dealing with warehouse management or building a data warehouse. And along with that, there might be snippets in other courses. So the accounting course may have a two-week discussion around SAP and what accounting looks like. A supply chain course might touch upon procurement just for a few weeks in the semester. There are different ways of teaching the classes, and employers can come in and take a look at that and see what they're looking for. Students see the employers coming in and get an understanding of what the employers are looking for, and everyone starts to dial in on what they like.

In some of the programs I've taught in, a majority of the students taking the courses, SAP courses, are not MIS students. They're not technology people. They're business process people because they see that the employers value that business process understanding. It's really fun to watch that eke out. Then faculty, of course, get involved because they want their courses to be relevant to employers. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone's feeding off each other's energy to ramp up the programs. It's really exciting to see that happen.

Now, that's interesting. I think one point that I really got out of this is as an employer ourselves, at Innovative Solution Partners, basically what I'm hearing is you want us to be there, interact with the program and students, and get to know what is being taught. And this is one way of Getting the value out of the program because each program has got its own merit in terms of what has been taught in the program. And each school has a different curriculum. So this way an employer has an opportunity to get to know what they will be dealing with or what they will be getting in terms of the talent that they're looking for.

To speak to that point, let me give you some examples of some opportunities that have taken place at a lot of University Alliances schools. There's something called the NextGen Labs. Nextgen Labs are a space within the university where they can do hands-on projects for or a community partner. If your business has a small project that maybe you don't have the bandwidth to take on and it involves SAP in some way, you could turn it over to a course at a university, and the students could work on solving that problem for you or making that report that you need. That's one great way to preview the talent because those students that are on that next-gen project who are going to be meeting with you and talking about it and presenting it gives you a great insight into what type of employee those students might become. Another one that is pretty popular is code jams. A great way to connect with the students and see the students in action would be to participate in a code jam. A lot of SAP organizations or user groups groups, they have code jams put on by SAP. Students can attend those as much as the employees at the different businesses can attend.

And having that mix between students and professionals is a great way to see that blossoming talent and really connect with them before you hire them on.

That's very interesting. So I know I'm familiar with code jam for sure. This next Gen program that you mentioned, it seems very interesting also. It seems like there are multiple ways a prospective employer can connect and interact and get a first-hand look at the talent that they're dealing with or they will we're going to be approaching in the future. So this is really good news.

Now, let's take a different approach.

I know you are being an educator, you're dealing with students day in, day out. How How are you preparing these young people to be productive from the get-go?

I think it takes more than just an individual faculty member. It's really, most of these SAP University Alliances programs are housed in a larger college, like the College of Business. It takes that whole roundabout knowledge of the tactical things, the systems thinking, the hands-on, education, all the different insights that come from career services and come from extracurriculars, even leadership type roles that students might have on campus. It really takes a large ecosphere at the university level to really prepare the students to go forth. And the UA gives a really great mix that universities can already add on to their great programs, but it just gives that little bit of extra edge.

Yeah, that makes sense, because especially when you think about these programs, I know it feels like sometimes when you think about these programs, you are looking at one part of it, but it's an overall scheme of things It makes sense to have it as the way it's set up, like you mentioned.

Tom, you have any other points that you want to share about this, especially when you're preparing young folks?

Part of it is there's There's a couple of aspects to it. It's more from the employer side of things is when you're looking at programs, as I said before, they're not all the same. Oftentimes, I see companies struggle with how to participate, how to put their foot in in those cases. Megan has mentioned career services and all those opportunities, but part of it is assessing the schools that you partner with. Most organizations already have a set list of schools that they recruit from. It could be just as simple as going out and looking to see if one of their current schools is on that list. Sap, www. Sap. Com, they have a list of UA schools. If you have a list of 10, 15 local schools that you recruit from, it's worth checking to see whether those schools are there on that list. Then you just take a look at their program. How many students do they have? What's the mix of majors? How involved are the faculty? What courses are involved in that? Lastly, as Megan said, the certifications. You're looking at that holistically and bringing that all together, and that's where you get some of those unique views.

The faculty oftentimes go along for the ride because they see the interest in those programs. It's a great way of getting that synergy involved. I think that's the thing I want to stress. It's the combination of faculty organizations and the students. That's what really brings this home as a value prop for everyone involved.

For sure. I think this subject is such a vast subject, and we can keep on going, but we do have a time limitation. I'll try to wrap this up. Just looking at all the discussions we had so far and what we covered, what is the one key takeaway that you want our listeners to go with?

In preparing and talking and getting this topic on the top of our minds, the one takeaway that really stood out to us is that old adage of, You reap what you sow. So the more involved that you are in that synergy of students and faculty and organizations the more that your connection and your internship possibilities, your young career possibilities will flourish.

There's opportunities out there for companies to harvest these diamonds in the rough, we call it. Fantastic performers that are sitting there in school not quite knowing what they want to do yet, who are going to really flourish in the right environment. It's just getting those folks together and seeing the value on on all their sides. And oftentimes, I see organizations not taking advantage of this because they have some self-imposed barrier to entry in this recruiting scheme. And there's nothing there. It's a simple call to Career Services to find out who on campus could I talk to and going from there. Or it's leveraging your current grads and whatever alumni associations you have in your company, using them to go out and recruit on campus. So there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that's there for people to take advantage of.

Yeah, and I think I would like to sum it up with this is almost like a matchmaking

You have the right set of talent on both sides, right?

In our business, looking for individuals or teams that they want to bring into their fold. And the university is looking at placing these young individuals into a system where they can flourish and they can get a sense of what they are getting into. And it seems like the UA program allows them to do both of it in a way that interaction starts so much earlier than any other program where you are doing the book study versus not having that real-life exposure. I really appreciate you guys coming together and sharing your thoughts on this.

Thanks for listening to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Meagan and Tom shared valuable insights on how IT firms can leverage the University Alliance program. Their main takeaway, the more involved that you are in that synergy of students, faculty, and organizations, the more impact the program will have. There is a lot of low hanging fruit that's there for people to take advantage of. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss our podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this next series of episodes, Megan Knoll and Tom McGinnis, long-time collaborators and educators join me to talk about how companies can leverage the SAP University Alliances to build their talent pipeline. In this first episode, we'll start with an overview of how the program is helping shape a skilled workforce and benefiting students, educational institutions, industry partners, and SAP. 

Meagan Knoll has been a member of Grand Valley State University Faculty for the past 16 years. In addition to her longstanding dedication to academia, Meagan has achieved a new milestone as the Vice Chair of the SAP North America Academic Community Board and as the Co-Chair of the Partnership Committee. Meagan's commitment to student success extends beyond the classroom. She takes great pride in her extracurricular role as the advisor of the university's SAP student group, a community that serves as a crucial bridge connecting students to professionals within the SAP ecosystem. Outside of GVSU, Meagan remains deeply involved with the ASUG Michigan Chapter, where she currently holds a position on the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).  

