Podcasts about business architecture

In this episode of Better Tech, host Jocelyn Houle interviews Marc-Antoine Auger, AVP of AI Data Governance and Business Architecture at iA Private Wealth. Marc-Antoine dives deep into how financial institutions can modernize legacy systems by aligning business architecture, data governance, and AI to drive scalable transformation and value. He emphasizes the importance of understanding business capabilities, managing technical debt, and fostering collaboration across business, technology, and risk teams. Marc-Antoine also shares insights on data quality being “fit for purpose” rather than perfect and highlights the challenges and opportunities of AI adoption in finance. Listeners gain practical guidance on navigating complex AI projects and managing up effectively in fast-changing environments.

In many minds, legacy is “everything that works”. And even if that is not always true, many organizations look at their legacy systems and get a headache. How do you replace or update a set of systems that have served you so well over years or decades?That is why we are speaking with our guest Kastin Deal about legacy modernization in this episode.With over 8 years at Hitachi Rail, Kastin's expertise lies in spearheading IT strategy and digital transformation, aligning with the company's mission towards sustainable technological advancement. At Hitachi, the role involves balancing application, infrastructure, and data project investments and ensuring their alignment with our overarching IT strategy. Kastin's commitment to innovation and process excellence contributes to evolving business models and driving success within a global framework.Most recently, as the Global Business Architect Lead, Kastin designed and executed the digital revamp of Hitachi Rail Group's business management system. This initiative encompassed strategy execution, process excellence, and enterprise architecture, harmonizing 50 global processes. The responsibilities also extended to product rationalization and the integration of sustainable IT practices, which have been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency across multinational IT services and lines of business.In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about:Kastin's backgroundDefinition of “legacy”Benefits of legacy modernizationAlignment of Enterprise Architecture, Business Architecture, and Solution Architecture as key playersHow to get to the desired outcomes in legacy project and what architects contribute to thisDifferent views needed when defining the legacy replacement solutionUse of ArchiMate as notation for solution designYou can reach Kastin via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kastin-deal-1b22b4203/ and email at kastindeal@gmail.com.Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠hello@whatsyourbaseline.com⁠ or sign up for our newsletter and get informed when we publish new episodes here: ⁠https://www.whatsyourbaseline.com/subscribe/⁠.

The business architecture strategy is an innovative way of approach organizational development and design. Kenyn Benjamin, president of ARGITEK, a strategy management consultancy, is back to delve deeper into this tool for transformation.

Kenyn Benjamin is the President and founder of ARGITEK, a strategy management consultancy. He's a thought leader on organizational transformation and business strategy. A speaker and a consultant focused on transforming business operations to create alignment throughout the enterprise. His company serves forward focused leaders throughout the US. Today he introduces the concept of "business architecture."

Kenyn Benjamin is the President and founder of ARGITEK, a strategy management consultancy. He's a thought leader on organizational transformation and business strategy. A speaker and a consultant focused on transforming business operations through enterprise alignment, his company serves forward-focused leaders throughout the US. Today he introduces the concept of "business architecture."

This BA Brew focuses on the newly published ‘Business Architecture: a comprehensive guide.' Authors Jonathan Hunsley and Debra Paul and contributing author Victoria Banner discuss the ‘why' of the book; the joy of collaborating and sharing ideas; and some of their favourite content including: - leveraging capability to meet goals and outcomes using the CALM model - comparing the business architecture service framework to the business analysis service framework and other service frameworks for role clarity - information concepts including data protection and security - case studies showing the positive impact of business architecture ‘Business Architecture: a comprehensive guide' is available from BCS publishing and other retailers. You may be interested in the following articles, BA Brews and bitesize learning on the topic of Business Architecture. This article compares the Business Analysis and Business Architecture roles, in particular their respective Service Frameworks. Find out more about AssistKD's Architecture courses.  This BA Brew on Business Architecture features Wouter Nieuwenburg.This BA Brew on Strategy and Business Architecture features Vicky Rothwell. Business Architecture: a comprehensive guide is available from the BCS book shop, and also on Amazon. Scroll through our bitesize learning videos and you will find ‘What is Business Architecture' and ‘What is Enterprise Architecture'. #businessarchitecture #businessanalysis #businessarchitectureguide #businessbooks #businessstrategy #businessarchitecturetraining #whatisbusinessarchitecture

Digital transformation isn't just about technology—it's about people. Culture shapes how teams adapt, collaborate, and drive change, but it also determines whether transformation efforts truly take root. Mindset, leadership, and shared values are the real catalysts for lasting success.  This week, Dave, Esmee and Rob talk to Alex Alves Global IT director Business Architecture at Unilever, about the hidden role of culture in driving transformation success.  TLDR: 02:00 Rob is confused about Techno Platform Feudalism 06:40 Cloud conversation with Alex Alves 48:35 Research about raising AI as a child   58:10 Starting an applied research PhD (UCL, the AI Lead department in Europe with two Nobel Prizes) and that this is an example of "intrapreneurship" in Unilever. Science as an Innovation lever.  Guest:Alexandre Alves: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandre-alves-b5315646/Hosts:Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Esmee van de Giessen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/Rob Kernahan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/Production:Marcel van der Burg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Sound:Ben Corbett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/'Cloud Realities' is an original podcast from Capgemini

As we start 2025, Susan looks back at the most memorable moments from Business Analysis Live! In this special episode she shares the top five episodes from 2024, with these experts:

Tokenizing Trade Finance: A Glimpse into the Future of Digital Assets Live from SFF 2024, we had the privilege of sitting down with Wee Kee Toh, Global Head of Business Architecture for Coin Systems at Onyx by JPMorgan, to unpack the groundbreaking innovations shaping the future of digital finance.From interoperability to Global Layer One—a collaborative blockchain network operated by banks—we dove deep into how these advancements are revolutionizing the financial ecosystem.Don't miss this insightful conversation on the future of digital assets and blockchain-powered finance!A big shoutout to Founders Peak for their collaboration in making this special series at SFF 2024 a reality.Our website

Extract from https://businessengineer.ai/p/ai-business-models-bookTable of Contents: Excerpts from "AI Business Models Book"I. Introduction: The Current AI RevolutionThis section introduces the concept of AI as a collaborative tool and highlights the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on business. It emphasizes the growing integration of AI in various sectors and its potential to reshape the future of work.II. The Path to Generalized AIThis section explores the technological advancements that have enabled AI to evolve from narrow applications to more generalized capabilities. It discusses the role of unsupervised learning and delves into the significance of the Transformer architecture, developed by Google, in revolutionizing text processing and AI development.III. Shifting Paradigms: From Search to Generative AIThis section highlights the shift in information processing from traditional search-based models to pre-training, fine-tuning, prompting, and in-context learning approaches. This transition, driven by AI, is presented as a paradigm shift that will make traditional search methods obsolete.IV. The Evolving AI EcosystemThis section discusses the transformation of the AI ecosystem, focusing on the transition from narrow software to more open-ended and generalized applications. It also notes the shift from CPUs to GPUs in hardware, fueling the AI revolution.V. Transforming Consumer ExperiencesThis section examines how AI is changing consumer experiences, highlighting the move from static, non-personalized content to dynamic, hyper-personalized experiences driven by AI. It emphasizes that this shift is already impacting millions of users globally.VI. Deconstructing AI: The Three-Layer TheoryThis section introduces a framework for understanding the AI industry's trajectory: The Three Layers of AI Theory. This framework categorizes AI into foundational, middle, and app layers to illustrate its development and future potential.VII. The Foundational Layer: General-Purpose AI EnginesThis section delves into the first layer of the framework - the foundational layer. It describes this layer as consisting of general-purpose AI engines like GPT-3. Key features of this layer, such as multi-modality, natural language processing, and real-time adaptability, are discussed.VIII. The Middle Layer: Specialized Vertical AI EnginesThis section focuses on the second layer - the middle layer. It describes this layer as being comprised of vertical AI engines that specialize in specific tasks, such as AI lawyers or marketers. It further emphasizes the role of data moats in creating differentiation and the potential for these engines to replicate corporate functions.IX. The App Layer: Specialized Applications Built on AIThis section examines the final layer - the app layer. It defines this layer as consisting of specialized applications built on top of the middle layer. It underscores the importance of network effects and user feedback loops in driving the success of these applications.X. Defining AI Business Models: A Four-Layered ApproachThis section introduces a four-layered framework for analyzing AI business models. It emphasizes AI's role as a connector between value creation and distribution.XI. Foundational Layer: The Technological ParadigmThis section explores the first layer of the AI business model framework, focusing on the underlying technological paradigms. It categorizes them based on the use of open-source, closed-source, or a combination of both types of AI models to enhance products.XII. Value Layer: Enhancing Value through AIThis section discusses the second layer - the value layer - and how AI enhances user value. It identifies three key ways AI achieves this: changing product perception, improving product utility, and introducing entirely new value paradigms.XIII. Distribution Layer: Reaching the CustomerThis section delves into the third layer, the distribution layer, and how AI-driven businesses reach their target markets. It highlights the importance of a combined technology and value proposition, leveraging various distribution channels, and utilizing proprietary channels for effective product delivery.XIV. Financial Layer: Sustainability & ProfitabilityThis section examines the fourth layer - the financial layer - and analyzes the financial viability of AI businesses. It focuses on revenue generation, cost structure analysis, profitability assessment, and the generation of cash flow to sustain continuous innovation.XV. AI Business Models: Real-World Case StudiesThis section provides real-world examples of companies successfully implementing AI business models. It uses the four-layered framework to analyze the models of DeepMind, OpenAI, Tesla, ChatGPT, Neuralink, NVIDIA, and Baidu.XVI. Key Takeaways: Understanding the AI RevolutionThis concluding section summarizes the key takeaways about the evolution and impact of AI. It reiterates the shift in technological paradigms, the evolving AI ecosystem, the transformation of consumer experiences, and the emergence of distinct AI business models.AI Business Models: A Detailed BriefingThis briefing document reviews the main themes and important ideas from an excerpt of "AI Business Models Book" by Gennaro Cuofano and FourWeekMBA. The excerpt focuses on the evolving landscape of AI, its impact on business models, and provides a framework for understanding this transformative technology.Key Highlights:The AI Revolution: The authors argue that we are in the midst of an AI revolution powered by advancements in unsupervised learning and the development of powerful new AI models like GPT-3, the foundation of ChatGPT. This revolution is characterized by a move from narrow AI applications to more general and open-ended systems.The Importance of the Transformer Architecture: Cuofano emphasizes the "Transformer" architecture, a neural network design that excels in processing sequential data like text. He states, "As you'll see in the Business Architecture of AI, the turning point for the GPT models was the Transformer architecture (a neural network designed specifically for processing sequential data, such as text)." This architecture is crucial for the effectiveness of models like ChatGPT.From Search to Generative AI: The excerpt highlights a fundamental shift from traditional "crawl, index, rank" information processing models to "pre-train, fine-tune, prompt, and in-context learn" models. This transition marks a move from search/discovery as the dominant paradigm to a generative AI-powered approach, making traditional search methods obsolete.The Three Layers of AI: Cuofano proposes a three-layered model to understand the AI ecosystem:Foundational Layer: This layer consists of general-purpose AI engines like GPT-3, DALL-E, and StableDiffusion. These engines are multimodal, primarily interact through natural language, and can adapt in real-time.Middle Layer: Built on the foundational layer, this layer comprises vertical engines specializing in specific tasks. Examples include AI lawyers, accountants, and marketers. Differentiation in this layer is achieved through "data moats" and fine-tuned AI engines for specific functions.App Layer: This layer features a multitude of specialized applications built upon the middle layer. These applications rely on network effects and user feedback loops to scale and improve.The AI Business Model Framework: The excerpt introduces a four-layered framework for understanding AI business models:Foundational Layer: This layer examines the underlying AI technology used by a business, whether open-source, closed-source, or a combination of both.Value Layer: This layer analyzes how AI enhances value for the user. This can be achieved by changing product perception, improving utility, or introducing entirely new paradigms.Distribution Layer: This layer focuses on how the AI-powered product or service reaches its customers. Key considerations include growth strategies, distribution channels, and proprietary distribution methods.Financial Layer: This layer assesses the financial sustainability of the AI business model, encompassing revenue generation, cost structure analysis, profitability, and cash flow assessment.Real World Examples: The excerpt analyzes several companies through the lens of this AI business model framework, including:DeepMind (Google)OpenAITeslaChatGPTNeuralinkNVIDIABaiduKey Takeaways:We are witnessing a paradigm shift in how we interact with information and technology, driven by AI.The "Transformer" architecture is a cornerstone of this AI revolution.Understanding the three layers of the AI ecosystem and the four layers of AI business models is crucial for navigating this evolving landscape.Existing companies and new entrants are leveraging AI to create value, enhance products and services, and redefine business models across various industries.