Thomas McGinnis has industry experience as a Software Developer, Business Analyst, System Administrator ERP Consultant and Project Manager. Tom also has 20 years of experience in academia.  He has a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in the field of Business Information Systems; he is an SAP-certified Associate Consultant and TERP10 academy instructor.  Tom has developed and taught courses in Enterprise Resource Planning (using SAP), Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.  He is active in his local ASUG Chapter; frequently presenting new and developing aspects of Business Intelligence at chapter meetings.   Tom’s research work has appeared in peer reviewed journals, in book chapters and numerous conference proceedings. 

Connect with Us:

Meagan Knoll

Mustansir Saifuddin

Innovative Solution Partners 

X: @Mmsaifuddin

@ISolPartners, 

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or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation. 

Episode Transcript

Welcome.

To Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Megan Knoll and Tom McGinnis, long-time collaborators and educators, joined me to share how the University Alliance Program is helping shape our skilled workforce and benefiting students, educational institutions, industry partners, and SAP. It's all about building a valuable talent pipeline.

So how are you guys?

Well.

Thank you. Very well, thanks.

So I know the topic from today's session is building your talent pipeline. And I know it's a wild subject, but I try to keep it to a few points that make sense in terms of how our listeners interact with our podcast. So if you guys are ready, we can get into our questions.

Sounds great.

Let's get started. Let's go.

All right. So I know talent pipeline, big word, a lot of different things that goes along with it, but let's focus on a couple of things. Can you describe the University Alliance as it applies to SAP and the SAP customers and partners ecosystem? Absolutely.

The University Alliance is a program that was initiated by SAP, and the whole idea was to foster collaboration between educational institutions like the universities and trade schools, SAP itself, and then SAP customers and partners. What we like to think of for the University of Alliances is that it is a conduit for knowledge transfer that will help prepare students to become skilled professionals in the SAP area. It's a global initiative that has over 3,500 educational institutions, and that spans over 113 countries.

From a customer perspective, it gives an avenue. It allows companies to work with their local schools, because often times universities are struggling with what content to provide that's meaningful to the local community when it comes to job skills and with systems work. Companies can help identify what those requirements are and the skills that they value and help set those realistic goals for the graduates. And from a school's perspective, it's the target market that they're working with. So the whole idea of having this conduit back and forth allows both sides to get what they need out of the relationship. Collaterally then, everyone gets other benefits outside of the University Alliance, a variety of different ways that we'll probably end up talking about in a few minutes.

One of the other points when it comes to the SAP University Alliances is that there's a lot of collaboration and making sure that students and partners can both participate in things like conferences, meetings, workshops, boot camps, certifications. It really helps to make sure that our students are skilled to the point they need to be to jump right into that talent pipeline.

Now that's a great explanation about the University Alliance. Thank you. Let me ask you this, how long has been this University Alliance around in terms of your interaction, both of your experiences, goals?

I have been interacting with the University Alliance for about 17 years now.

And for me, close to 15 years.

Wow, it's quite a long time. Okay. So that leads me into my next question. Especially, we're talking about talent. University Alliances, coming from a customer's perspective, what can SAP customers and partners expect from this program? Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, everyone gets a little bit different benefits out of it. The major stakeholders, as you said, the business community, the academic community, and most importantly, from our perspective, the students. From a business perspective, their impact on the school, I don't think organizations appreciate how much impact they can have on their local schools because they're looking for guidance, they're looking for help when it comes to what to offer students. The partnerships that are forged with companies and the local universities provide a variety of benefits out of that. Companies also, from an internal standpoint, get visibility at school so that their own organizations can see opportunities for upskilling employees, working with researchers at universities, and that partnership really builds. From the school's perspective, it's almost like self-marketing. They're working with these organizations, and it's a front-facing thing, where now these companies have a face on campus, and that means a face in recruiting. That's a face for research, a face for value generation that helps the university move along. And of course, with students, it's the networking. Students struggle. They struggle hard with meeting companies and getting their foot in the door with these social networks, professional social networks.

The UA program is a shot in the arm for them for that. It helps them meet people that they want to interact with and start slowly gaining that understanding of what an organization does. Again, it leads to other peripheral things. There's a lot of internships that come out of the UA, and that allows companies to test drive students in a manner of speaking, but also the students get to test drive a company and see what organization they'd like to work with. Ua schools are a great place for organizations to get interns because they're ready to hit the ground running when they're done with their coursework. So there's a great variety of things that benefit all three parts of that group.

Yeah. It's going to be very interesting term you mentioned that it seems like a mutually beneficial for all parties involved in terms of... Especially, I think one thing that I really liked about your observation is everybody gets a test drive, right? You get to know the employer versus the employers get to know the students and the university being in the middle trying to engage these different parties into a common platform, right? So, Meagan, from your perspective, how have you seen this work? What's your perspective on this?

From an education standpoint, I have seen the great collaboration that has come between industry partners, SAP Proper, and then also the universities in the University Alliances. There is a wealth of information that's provided by these companies when it comes to adapting new technologies, giving students hands-on opportunities to work with these new technologies, and it also helps to encourage and support faculty-led research. Not only are we looking for benefits to the students, but also benefits in making the research aspect of working and having that environment where we have that pipeline of students versus our students going to our employers, it all comes together as a nice symbiosis.

Makes sense. No, definitely. Let's talk about from a different angle. Lessons learned when you're working with employers, how can they be successful?

Well, that's a good one.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, it comes back a little bit to what we were saying just a bit ago about that front-facing aspect. One of the things that we've seen with our students, and part of it is the demographics of the student today, but if they don't know an organization, they tend not to go out of their way to recruit at that organization. They like whatever they know and they stick with it. Well, for companies that don't have an end consumer product, they're at a disadvantage. Those people who make intermediates, they make the product that goes into other products, our students don't know them, and the company is not on the radar during recruiting. With a program like UA, they're seeing how everything is made behind the scenes. A lot of UA schools also—and I do plant tours and things like that as part of the curriculum to get folks onto the shop floor, let's say, and see how SAP is really used there. Breaking down that barrier, if you will, or informing the students of who's out there, that's a big change in the opportunities for a company to recruit. And that's probably one of the biggest things I've seen come out of UA programs is the visibility of the company in front of the students has greatly increased compared to traditional courses.

I think I really love that aspect of it. It seems like there is a conduit into how a student is starting from an education point of view, but then getting to real life earlier than they expect to. I mean, this engagement through the UA program allows them to experience way upfront, which makes it easier when they actually get into the real work-life, right? So it seems like a very powerful tool that allows them to be ahead of the competition. I mean, there's always companies looking for talent, but talent that comes with education upfront about themselves, about the organization where they're maybe potentially working in the future.

Absolutely. We have noticed that there not only is that reduced onboarding time because they have those skills and they're ready to hit the ground running, but there's also the opportunity to develop the talent. It's not uncommon for students who are part of the university alliances to intern at a company, then possibly work part-time at a company, and then become full-time hire as soon as they graduate. You can start to develop that talent in a specific way that meets your needs of your organization.

Yeah, for sure. And that is the key point, right? How do we get that engagement going early on? So now taking a little deviation from our UA part of it, but on a personal level, you both have been an educator for quite some time. Taking it back to the University Alliance, what is the aha moment that you would experience over the past few years? And you can go, Tom, you can start and then Meagan, you can follow up with what are your experience is. I'd love to share that with our listeners.

Well, it's funny the way you said that, because for me right now, it's going through the list of aha, moments. There's not just one. There are a couple of them. There was one moment for a Midwest company. This is a company that was in Minneapolis. They had to change the way that they hired new hires and students because they brought on a student who was doing SAP work, coursework, as an intern his sophomore year in school. They liked him so much, they brought him in for another internship the following summer. When he graduated, of course, he applied for a position there and they gave him a position, but he had worked there so long already they couldn't hire him as a new hire. He was actually in a different salary bracket. When you have a student that's that valuable before they've even finished their coursework, that's a big aha moment on what a UA program does for the student's skills. The other big aha moment is when I take a look at the students in my classroom, and I'm MIS faculty, Management Information Systems, you would think the course I teach predominantly has MIS students in it.

But my biggest SAP classes, my MIS students are in the minority in the class. It's usually other disciplines, supply chain management, marketing, accounting. It shows, I think, the value that other disciplines place on SAP skills and what those organizations are then doing to the recruiting at our college. Yeah, there's a lot of aha, moments.

I think the biggest aha moment for me was a very rewarding experience. A couple of years ago at Sapphire, I was able to sit in on a session in which one of our former students was presenting as the subject matter expert. That was only three years after she had graduated from our program. Knowing that the roles were reversed and I was able to learn from her, just like she had learned from me in the classroom five years earlier, was a great aha moment and a great feeling that our program does make a difference and that we could really bolster up that talent pipeline and really have students who are ready to hit the ground running to make valuable impacts for any organization that they're hired at.

Great example. Thank you for sharing that. I think one thing I would like to add to this is being an SAP professional for over 20 years and working with different industries and different customers, one thing is very clear to me, and that is the talent that comes out of the UA program. I mean, the example that you used, Meagan, about someone this early in the career getting on a stage, something like a Sapphire conference, a huge opportunity and a huge gathering of customers and partners and folks who are learning more about SAP. And this is a moment for a student that just came out of this program and getting into the workforce, be able to share what they've learned on this stage. I think that is great. And especially, Tom, your examples speaks for itself, right? I mean, you're looking at as an organization, customers looking for talent. But when the talent is that well developed early on and they are able to get into the organization, start running from the get go. I mean, that's what a lot of these companies are looking for. They want to have employees who are ready, who understand the culture, who can adapt to the applications, to the technologies that they're using.

So it's a happy ending from both angles, right? So great examples. Thank you. Well, I know we talked about a bunch of things in our session, so that takes me to my last question. And this is one takeaway that I always like our listeners to have with them after every session. Based on all that we have covered so far, what is the one key takeaway that you would want our listeners to leave with?

I would say that the one key takeaway that I want listeners to leave with is an expanded knowledge that this program does exist. It may not be at your fingertips at this time, but just the knowledge of knowing that the University of Alliance is out there and is promoting and producing this talent, is something to maybe tuck into your back pocket and revisit at another time and really reach out to a UA school in your area.

To echo that, I think it's about engagement. A company needs to reach out in this day and age to find the resources it needs. The UA is a great place to reach out to, but you also want to reach out to your local schools. Even if they're not in the UA program yet, your interest in UA coursework may push them in that direction. And it's that interaction that I really want to see organizations do, is get out there with their local schools and start that conversation. The worst thing that could happen is that you don't find the resources that you want. The best thing that can happen is you find these diamonds in the rough that you can then use and use them to recruit even more diamonds in the rough. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, great examples, and I think that's the key, right? I mean, you have the opportunity and you have the means to get to this great program that has been around. And how do we get the word out? So folks who are looking, folks who may be looking in the future, folks who never even heard about it, this is an opportunity for them to avail this, at least explore the options and see what is out there in terms of what UA can do for them. And we'll look forward to having you both on our next session, where we'll dig more into the details of the University ofAlliance program. So thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Thanks for listening to Tech-driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Meagan and Tom shared valuable insights on how partners can come together in building a talent pipeline. Their main takeaway? Know that the University Alliance is out there and reach out to your UA school in your area. It's all about engagement and finding these diamonds in the rough that can help build a talent pipeline. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.Com. Never miss our podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this 2nd part of a 2-part series of Tech-Driven Business, Nick Verhoeven, Solution Manager for Planning & Analytics at SAP, rejoins Mustansir Saifuddin to dive into how SAP Analytics Cloud's seamless integration between planning, reporting and predictive capabilities is modernizing FP&A strategies. SAP Analytics Cloud continues to reshape business analytics and strategy. His key takeaway? With continuous technology developments, make sure you have a vision and then see how technology can help you achieve it. 

As solution manager at SAP, Nick's role is to align the different functions within the company. Customer engagements, analyst relations as well as supporting the internal controlling functions are the main drivers of the role that spark enthusiasm in Nick and steer the solution in the right direction. Nick’s discipline stemming from professional sports is his main strength, helping him drive enterprise engagements however sluggish processes might be.

Connect with Us:

Nick Verhoeven, 

Mustansir Saifuddin,

Innovative Solution Partners ,

Twitter: @Mmsaifuddin

Innovative Solution Partners

or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation. 

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Tech-driven business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Nick Verhoeven, Solution Manager for Planning and Analytics at SAP, rejoins me to dive into how SAP Analytics Cloud's seamless integration between planning, reporting, and predictive capabilities is modernizing FP&A strategies. SAP Analytics Cloud continues to reshape business analytics and strategy.

Welcome back, Nick, to Tech-driven business.

Thank you, Mustansir. I'm happy to be here.

Well, thank you, Nick. It's been an amazing session we had last time. Really enjoyed the discussion. And for our conversation today, I'd like to give a little background on what we talked about last time. We were looking on the surface of what planning is and what planning brings to SAC, especially in the analytics space. You are bringing both the planning capabilities and analytics together in the SAC platform. So what I would like to do today is I would like to start our conversation with taking it a step further. A lot of times, customers look at things where they are looking at, What benefit does it bring to me? What do I get out of this tool? So if I want to go and bring on planning capabilities of SAC, and how does it compare to other planning tools in the market? How does that sound to you?

I think that's great. I always look forward to a bit of a deep dive in SAC and cloud, so let's do it.

Awesome. Let's start with the most obvious thing. Whenever you look at any planning tool, you look at features. So what are some of the key features of SEL that elevates it compared to other planning tools in the market? What's your take on that?