In this episode of InfoBeans Fail Faster podcast, we welcome Hetal Patel, Managing Director of Business Architecture and Product Strategy at CIBC US. Hetal shares her journey from growing up in Bangalore to becoming a leader in the tech and financial sectors. She discusses the challenges and successes she faced, the importance of grit and continuous learning, and how her early experiences shaped her career. Tune in to hear about her transition from telecom to finance, her passion for product management, and her insights on building successful digital products.

Welcome to our sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) podcast series. Each episode features business leaders from across the technology, media and telecoms industry who discuss what sustainability and ESG means to them, their organisation and the industry as a whole.  In this episode, Analysys Mason's Simon Sherrington, Research Director, talks with Kelsi Doran, Director of Sustainability Strategy and Business Architecture at Cisco.  Simon and Kelsi discuss:  building the case for investment in sustainability programmes   driving action on net-zero emissions  leading Cisco's circular economy strategy   using sustainability to create new business opportunities   driving ESG accountability within senior leadership   Find out more about Analysys Mason's sustainability and ESG-related research and consulting services here. 

Do you need Business Architects when creating a new product? Isn't that a bit redundant when you have highly-paid Product Managers already? Or is there an overlap between the two that will create a better product for the end users, but also for the organization because they can better support it and it is aligned with the underlying process. Our guest this week is Mike DeCamp, who has over 15 years of professional experience in business analysis, project management, and process improvement. He is a Senior Product Manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), one of the world's leading cancer research and treatment centers. Mike has earned multiple certifications in Business Benefits Realization, Change Management, Business & Enterprise Architecture, and Financial Literacy, and is a proficient thought leader in areas of strategy development and cross functional leadership. In this episode of the podcast we are talking about: Mike's background Business Architecture - how the BA Guild defines it and how it relates to other frameworks and concepts Business architecture artifacts as the value contribution to make the connection to the strategy/business model How Mike applied BA to a new product in his day job at MSKCC How BA provides the context when defining new projects or programs (for products, but also otherwise) How to keep structures up-to-date when everything is a project To reach out to Mike via LinkedIn have a look here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-decamp-cba%C2%AE-02bb6b2/ Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whatsyourbaseline/support

This BA Brew is AssistKD's second BA Question Time. Many of the questions focus on role clarity, a hot topic for BAs. Mike Williams is host, with expert panellists Jo Frances and Jonathan Hunsley providing the answers and insights. This week's questions are: ❓What is the difference between a Business Analyst and a Business Architect? ❓What is the difference between a Business Analyst and a Service Designer? ❓How can a growth mindset support change professionals in general? ❓ What are the overlaps between a Business Analyst and a Functional Analyst? Do you have a question our the next BA Question Time? If so, please email us on BABrew@AssistKD.com or post on our wall on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. The following BA Brews and articles are relevant to the topics discussed: This article on Business Analysis and Business Architecture is based on the workshop run by Victoria Banner and Jonathan Hunsley at the BA Manager Forum in June 2024. This is an interesting BA Brew on Business Architecture. BA Brew 22: Business Architecture (Feat. Wouter Nieuwenburg)This article compares the BA Service Framework and the Service Design Service Framework and addressed the ‘grey area' between the roles. This book review is relevant to the growth mindset. This output from the BA Manager Forum provides some useful information on the growth mindset. #businessanalysis #businessanalyst #baqt #growthmindset #businessarchitecture #businessarchitect #servicedesign #servicedesigner #functionalanalyst #dataarchitecture #roleclarity