Well, that's a good one, Mustansir, but if I look at it, so this is my perspective, what I think is unique to the experience cloud is the flexibility in an enterprise setting. So what do I mean? What I mean by that is that with its integration to SAP systems and non-SAP systems, using commonly accepted APIs for metadata as transactional data to create and maintain data models for planning, that they can be easily extended with flexible dimensions and measures and accounts for a user interface. There you see this enterprise as well as business functionality coming together in that sweet spot. But then if you go beyond data, going beyond the model itself, you have user interactions through data inputs, analysis, workflow. Here similarly, we offer flexibility through drag and drop and wizards to build entire flows for the business user. But here we can also expand into scripting on those same objects and using a single artifact, lowering overall total cost of ownership, but allowing for limitless flexibility. Now having all these capabilities puts SAC Cloud in a true sweet spot in offering enterprise as well as flexibility, allowing for the FP&A persona and IT persona to work side by side on these different capabilities.

And I think that's really unique to us.

Yeah, I think definitely I echo that same sentiment. One thing that really stuck out for me in this conversation is you mentioned flexibility a few times. So from your perspective, what you're seeing in this tool, what I'm hearing is from a business user's perspective, the flexibility is at a different level. Is that true? What is your take? What are you hearing from the customers when you talk about flexibility and that business ownership on this tool?

Well, it's a sliding scale. In essence, a lot of business users are not used to working with enterprise tooling. They're used to working with Excel, and flexibility is 100% there. Then if they move to enterprise tooling, they need to be guided to a certain extent. I have a nice example from a toothpaste company from the US. What they've done is they've started with extremely guided applications, really having the user guided step-by-step, using heavily scripted applications, which are more expensive in the maintenance of such applications. But as the users gotten into it and started to accept the application with less flexibility than Excel, they've actually opened up bit by bit the functionalities that SAC brings to them. In a self-service perspective that they can do their own thing. With that, they started using those flexible functionalities for themselves, as still using scripting every now and then when they want to extend, but having the ability to create their own stuff, create their own models. Then they're really starting to appreciate the benefits of having a centralized database that consolidates all of the planning inputs side by side with a tool that is flexible enough for them to work on, albeit never as flexible as I thought.

Yeah, sure. And that's the key differentiator, right? And thank you for delving into the details of this. So what I'm hearing is at least you have two different paths. If you start off with a flexible application where a business user takes ownership versus an example where you started off with a guided approach and then let the business ease into the tool. So seems like multiple options available from how business can benefit from this tool. Great. Thank you. So now, and this question always comes up, and I've been working with planning and analytics in the SAP space for quite some time. What would be your recommendation for existing BPC customers? What is a realistic path forward for them?

To your point, we get this question a lot because, of course, we have a huge user base using our BPC solution. Now, the first thing that I always want to say is we have tied our BPC support to that of BW for HANA, which is a long lasting one. There is no case of forced migration of any kind because this theoretically goes all the way up to 2040. However, it is the case that if you want to innovate, BPC is a platform that is being maintained and not expanded. This is where SAP Analytics Cloud comes in as our flagship cloud platform, neatly integrating with BPC so you can move on a case-by-case basis and build experience in the new platform. But no need, we're not forcing you in that sense. But realistically, customers have made major investments and moving without any aim of innovation does not make sense. My advice to BPC customers is to figure out where do you want to be from an FP&A perspective? What do you need? Considering the standstill of B2C from a functionality perspective and strong innovation in SAC and create an approach that aligns with your budget and resource constraints but still allows you to innovate at the because FP&A cannot sense it.

I think that's the key point you mentioned, right? And the FP&A is this whole paradigm is shifting in this space. And if you're looking at a tool that is not moving with those changes and how the business is changing over across the board. So what is the best way to move forward? Is it a combination? What I'm hearing is it can be a combination of you still having your PPC and your landscape, but you're introducing SAC slowly, so where you can take in the benefits of all the new innovations that are coming in in SAC, correct?

Yes. That is the more typical, to be fair. There is multiple examples that we have from companies. Some immediately go for a big process redesign because they want to consolidate their tooling, meaning they will only have a single platform and they move it immediately. But that requires a lot of resources and budget. If you do not have that available, but you do want to innovate, it makes more sense to do this case-by-case basis because it's a lot of change and you need to be ready to do the change management if it all happens at once. It's not black or white, but I would... I think that the more you go case by case is more logical if you have a big BPC investment.

Makes sense. That takes me to a different topic and this same realm of conversations that we're having. Let's think from a business user's perspective, how can a business user be more effective using having SAC planning at their disposal versus other traditional planning applications? Can you provide some examples from your experience?

Definitely. Because where I see traditional solutions having their place and mainly being very important to add up the numbers, they were also quite inflexible, up to the point that they were mere models of consolidation where data was added up. With SAP planning or SAP cloud planning, as our marketing department tells me to call it, one can do instance simulations using the versioning concept as well as running flexible, driver-based, and predictive-based calculations. That's a lot of buzzwords. What does it mean? Let's take the example of our reference customer Roche. They are a big pharmaceutical company in France. In their R&D expense planning, which is, of course, key as a pharmaceutical company, they had to produce about 20,000 data points each and every time that they run this situation. They, using our predictive functionality, have automated 16,000 out there. This is where they've used the embedded predictive capabilities in SAP's cloud for planning to automate to a certain extent, their planning process. Not all of it, because not all is automatable. But they've used the points that are predictable, used predictive for that. With that, they got the focus on those 4,000 points that are currently not that predictable, and they've increased their accuracy.

This is really innovating the department, doing more with less and focus on where it matters for the people.

I think that that is something that a lot of times it's not very obvious, especially you mentioned predictive capabilities and especially a lot of customers. But when you think about the traditional planning applications and tools available, a lot of times they don't even have those capabilities available. So from a business user's perspective, having this available at the disposal, it just gives them a lot more flexibility as well as control on what they are trying to get out of the tool. So it definitely, I think, puts them in a different level compared to how the traditional planning applications work in the past. Now, you used the example of Roche. How often do you see predictive being part of the planning solutions in terms of customers using SAC? Is this pretty prevalent or is it just trying to catch on now? What is your take on that?

I wouldn't dare say that it's only starting to catch on because from the very beginning there were customers experimenting with this. But I think since we've released and this was 2021, 2022, the ability to directly write back into planning versions from predictions, this has really taken off. I actually myself have done an internal project with our central forecast team, where for central forecast, this is at a higher group level, we do the entire P&L using SmartPredict. I've trained a number of controllers to apply SmartPredict to the predictive functionality in SAP's cloud on their planning models. And not all accounts were automatable, but the ones that were are now being utilized. And we see those controllers applying it themselves because the focus of our predictive is that it's very much business-user-based. However, we are heavily investing in this. You say, What is the difference of a modern tool? I think that we are going to, and this is in our statement of direction, we are going to infuse artificial intelligence into each and every workflow of SAP and it's cloud for planning. This will go from version management to data management to scripting. All of that will get artificial intelligence and this will even more widen the user base that's able to work with SAP and it's cloud for planning.