There are a LOT of similarities between business and architecture.  When things are built with vision and intention, they are both beautiful AND effective.  Apply this thinking to you business  Greg BeckChief Growth Officer & Sunbelt M&A AdvisorFocalPoint Advisory Serivceshttps://gregbeck.focalpointcoaching.com/https://transactionreadiness-gregbeck.scoreapp.com/gbeck@focalpointcoaching.comgbeck@sunbeltnetwork.comOffice: Office: 937-866-4611 ext 5Cell: 513-379-2399www.linkedin.com/in/greg-beck

To be added --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whatsyourbaseline/support

Ever wondered how organizations bridge the gap between IT and business operations? You'll discover the intriguing journey of business architects as they navigate through different departments, from IT to strategy, in pursuit of organizational excellence. Join Scott and Susan and special guest, Roger Burlton, business architecture practitioner, author, speaker and trainer, as we answer the question "What is Business Architecture?" RESOURCES: Short videos and articles by Roger at Process Renewal Connect with Roger on LinkedIn Do you have questions about this topic or have an idea for a different topic? Ask us a question at ⁠⁠⁠live@iiba.org⁠⁠⁠ or leave us a ⁠⁠⁠voice message⁠⁠⁠ on our podcast homepage.  Business Analysis Live is hosted by: - Susan Moore, Community Engagement Manager at IIBA - Scott Bennett, Manager, Business Analysis at IIBA International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) is a non-profit professional association serving the field of business analysis.  As the global thought leader and voice of the business analysis community, IIBA actively supports the recognition of the profession, and works to maintain global standards for the ongoing development of the practice and certifications.   #BusinessArchitecture #StrategyAlignment #EnterpriseTransformation #ITStrategy #BusinessInnovation --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/iiba-org/message

In the latest energizing episode of "Invest In Yourself: the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast," host Phil Better welcomes Sean Delaney, a business virtuoso whose insights are reshaping the landscape for digital entrepreneurs. As the founder of What If, Delaney divulges his revolutionary approach to solving age-old business issues, drawing paralells between large corporate structures and a "Frankenstein monster" of business understanding. He charts the transformation of business ideals from the industrial era into today's digital age, advocating a return to core values and harmonious business architecture for successful entrepreneurship. In their captivating discussion, Delaney and Better delve deep into the essence of business disciplines, the redefinition of strategic planning, and the paramount importance of time management rooted in a company's mission. The episode is peppered with enlightening analogies, even drawing on allegorical references to Marvel's Doctor Strange and Gambit, which unexpectedly resonate with the show's entrepreneurial themes. Delaney also shares his personal story, detailing his pivot from consulting for mega-brands to empowering entrepreneurs, ensuring lasting change and impact. With a methodology that simplifies complex marketing principles and fosters harmonious cultures within companies, Delaney's system pivots on the creation of value and aligning with like-minded partners. Listeners won't want to miss the opportunity for a complimentary diagnostic analysis offered by Sean Delaney, a tool that promises to bring clarity and the potential for a 7-figure business roadmap. This episode isn't just a podcast; it's an invitation to reevaluate and reconstruct your entrepreneurial endeavors for success. For those ready to ignite their business spark and embrace their digital prowess, tune in to this episode of "Invest In Yourself: the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast," where Phil Better and Sean Delaney not only share the keys to entrepreneurial mastery but also establish the framework for a vibrant, value-driven business future. Visit whatif.com/getclarity for more on Sean's diagnostic tool and check the show notes for additional resources. Transform your business architecture and scale new heights with the wisdom from this essential digital entrepreneur's manual—because investing in yourself starts with pressing play.

Bas Bach legt uit hoe je doelen kunt behalen die buiten de grenzen van de organisatie vallen. Oftewel hoe kun je polderen buiten de organisatiegrenzen? En wat is de relatie met de bedrijfsarchitectuur? Wil je meer weten over hoe je bedrijfsarchitectuur vraagstukken kunt oplossen, kijk dan op onze website: https://www.solventa.nl Reacties en vragen kun je sturen naar ons email adres: podcast@solventa.nl

Get a glimpse into the cutting-edge of marketing with my interview with Rick Meekins, a master of streamlining operations, scaling businesses, and crafting brands that stand out from the crowd. Being a Business and Technology strategist with more than 30 years of experience, he has worked with various industries and individuals to enable business operations and growth. He holds expertise in Process & System Engineering, Software Selection, Customization & Implementation, Business Architecture, and Business Analysis. Being on Advisory Boards as President, and Managing Partner of different organizations has helped him excel and transformed the firm into what it is today. He is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and small business owners build infrastructure and strategies to facilitate and support their growth. He is a wealth of knowledge and practical wisdom, and this episode is packed with actionable insights you can implement TODAY. Ready to take your marketing from clunky to clutch? ⚙️This interview is all about helping businesses streamline operations, scale like crazy, and stand out from the pack. Hit the link in bio to hear their expert tips and get your growth engine purring! #podcast #marketingtips #businessefficiency      

Send us a Text Message.“If people can't explain you, you're at massive risk' Mike DysonIn this episode you'll hear about Intrapreneurs vs. InnovatorsEssential qualities of an IntrapreneurHow and where to initiate changeSelf-Assessment and Alignment - Staying on TrackUnderstanding Stakeholders and Effective EngagementInnovation and Business Goals - Value AlignmentFostering a Culture of Innovation - Psychological SafetyWe hope you enjoy the show!Key linksRyan Rumsey Dare by Stan BushLean Six Sigma Harriet WakemanCynefin FrameworkAbout our guestOur guest, Mike Dyson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedysonexpdesign/), was formerly the Head of Capbility & Experience Design at nbn Australia. In the five years since joining nbn, Mike established a cross-functional innovation & design practice who delivered immense value across multiple parts of nbn's operations groups.Mike has worked in many of the major industies from telecommunications, healthcare, finance, insurance and even waste management. In fact he likes to joke that if he ever wrote a book it would be from Movie Stars to Landfills the Mike Dyson story. An expert in numerous facets of Human Centred Design, Business Architecture and Innovation, he uses his passions and knowhow to maximise the talent of teams and changes lives through simple design. Mike generously shares his design leadership experience through his public speaking event and his role as a mentor with digital and design with groups like Academy Xi and ADP.About our hostOur host, Chris Hudson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hudson-7464254/), is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching & consultancy Company Road (www.companyroad.co)Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.Every team approaches transformation in their own way, also bringing in their own partners to help. And while they're working towards the same organisational goal, it's this over-fragmentation that stunts rapid progress at a company-wide level. Having worked as a marketer, transformation leader, teacher and practitioner of design thinking for over 20 years, both here in Australia and internationally, Chris brings a unique, deep and 'blended' skillset that will cohere and enable your teams to deliver ambitious and complex change programs.Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world's most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.  For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

How can business architecture help change leaders deliver more successful transformation programs? My guest today is Krishan Jogia founder and Managing Director of Evolve&Amplify, a business and enterprise architecture consultancy. Krishan specialises in the areas of business strategy, architecture, portfolio management and design thinking. Krishan is passionate about helping executives to define their business vision and break it down into strategies and target operating models.In this episode, we're discussing how to align change management and business architecture. Krishan explains what is involved in business architecture, how it overlaps and aligns with change management, and examines the touch and pain points to analyse the service that is delivered. Krishan delves into the importance of examining the stakeholder's experience, mapping customer journeys, the benefits of working in multidisciplinary teams, and the current trends in business architecture. This conversation will be of great value to anyone who wants to find out more about how business architecture can work together with your change management strategy to deliver the best transformational results for your organisation. LINKS:Connect with Krishan: Website: https://evolveandamplify.com/ LinkedIn Evolve&Amplify: https://www.linkedin.com/company/evolveandamplify/ LinkedIn Krishan Jogia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishanjogia/Connect with me: Website:https://www.everchange.com.au/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne/

In deze aflevering gaat Alexander Engelman in gesprek met Jules de Ruijter om de rol van GEA te bespreken bij het oplossen van bedrijfsvraagstukken. Wil je meer weten over GEA, kijk dan op onze website https://www.solventa.nl/blog/?filter=gea of ga naar het groeiplatfform GEA https://www.groeiplatformgea.nl. Daarnaast kun je het boek bestellen via https://www.managementboek.nl/boek/9789461264350/gea-enterprise-architecture-in-practice-rob-stovers. Reacties en vragen kun je sturen naar ons email adres: podcast@solventa.nl

Wat is Sourcing en Cloud eigenlijk? En hoe kun je een Sourcing en Cloud strategie opstellen die past bij jouw organisatie? Alexander Engelman zit in deze aflevering samen met Diederik van Kuilenburg om hier antwoord op te kunnen geven. Meer weten over de cloud, kijk dan op onze website https://www.solventa.nl/blog/help-we-willen-naar-de-cloud-toch/. Reacties en vragen kun je sturen naar ons email adres: podcast@solventa.nl

Industrial Talk is onsite at the OMG Quarterly Standards Meeting and chatting with Whynde Kuehn and William Ulrich with Business Architecture Guild about "The Aggregation and Dissemination of Business Architecture Best Practices". Tune in and hear more about the importance of Business Architecture and Team Business Architecture Guild's unique insights on this Industrial Talk. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! WHYNDE KUEHN'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whynde-kuehn/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/business-architecture-associates/ Company Website: https://www.businessarchitectureguild.org/ WILLIAM ULRICH'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamulrich/ PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/ju3UXLwYo0k THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.com/ Hexagon:  https://hexagon.com/solutions/enterprise-asset-management Arduino Pro:  https://www.arduino.cc/pro/ Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html CAP Logistics: https://www.caplogistics.com/ Armis: https://www.armis.com/ Saviant Consulting: https://www.saviantconsulting.com/ Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/ YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 –

I see a lot of separated efforts in organization, and model processes. Aren't these all connected activities that should be coordinated to create a *gulp* architecture that carries the load? But what is a "Business Architecture" and how is it different from just an assembly of processes? Are these terms synonyms or is there more to a Business Architecture than that? In this episode of the podcast we are talking about: What is a Business Architecture? Why should I care and where to start? Align strategy to (business) architecture Two process views - functional processes vs. End-to-End processes Both process views are connected (big map vs. trip map) Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