And first release is being mentioned on TechEd, which is currently ongoing. Their Just Ask has been presented as the natural language ability that we will get in SAP and it's cloud also on planning models.

Yeah, I think that is really good news. I mean, a lot of customers that have been thinking about that and now, as you already took the initiative of sharing that information with us, this is awesome because what I see, especially in this area, when you allow the business users to be more in control and this capabilities with AI becoming more forefront in a lot of these scenarios, and you have that tool that is already having those capabilities where it's allowing the business to take more control of their planning process, I think that's the wave of the future, basically. So talking from that angle, let's take a step back. The analytical applications, they've been around for some time. Can you use or share with us a use case where analytical application is required for a planning project?

Yeah, sure I can. An analytical application is now embedded within the story, right? So it's a single artifact. But looking at the scripting functionalities of the unified story, so the former analytical application, we can devise a use case, and this, of course, comes from practice, but I'm not allowed to call the customer name, but let us just imagine I am a regional manager at a supermarket and I'm on the road. This regional manager then needs to analyze financial performance as well as subjective scores on cleanliness of the stalls and such. On entries or I enter this local supermarket, I desire to input set scores on my iPad and I would like to also compare these to the financial performance. After these inputs have been done, I want to sit down with the local manager and I want to figure out how can we tweak local forecast numbers based on the latest actuals and market expectations. In this situation where I need this flexibility on my mobile device, it is clear that I want a mobile experience and an easy way to input the numbers, say, in entry form with sliders. Having this is not standard.

Of course, we have the ability to add Sliders, but how do we make sure that it writes back in the correct position of our plan and model? This can be easily achieved using descriptive functionality. This is an alternate way to leverage standard functionality, but then from Script. In this way, we will feed the Sliders into the model. We will make sure that we have a guided experience for a supermarket manager that is not necessarily someone that can build applications themselves. We actually see many specific requirements being fulfilled in this rate to really guide users through the process. Think about pop-ups, entering the screen, sliding screens as you go through them. Extra relevant for infrequent use, where a user can make do with minimal SAC training to what is needed using the scripts, you can really simplify their whole experience. I think that is key functionality where the scripting can help to either hide what could be viewed as a complex experience or to extend functionality that is just needed in that specific case, like the regional supermarket manager here.

I think that's a great example, especially I like the fact that you're taking that extra step to make it easier for any user who maybe he or she may not be as comfortable with the application. How can you make their job function easier to handle depending on the requirement, right? And I see analytical applications becoming a key factor in those scenarios where you have the ability as a user to do things on the fly, but as long as you have the minimal training given to you, that makes a lot of sense. I think we talked about a lot of different things today. We are coming to the end of our session. Based on what we have covered so far, what is that one key takeaway that you would like to share with our listeners today?

Well, I'd say there is really a new world of possibilities in the world of planning today. We've discussed a few with scripting and flexibility, but there is much more to explore now with AI also being infused into the platform like we mentioned. With that, it only becomes useful if we get tired to a specific strategy. Where does FP&A see themselves in the next 1-5 years in the world of AI, autonomous finance, and big data? Then we would want to see that you use that strategic vision and turn it into reality using rapidly evolving platform with the latest technology in the cloud, because that's the only place where this innovation can be offered. I would, of course, say look at SAP cloud, but my colleagues will tell you that you also have to look at the SAP Datasphere to have the surrounding data fabric. So really look at all the innovations ongoing, but always look at them into the respect of where is your FP&A strategy heading? You have a vision, you have something that you want to deliver on, and how can technology help you with that? And then as soon as you map that out, I'm quite sure the experts are more than willing to guide you on that.

Yeah, I think that's a great takeaway, especially you mentioned DataSphere, right? I mean, you think about technology, you think about cloud, all of it needs to be put together in a nice data mesh in terms of how you bring it all in one platform. And, of course, cloud is the way to go. So great insight on that one. I do appreciate your time. Thank you very much for sharing your insights. It's been a pleasure having you on our show. And definitely like to share this information with our listeners and make sure that they get the benefit of what you had to share today with us. So again, thank you.

You're most welcome, Mustansir. I'm looking forward to see the recording.

Thanks for listening to Tech-driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Nick Verhoveen highlighted the dynamic evolution of SAP Analytics Cloud, emphasizing its integrative power within business planning and forecasting. His key takeaway: With continuous technology developments, make sure you have a vision and then see how technology can help you achieve it. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners. Com. Never miss our podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this next series of Tech-Driven Business, Nick Verhoeven, Solution Manager for Planning & Analytics at SAP, joins Mustansir Saifuddin to discuss the power of SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning and how it integrates within the SAP landscape. Listen in as Nick dives into how planning is such a powerful addition to SAP Analytics Cloud. His main takeaway? "To do relevant planning, you want to make sure you understand your current state of the business, the latest trends, and have your analytics looking at the future using AI and predictions." 

The main purpose in Nick's role is to align the different functions within the company. Analyzing and reconciling these inputs to provide and position the best possible FP&A solution to facilitate optimal decisions through data. Customer engagements, analyst relations as well as supporting the internal controlling functions are the main drivers of the role that spark enthusiasm in Nick and steer the solution in the right direction. Nick’s discipline stemming from professional sports is his main strength, helping him drive enterprise engagements however sluggish processes might be.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this first episode of a multipart series, Nick Verhoeven, Solution Manager for Planning and Analytics at SAP, joins me to share how planning is such a powerful addition to SAP Analytics Cloud. It's all about how it integrates with your SAP landscape and beyond.

So joining me today is Nick Verhoeven, who serves as a Solution Manager for Planning and Analytics at SAP. Welcome to Tech-Driven Business, Nick. How are you?

Thank you, Mustansir. I'm quite well. It's been a good Monday so far, so happy to be here.

Thank you. I'm glad to have you on our show. And this topic is very near and dear to me. I've been in planning and analytics for so many years, and really happy to have you as our guests and share your experiences, especially for our topic today. It's a three-part series. We are looking at kicking off this session, and we want to talk about what makes SAC planning such a powerful addition to SAP Analytics Cloud? How does that sound?

Well, I think that sounds great. I'm looking forward to it.

Awesome. Let's get into our topic then. I want to start with the basics. What sets apart SAP Analytics Cloud compared to other cloud-based tools in the market? There are so many tools. So I like to hear your perspective. What makes it so special?

So of course, I'm slightly biased, right? I love the product. I'm the solution manager for the product. But I do think there is something that is rather factual that really sets us apart. You ask about the market, so how do you define a market in general? And then what I'll be using is the Gartner MQs. The Gartner Magic Cloud runs Gartner is an analyst company and they make ratings of different software markets, if you will. What I think is rather defining, if you look at the way that SAP Analytics Cloud is positioned, is that we are represented in the business intelligence market, as defined by Gartner, but we are also, as the one and only vendor, also represented with the same product in the financial planning MQ. And that, I think, really sets us apart. And beyond that, if you look beyond just the solution SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning, I think the integration within an SAP landscape sets us apart. So it's the integration to our transactional systems, but also the integration to our business technology platform systems, which allows a wealth of data integrations and connections.