On this episode we take you on a journey through the life of a dynamic working professional, who has excelled at his professional obligations in the organizations he works for and excelled as a co-founder of global community platform for high-performing Black professionals in all industries. Aziz Garuba (Guest) and Charles Moka Jr. (Host) discussed the following; How to prepare for and execute on career transitions How to manage biases in a corporate or business environment The power of building and sustaining relationships Pursuing and navigating multiple interests outside your job/current employment Managing doubt of starting a business while working a full time job How to start executing on your vision and dreams beyond your current full time employment/job Health and finance tips as a working professional and so much more... Our guest on this Episode is Aziz Garuba, a seasoned finance and strategy professional, a diversity and inclusion advocate, a podcaster (Made To Lead), speaker and facilitator with over 14 years of experience driving change and delivering improvements to business operations. He is the co-founder of BlackTies, a global community platform for high-performing Black professionals in all industries. He currently serves as Director, Business Architecture at RBC Capital Markets where he leads business unit strategy reviews, capability and operation efficiency assessments initiatives and Target Operating Model design across people, process and technology in Capital Markets. Consider these actions: Leave a comment(s) and let us know what you think about this episode Subscribe to the Principled Minds Podcast on anywhere you listen to your podcasts Email PrincipledMind@gmail.comn if you have any inquiries or would like to join as a guest/speaker or a podcast sponsor Follow our guest, Aziz Garuba on LinkedIn and Instagram at Aziz Garuba Remember that life is what you make of it; It's the choice you make that spices it up. Stay Legendary!!

In this episode, Randy welcomes Whynde Kuehn, author of the book Strategy to Reality: Making the Impossible Possible for Business Architects, Change Makers and Strategy Execution Leaders. Whynde shares her humble beginnings and how she got into sales. Whynde's conversation with Randy centers on the importance of Vision and Mission statements, their parallels with strategies, the importance of business architecture in designing strategies, and many more. Learn more about Whynde in this latest episode of Tech Sales Insights. INSIGHTS OF THE DAYWHYNDE: ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND CAPABILITIES THROUGH BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE“The architecture sort of the golden thread, right, allows us to keep this continual balance and alignment between strategy, the capabilities we're investing in, and the initiatives and solutions, especially if we need to replan what we're doing very quickly.”WHYNDE: INSIGHT ON VISION, MISSION, AND STRATEGIES“Those are sort of the blocks that we anchor back to. And they're, they're also the things that nobody kind of thinks about on a day-to-day basis unless you bring it up, where things start to change, which is where I focus is the strategies, the goals, the objectives, the metrics, the courses of actions, the where we play, how we win, and that's where we spend most of our time because that's where the change is happening, and that's where we need to be really clear.” Find out more about Whynde in the links below:Whynde Kuehn | S2e Transformation | Book This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community | OpenSymmetry

The way the AI industry is evolving right now:Closed-Centralized-top-down data processing: with the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership, Microsoft Azure offers the cloud infrastructure which enables OpenAI to pre-train its powerful models (right now, GPT-4 might be getting trained on trillions of parameters that require a huge amount of computation). And an Open APIs infrastructure where any business can access the OpenAI APIs to build business applications. Here you can't download the model, and each iteration of your build will go through the foundational layer built by OpenAI APIs. So as you train and fine-tune a middle layer model on top of GPT-3, you're interacting with OpenAI.Open-Decentralized-On edge data processing: with Stable Diffusion getting pre-trained on AWS, once the model is ready, it can get downloaded by anyone and run on a device, like the iPhone and on edge. Meaning you download and use it on your device without the data needing to go back to the centralized cloud provider. The reason why here I say it's open, it's because you can download the full, open-sourced version once the model has been released. And you don't need to interact with its APIs, but you can download Stable Diffusion and run it, let's say, on your iPhone. And therefore, it's on edge because there is no data that goes back to Stability AI, which develops Stable Diffusion. You can use it on your device at a local level.

This week on the IpX #TrueNorth Podcast: Join us for another animated discussion with IpX President Joseph Anderson as he reconvenes with Martin Haket & Martijn Dullart, ASML, on the challenges and impact of data integrity and interoperability in the industrial ecosystem. They also delve into the value proposition of business process hierarchy, CM2, configuration identification, and how favoring new product development over process transformation leads to poor quality. Watch this episode on YouTubeConnect with IpX to hear more industry thought leaders. Learn how IpX can help your organization evolve with our functional blueprint for the ecosystem of tomorrow. Drive innovation, create a better customer experience, and enable your workforce as an organization built for change, speed, quality and resiliency. www.IpXhq.comStay in touch with us! Follow us on social: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook Contact us for info on IpX or for interest in being a podcast guest: info@ipxhq.com All podcasts produced by Elevate Media Group.

In this segment I provide an overview of how A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge (the BIZBOK Guide) views Business Architecture. Follow along on BarcVox.com, where you can also find related content. Transcript to this segment: http://barcvox.com/2022/09/27/a-walk-through-the-bizbok/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/barcvox/message

The Transformation Ground Control podcast covers a number of topics important to digital and business transformation. This episode covers the following topics and interviews: Hot Topics: Digital Transformation of Pizza, Digital Transformation in Emerging Markets, Automation vs Autonomous Systems, Digital Transformation of AC (Eric Kimberling and Kyler Cheatham) How Business Architecture Enables Better Digital Transformations (Whynde Kuehn, Author of “Strategy to Reality”) Emotional Intelligence (Jedd Hafer, Mission Peace) We also cover a number of other relevant topics related to digital and business transformation throughout the show. This weekly podcast series premiers live on YouTube every Wednesday at 8am NYC time / 1pm London / 9pm Hong Kong. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Pandora, or your favorite podcast platform. WATCH MORE EPISODES HERE: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyI-oIQSgI2DGXQKvUz-farHwls_B3G3i —————————————————————— DOWNLOAD MORE RESOURCES BELOW: —————————————————————— 2023 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REPORT: https://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/2023digitaltransformationreport   TOP 10 ERP SYSTEMS RANKING: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/the-top-10-erp-systems-for-2020/   TOP 10 ERP SYSTEMS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/top-erp-systems-for-small-businesses/   TOP 10 CRM SYSTEMS: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/top-10-crm-systems-for-digital-transformations   GUIDE TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT: http://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/the-definitive-guide-to-erp-hcm-organizational-change-management   20 LESSONS FROM 1,000 ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS: https://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/lessons-from-1000-erp-implementations-ebook   ———————————————————— CONNECT WITH ME: ———————————————————— LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickimberling/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/erickimberling/ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@erickimberling0 TWITTER: https://twitter.com/erickimberling CLUBHOUSE: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@erickimberling THIRD STAGE LINKEDIN PAGE: https://www.linkedin.com/company/third-stage-consulting-group/ CONTACT ME TO BRAINSTORM IDEAS FOR YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: eric.kimberling@thirdstage-consulting.com   ———————————————————— MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE: ———————————————————— Get I'm Ready by The Eiffels here https://t.lickd.co/geq6gnjo3Y8 License ID: 6DnlLO3LnvW    Get You Worry Me by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats here https://t.lickd.co/XzBW917yD6r License ID: NYx6Z6maxbn   Get International Space Station by British Sea Power here https://t.lickd.co/5rM5pxr8zjn License ID: 3ljgXOeeYwk   Get Can I Play With Madness (1998 - Remaster) by Iron Maiden here https://t.lickd.co/rPYy0OeVxlk License ID: n5wRzPx7waY   Get Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood here https://t.lickd.co/86xKJAXy5n0 License ID: wREN8jBR0lr   Get Back on the Chain Gang by Pretenders here https://lickd.lnk.to/H2t9DXID!Eric%20Kimberling%20-%20Digital%20Transformation License ID: N0kDRlqnLOb   Get Epic by Faith No More here https://t.lickd.co/zG5VzByg51a License ID: 2536gYqYVQq Get this and other songs for your next YouTube video at https://lickd.co      

Whynde Kuehn shares valuable insights on her new book about business architecture.Charting an operational path as one of the original business architecture pioneers, Whynde Kuehn takes our audience on a guided tour of this foundational discipline for enabling end-to-end transformation and organizational agility. Bridging alignment gaps and connecting strategy to execution are enterprise necessities tucked inside the digital transformation era. Whynde has devoted her career to becoming a specialist in this business architecture arena. Join us for our fast moving and enlightening chat about Whynde, this discipline and her book. Support the show

What data do you use when shaping a change management strategy? Are your recommendations and decisions grounded in evidence?Today's episode is all about ways to think about and get your hands on the insights you need to develop tailored, robust change management strategies.We explore these ideas with Krishan Jogia, founder and Managing Director at Evolve and Amplify - a strategic business design consultancy. This isn't Krishan's first time on the podcast and I really hope it won't be the last. In this episode we discuss:How plugging into business intelligence can help change managers deliver more successful organisational changeWhy business intelligence (BI) is worth consideringThe difference between business intelligence and businesses insights and how they fit togetherExactly what classifies as dataHow business insights can help us shape user experienceHow to translate data into actionable insightsAre BI dashboards helpful for what you're trying to do?This conversation raises some really interesting insights around how we can transform data into actionable insights. And importantly, what the best data is for embedding enduring and lasting change. This was such a thought provoking conversation for me and I know it will be for you too.LINKS:Data pyramid / data continuumTools mentioned: Tableau and QlikViewPrevious episode mentioned:Aligning Change Management and Business Architecture with Krishan JogiaConnect with Krishan Jogia:LinkedIn:https://au.linkedin.com/in/krishanjogiaLinkedIn Company:https://www.linkedin.com/company/evolveandamplify/Website:https://evolveandamplify.com/Email:hello@evolveandamplify.com​​Connect with me: Website:https://www.everchange.com.au/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne

In this session, we speak to somewhat of a legend in the Business Architecture community - Roger Burlton. Roger is President of the Process Renewal Group, and longtime chair of numerous industry conferences including Business Business Capability and IRM UK. He is also an accomplished author on the subject of business architecture and has recently published his new book Business Architecture: Collecting, Connecting, and Correcting the Dots. 

Today's Salesforce Admins Podcast we're replaying our episode with Lissa Smith, Senior Manager of Business Architecture at Salesforce. In the context of the launch of the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit, we wanted to revisit our conversation about how she hired a team of Salesforce Admins, what she looks for in the interview, and important advice […] The post Replay: Hiring an Admin with Lissa Smith appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

It is Episode 14 of the Bamboo Talking Tech podcast and we are talking all about the Socrates education software and how it is helping to drive positive change in the Justice sector. In this episode, our host Ellen Smith and Bamboo Director of Business Architecture and Technology, Phil Thomas is joined by James Levy, Business Development Director for Socrates Software. Join us as they discuss everything from in-cell education to locked down technology.Let's dive in!