I think that is the key piece over here, right? I mean, you just hit it on the head. So it seems like when you look around, especially when you're dealing with a cloud-based solution, a lot of times you're stuck with either one or the other solution. So what I'm hearing from you is it's really about bringing two technologies together in one platform, right? Is that basically what makes you think that this is a special tool that allows customers, especially when you're looking for a unified approach of doing things? So it seems like SAC is serving up both those areas from a customer standpoint, right?

I'd say so, and think about it. When you are going to do planning, you don't start from scratch. You want insight on where you are, where you're going. And this is where analytics and planning to me and also to SAP, of course, are a natural extension of each other and not something that should have been viewed in a silo.

Absolutely. Now that makes a lot of sense. And so talking about from that angle, let's get into the details. When you look at from an SAP perspective, you're a little biased because you're working in that tool and you know the insights and what's really going on. When we move forward, SAP continues to enhance its analytics offerings. What do you wish customers knew about SAP that they may have overlooked? A lot of times a tool is out there, but there are certain insights that you may have that can help a customer get more out of their investment, basically.

I would say... We were discussing analytics and planning, but if I really focus on analytics, I think the main new addition, and people may have not overlooked it but haven't fully appreciated the capabilities that it brings, is what we call the unified story. This, in essence, means that we take the original object, that is the story where you could drag and drop self-service BI capabilities in there, and we combine that with the capabilities of the former artifact, which is the application designer. Here you could create very specific applications through scripting. Now, by combining these two, we allow in a single object to be present simple, low TCO way of building your analytics or planning input sheets for that matter. But the ability at any point in time extend that with scripting, if you so will. This is already quite interesting and relevant, but it's not the no point of return. At the point you've added scripting, you can close that again and give the object back to the user that might not be adapted to scripting, but the ability to maintain the object in itself, still remaining and retaining the lower TCO, but having the full flexibility to adjust the behavior of your analytical or planning object with specific scripting, I think that is unique to our platform in the way that we do it and has benefits for analytics as well as planning.

That is very interesting. So let me ask you a follow-up question on this. So that means that when you talk about application designer, you're talking about the ability from a programming standpoint, you can customize certain things and build an application around it. But when you bring in a user, a business user, who can leverage this object or development that is done by from the technical perspective and then bring in their data or their simple stories and have a single, unified approach of looking at information, right? I'm hearing it correctly?

I think you hear it completely correctly. Then we also productize that in a way with the recent addition of composites. Composites are reusable objects that will be released in our latest wave, and you'll see it in SAC three. But here what we have is basically script objects or regular objects that can be reused across many stories developed by a highly esteemed professional, but then can be reused across all of those stories. And then if you make an adjustment in such a composite, it will be adjusted in all of the stories, so really scaling out this combined capability across a very large user set.

Yeah, definitely. I think. And that brings value to the customer really many-folds, and that's what I'm hearing from you. So it's the benefit of using something that is being built and that is embedded, and then you're just extending it to a business user. So that's really awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So now let's get into our main conversation, why a customer, why any organization should consider planning capabilities of SAC? That's really the crux of why we have these two technologies put together in a single platform. So can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, definitely. So I'd say the recent world of turbulent change, and I say recent, but this is of all times, that things are changing around us and we have to deal with it. And I think the natural addition to planning is to start looking forward of where might we be going. If you don't know where you're going, you'll never end up there, right? Yeah. And this is where we're planning adds so much value if you combine that in a single platform. And I would never be one to judge. Every company has their own resourcing constraints and such. But I see all kinds of small planning projects popping up in our analytics user base where they have either a long-term strategic planning that they want to start with or workforce planning as they want to get the right talent at the right time. So small initiatives, and that will then be leading up to a larger enterprise planning deployment at a customer. But I think it is a natural extension to analytics and also where analytics can add so much more value because you have analytics and then put that into something actionable being a plan, which could be resource allocation.

Absolutely. I think what I like in this example, you mentioned two things, right? One is a lot of times when you think of planning, you look at the bigger enterprise planning approach. But here you have the ability or the capability of doing something small and you need planning no matter what you're doing. It doesn't matter if you're working with your labor data or your HR planning versus your financial or your sales data. You have components of planning which can be pretty easily integrated into this platform.I think that's one of the things that a lot of customers  always think about planning as a separate component versus having it together in an easy-to-use fashion where they can leverage the analytics at the same time, add a component of planning depending on what they are working on. So it's a natural extension. So that brings me to a more of a personal question. You've been SAP for quite some time as a Solution Manager for planning analytics. What drives you to make this tool as a tool of choice for customers? What is your take on it?

If we boil it down to what is the reason for using this tool? It's all about decision making. I'm very passionate about the topic of decision making because it's so abundant in all of our lives because we make decisions all of the time. Where I have the tool myself personally, where I use it to have multiple scenarios of mortgage down payments, I have it for multiple scenarios of investments. I'm using drivers to also influence those investments and what would happen if, and that is my personal life. But then when I go out there with the customers, we have scenarios in the oil industry, we have the medical industry. We have so many different angles that you get to for planning and you have to get into quite a bit of specifics. This is what I really like. This is what I really love. Then on my day-to-day job, what I try to make sure is that I look at the solution not only as a great platform, but also something pragmatic that can help people in their day-to-day operation of making better decisions. And this is the analytics and planning that comes together, which I hold so dear.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think you hit it in the head on this one, especially when you think about how simple can it be versus how complex you want to make it, depending on your use case scenario, right? So it really helps to have this capability built-in where you already have information coming from your organizations, different platforms, and you're looking at more like an analytic solution using SAC, but then you push in this planning capability in that tool, and all of a sudden you got this all-rounded view of the organization, basically. That's pretty powerful. Now, so thinking ahead, we always talk about roadmaps and what is really coming next. And this is, I call it... I call it a two-part question. When you think about roadmap, what is there, from a business perspective, short term and long term, what is coming next that a customer should watch out for when you think about the roadmap for SAC?

Taking that twofold question, starting with the short term, I'd say there's many developments, right? But I'll make a focus point where short term and long term also meet each other. And if I look at the short term, I'd say API, API, API. What I mean with that is within the application itself, so the scripting that we were just talking about, we offer APIs there so that you can, through scripting, enhance versions, set up customized planning areas. That is a multitude of functionalities there that you can use through APIs. So basically opening up the system to be manipulated in any way that the customer could want. I'd say that's one of the major short-term developments that we have offered and are also enhancing. This is something that also comes together with our B2P offering. So the import and export API can be leveraged by our integration suite, which can then also make sure that the data from the data marketplace in SAP DataSphere rolls in as drivers into SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning, does its calculations. And then if you want to go to the execution side of things, the integration suite can take those APIs again, take that information and push it out to execution system so that you actually execute on your plan.

So that would be short term. Those APIs also offer a lot of perspective for the long term. So one of the statements that our major development leaders, so Matthias Kramer, has made is that artificial intelligence will come to each and every workflow of SAP Analytics Cloud. Now, the only way to make that work or have something that is effective through AI is to make sure that your application is offering all of the APIs for it to work. Just to give you an example, if you want to have something like asking your application to be built using scripts with certain functionalities, then you can ask the AI bot to write that. But that's only possible if the APIs are there, if it has the ability to create a version API, if it has the ability to trigger data actions. This is where it really meets each other. Just to give you an exciting perspective here, we internally have already developed bots that can generate entire applications, can also create queries, like we know from the pending just ask functionality, but the former search to insight functionality that's still there. But then going beyond that, also leveraging large language models to write a query and also ask AI to summarize.

What do we see in that query? What are the most profitable stores within my assortment? It's these two stores. Note, this one store is actually on the rise compared to the last time you asked. Those insights the AI bot can offer. I've seen internal demonstrations where we can already do it. We also have an external statement of direction on AI, where we also have some of those beta demos already visible because we're really committed to deliver on that.

That is so exciting. I mean, especially thinking being on the projects myself, I know that from a customer standpoint, this is really exciting stuff, especially when they're looking at how to maximize their investments, especially on a platform like SAC, and you mentioned a couple of other technologies where you bring in data from DataSphere and all these other surrounding BTP, et cetera, how they all make it so much useful and allow any organization, any business who is using these platforms to extend their value proposition to the end users. So definitely something exciting and really looking forward to having these short-term and long-term goals coming together and giving this tool a boost that it really can make decision making, especially when you talk about these analytical tools, the decision making is where you're looking at time to value, and how quickly can you make those things? I know we talked about a lot of different things. So coming to our closure, one thing that I always like to ask my guests is based on what we talked about so far, what is the one key takeaway that you want our listeners to leave today?

I'd say it's where we started. We spoke about what makes the platform special. In my mind, it's the presence in not only the analytics market, but also in the planning market, and with that also now with AI and predictive coming together. I think the most important thing is to not decouple these two elements, because to do relevant planning, you want to make sure you understand your current state of the business, the latest trends, and also having analytics looking at the future using AI and predictions, those are natural inputs to your actual plans, and those plans that need to turn into execution. It's so logical if you look at the plan to check X circle from Deming. There are so many things that always relate to these two are interrelated. And I think within a platform, they should also be interrelated. That's my main takeaway.

Yeah, I think that is really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And that's really what sets the whole application apart from so many other tools out there. And with that, I'd like to wrap our session. I do want to thank you for coming on to our show. I'm looking forward to our next conversation, which is all about planning and what makes SAC planning such a powerful tool. I'm looking forward to having that deep dive where... Especially when you look at all these things outside in the market, even from SAP, you have BPC, you have other competitor planning applications out there. We'll talk about more into a deeper perspective of what SAC planning can do and how will that be a game-changer for folks who are looking at planning as one of their additional analytics capabilities to be built into their platform. So looking forward to that. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to that as well. Thank you Mustansir.

Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Nick shared valuable insights on the power of SAC planning. His main takeway? To do relevant planning, you want to make sure you understand your current state of the business, the latest trends, and have your analytics looking at the future using AI and predictions. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.

In this next episode, Mustansir Saifuddin speaks with David C. Williams, Assistant Vice President-Automation at AT&T. David dives into how hyper-automation, specially RPA, and AI come together to effectively and efficiently make a business impact. It's not about choosing one over the other.  

During David's career with AT&T, he has created deep-link HTML marketing initiatives that garner 90 million monthly impressions, led Competitive Intelligence which helped shape AT&T's Mobile First strategy, has been responsible for supporting several Fortune500 companies encompassing $120M in revenue, and authored two patents for Reprogrammable RFID and bridging satellite and LTE technology. In his current role, David is responsible for hyper-automation & emerging technology to transform Customer/Employee Experience and Cost Structure for his organization. He leads the largest Robotics Process Automation program worldwide. His innovations are driving change across the company as his team has developed 600+ Bots automating 70M contacts, realizing $400M in operating income at over 3,000% ROI. Additionally, he also invented & sponsored a decision engine driving $200M credit reduction annually.

David is the 2021 Legacy Award recipient at Black Engineer of the Year STEM Global Conference, 2x Dream in Black winner, AT&T Champion of Diversity Award winner, a proud mentor of multiple Employee Groups, & Diversity Ambassador. David’s humble beginnings in the poorest corner of Dallas, TX, continual giving back through Solar Robot Workshops to the community, and rise through a corporate giant is encapsulated in his book entitled, Business Model. 

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Show Notes:

Welcome.

To Tech-driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this episode, I welcome back David C. Williams. Listen in as David shares his thoughts on how organizations can use AI and RPA to move business forward. David dives into the role each plays and how they complement each other to solve business problems.

Hello, David. How are you?

Must say I'm doing well.

Thank you, David. I'd like to welcome you back to my podcast, Tech-Driven Business. Today, I would like to talk about how RPA and AI is helping organizations. How does that sound to you?

Wonderful. It's an exciting topic, brother.

Yeah, I know this is very near and dear to you. In our previous sessions, you had talked about at length, about RPA. I thought this will be a good segue into this conversation.

Wonderful.

How is AI and RPA helping organizations increase efficiency in their operations and throughout their business in general?

Well, when I think about it, RPA is, I would say all of hyper automation, but especially RPA, is one of the, if not the least, expensive way to solve a business problem with software. Artificial intelligence is the computing power we've dreamed of. When you take that type of computing power and intelligence and give it a efficient reach like RPA, you can go do a lot of cool things very quickly and it doesn't cost your arm and the leg.

I like the way you connected the two. So it seems like they are both connected at the hip in terms of how they are complementing each other.

Yeah. Ai is a brain, right? And just like in a human body, a brain is great, but it can't move anything physically, right? And so you need all these extremities to go about the brain's business every day. That's how I think about AI and RPA coming together. You have the most intelligent computational brain that you could imagine or dream of with mobility of RPA that's so flexible, so ubiquitous, so applicable in so many ways that when you put the two together, it's exponential.

That is great. Let's talk about something in terms of leveraging the efficiency part, right? We talk about efficiencies in business, in our general lives, how we can do things faster, better.

When we talk about leveraging the efficiency of RPA and the capabilities of AI, what makes it beneficial to a business? Can you give some examples? Talk about that.

Yeah, sure. If you think about the combination of the two things that you could do with this. Let's say you have a workforce that uses some knowledge management system. Well, every day that workforce thumbs through a virtual encyclopedia, right? They thumb through a virtual dictionary to go get information or they query it.

With the advent of generative AI combined with RPA, what you could do is you could use AI to do the querying and summarization of all of that knowledge management. You can use RPA to quickly place that in so many different places to make it more accessible. Yep, we got it. We got the great brain that's going to take all of this stuff and compile it into something that's usable and easy to extract from. But how do I get it over to my field technicians, to my customer service group? How do I leverage that across several systems? Rpa and other components of hyperautomation are very prone, very likely to be the best options to go do that without having to reinvent the wheel.

That's a great example you use. That leads me into my next question about you've been doing hyper automation for quite some time, and you had some great success and gains that you saw with that implementation at AT&T. How do you see that journey evolved with the addition of AI now?

Oh, man. Well, I would tell you, when it comes to things like RPA, my team does sit on the very forefront of where all that stuff is going, the way we use it, the conversations we even had with Microsoft on what they're building and enhancing and all that stuff. When I think about where it's going, though, and with AI, AI is going to take our most challenging parts of the development cycle, the most challenging parts of every business or many businesses, and it'll simplify. When I think of that, I think about a world where RPA is even more democratized, where literally any knowledge worker can use RPA. Instead of putting up PowerPoints, we can share prototypes.

That is going to open up an entire universe of innovation and automation.

It seems almost like you are fast tracking a lot of things.

Trying to, man. The funny thing about automation is the more you do it, the more folks want it, which is a good thing, but it is still a challenge. As we continue to grow the program, as we continue to help more of our colleagues, coworkers, customers, as more parts of the business depend on the things we create, we look for ways to continue to accelerate. There are a ton of quotes that we believe in and mantra we have on our team. One is that success is momentum over time. As we continue to... We found some success, we built some momentum. It's taking us a little bit of time as we continue to go down this path, we're going to keep driving more momentum. That is the expectation. Honestly, we're positioned for it. The more things that we build, the more we get to leverage. At one point, we were using bricks to build buildings, then we're using buildings to blocks to build cities, cities to build, etc. We're just still lead on that journey, accelerating and looking for ways to continue to accelerate. And that AI version of what I just spoke about is just one area.

There's a ton of other things that we're looking at to automate so that we can accelerate everything that we're doing in that space.

That is awesome. When you think about opportunities, what opportunities do you see in this area where AI and RP are working together, the idea of creating this intelligent automation? Where do you see that going?

Well, I think that at a certain point it's going to happen. For those that discover it or leverage it, priced, they will solve more complex business problems at a cheaper price, at a faster pace, and that will impact their competition and so forth and so forth. I think it's just a matter of time. These things, these operations, these big companies, whether you're talking telecom or healthcare, doesn't matter. The efficiency that they can drive helps them to be able to capitalize on the things that they do in those specific industries. Rpa is the least expensive hyperautomation is the least expensive way of solving a business problem with software. I haven't found anything cheaper. You put cognitive capabilities on top of that. That means the more complex things you can get after with the cheapest means of doing it. If you're doing that better than your competitor, look at our competitor.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's always this conversation about what technology is moving away from or getting a thing of the past. So when you hear people talk about who say that RPA is a thing of the past and the future is AI, what is your response to that?

It's probably a laugh, a chuckle. It would be like saying, Oh, you know what? The Wright brothers have mastered human flight. We've discovered human flight. We all can fly now. There's no need for tires. No need for tires. Nobody needs tires anymore. It's impossible to even think like that. I would say the same about AI and RPA. There is no competition between the two. This is chocolate and peanut butter. They work better together. There is no competition between the two. There is no replacement of one or the other. Your brain will never replace your thumb. Never. I don't care how good of a brain you have. That thumb sure comes in handy. That's how I think about RPA is that it's not that this is the 3G and there's 4G. No, no, no, no, no. This is complementary. As long as you have one, you will want the other. That's what I think about AI and RPA. As long as you have one, you're going to want the other. If you have RPA, you want cognitive capabilities to make those automations smarter so you can automate more things. If you have AI, you want reach and you want quick reach because with AI you get quick answers.

So you want quick, ubiquitous, far, far reaching reach. Rpa gives you that hyper automation gives you that. Putting up Lego blocks together in the right ways, you get exactly that. For those that say that, I guess maybe it may be a little telling, but I don't see it.

I love the example you use. That is really great. It just puts things in perspective. I think it's just like the one cannot live without the other. It's almost like a marriage made in heaven. That's awesome.

It really is. I mean, when you think about just how fast AI is able to go get the most complex, sophisticated answers and responses to produce code in seconds, whole paragraphs in seconds, whole reports. When you think about that to have that level of intelligence with the an arm 8,000 miles long, you can do a lot. You can do a whole lot. And so that's, I think, the beauty of AI and RPA coming together.

That makes sense. Definitely. For sure. So I guess that takes me to my next point. Based on all that we covered today, what is that one key takeaway that you would want our listeners to leave the session today with?

You got to embrace AI quickly. You got to move safely with it. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Rpa is still the future. Rpa still has a huge impact. I would say to many American Airlines is great for getting you from New York to Los Angeles. But if you need tacos delivered on Tuesday at 2:00 PM American Airlines is probably not the place that you want to call. There's probably better options, more suitable options. One is not better than the other. They just have different roles. That's how RPA and AI relationship are. They have different roles that are extremely complementary of each other.

I think that's a great way to put it. I like the example you use. I think it seems like a lot of times folks are thinking of one technology versus the other. The way you're explaining or you're rationalizing this whole thing is one is helping the other to be more productive, more efficient, and be more robust together as a business, as a technology that is working together to make things better.

Must have said, I would tell you, brother, that one of the biggest mistakes people make in technology is they want to put all the eggs in one basket. Oh, we're going to have this one thing that's going to do all these things. You know what that's called? They did that a long time ago. It's called the Titanic. It doesn't work well that way. Even if you look at Netflix, Amazon, everything you're looking on a page, it's not just one application. There's so many applications working at once. You just see it in one user interface. And so the same way that those microservices work and they feel like one, but they're all separate is what hyper automation, what RPA is. It feels like one thing, but it's still separate. You put all these things together and you can create something magical versus trying to do this just one big, herculean, Titanic thing. And so I find that putting one and one together, if you get them close enough together, one in one is 11. You get further, faster, you get something exponential. You can skip all the other stuff. That's how I think about AI and RPA coming together.

You get further, faster putting them together.

For sure. Now it's been a great session, David. And thank you for sharing your thoughts and your insights into this discussion point. I mean, definitely, there is a lot of progress that needs to be made in this field where both AI and RPA coming together, helping businesses and making our lives better. So I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining our session today.

Thank you. Have a great day.

Thanks for listening to Tech-driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. David gave a great overview on the power of AI and rpa. His main takeaway: embrace AI quickly, move safely with it. Rpa is still the future and will have a great and huge impact. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about innovative solution partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss our podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.