After talking about recently attended events we learn that Marijn likes only soft things against his skin, but the boys resist the opportunity for a fun discussion on this fact.  They talk about the new news around AD and AAD groups where AAD groups can now be nested.There is disagreement about the copying of profiles and if the AAD groups also get copied across to new users based on another user... Steve thought not and Marijn started to doubt... but from a quick lookup it appears there is a user template option now available and some Microsoft Flows that will not assist in this role.Bon Vivant is Marijn's new Viva name, which is apparently a thingEventually, Steve and Marijn move on to the subject at hand which is Business Architecture.  The idea being it is important to understand the business processes around this architecture and then use M365 architecture to add value to the areas that most need a change or improvement.We take a look at a specific Business architecture working across the business and for the podcast, we tool the Hire to Retire process.  We take the various aspects of the process and choose the appropriate Microsoft365 application and tool that best improves that aspect of the process.  Nothing is limited as this is after all only a podcast.And of course, neither Steve nor Marijn has to build this so reality can take a side-line.  Especially when Steve takes an AI chat that creates an automatic Head-hunter application to go find the perfect candidate.After completing the process, it is time to relax with a whisky from Finland... so we finished the Finish whisky at the end of the podcast

The Azure cloud platform is more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life—to solve today's challenges and create the future. Build, run, and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice. Dynamics 365 runs on the Azure cloud service, and today's cloud architecture expert, Tony Begum, highlights why that's valuable and what that means to all you Biz Apps innovators out there! Episode TopicsAzure and Dynamics are different products, so how are they important to each other?When it comes to our competitors, do you think Azure + D365 separates us? If so, how?How does IoT play a part in the Azure + D365 story? What are some good nuggets to know?How can partners tell a better together story with Azure + D365? Useful Resources:Azure + DynamicsAzure + Customer EngagementDynamics Field Service + IoT + Azure About Tony BegumTony Begum brings over 25yrs of experience building enterprise solutions ranging from his first ISP startup in 1994 to putting in the most remote VoIP system in in the world in Perdo Bay Alaska. He has over 25 industry cloud technical certifications from AWS, Salesforce, and Microsoft. His current role is developing our new business architecture service for Microsoft to help our customers realize their digital transformation more rapidly. Tony brings a wealth of knowledge and experience with over 20 years of business application value selling. Tony has also held positions at IBM and Cisco where he acquired in-depth knowledge of Cloud Architecture, Customer Service, Business Architecture, and B2B Commerce. Connect with Tony here - Tony Begum | LinkedIn We'd love to hear from you:Don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, comments, suggestions or feedback! We'd love to hear from you. Send your hosts an email at digestibledynamics@microsoft.comDiscover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is episode 1077 of the Arete Coach Podcast with host Severin Sorensen and guest coach David McKnight, who is an executive coach, image consultant, personal brand strategist, speaker, author, and change management specialist. In this episode we explore "Leveraging Executive Brand, Image, and Presence" and David's journey in executive coaching and his 'executive make-over' business. David McKnight is a Certified Professional Coach and Energy Leadership Master Practitioner with iPEC Coaching. He is also the CEO and President of McKnight Image Lab, where he provides a unique combination of image consulting and executive coaching. Through McKnight Image Lab, David helps professionals transform their professional presence, personal brand, performance, effectiveness, and productivity. Before starting McKnight Image Lab, David was a management consultant with companies such as Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and eLoyalty. He has also held several positions such as Head of Change Management, Global Head of Business Architecture and Solution, Sr. Enterprise Integration Manager. David has also worked as an image consultant within the fashion industry. From these experiences, David has combined his love for style with his corporate knowledge and started helping business leaders through executive coaching and image consulting. He has been featured in The New York Times, New York Post, The Huffington Post, and INC. Magazine. He has helped leaders from Verizon, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Spotify, and many other leading brands. He is also the author of, “The Zen of Executive Presence. Learn more about executive presence and other coaching topics at AreteCoach.io. The Arete Coach Podcast seeks to explore the art and science of executive coaching. You can find out more about this podcast at aretecoach.io. This episode was produced on March 9, 2022. Copyright © 2022 by Arete Coach™ LLC. All rights reserved.

How can business architecture help change leaders deliver more successful transformation programs? Today, my guest is Krishan Jogia founder and Managing Director of Evolve&Amplify, a business architecture consultancy. Krishan specialises in the areas of business strategy, architecture, portfolio management and design thinking. Krishan is passionate about helping executives to define their business vision and break it down into strategies and target operating models.In this episode, we're discussing how to align change management and business architecture. Krishan explains what is involved in business architecture, how it overlaps and aligns with change management, and examines the touch and pain points to analyse the service that is delivered. Krishan delves into the importance of examining the stakeholder's experience, mapping customer journeys, the benefits of working in multidisciplinary teams, and the current trends in business architecture. This conversation will be of great value to anyone who wants to find out more about how business architecture can work together with your change management strategy to deliver the best transformational results for your organisation. LINKS:Connect with Krishan: Website: https://evolveandamplify.com/ LinkedIn Evolve&Amplify: https://www.linkedin.com/company/evolveandamplify/ LinkedIn Krishan Jogia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishanjogia/Connect with me: Website:https://www.everchange.com.au/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne/

Welcome To The Hawthorns Debate Club. A West Brom Podcast with Jamie Clay, Joe Clay and Alex Collins. In this week's sleepy episode we hammer the final few rusty nails into the coffin of the season that promised so much but delivered so little. We briefly mention the Coventry game, before turning our eyes to the future. We discuss the reports that Steve Bruce will seemingly be in charge next season, is this a good thing or a bad thing? We then turn our attention to troubleshooting the deeper issues at the club, before we each offer an elevator pitch as to how we'd fix the club. Ron pick up the phone... we are expecting your call. Are Albion fans entitled? Joe is the new Paul Scharner? Riding an elevator to the ISS? Business Architecture to the rescue? ‘Get the full experience of an Albion fan. The dizzying highs of optimism and then crushing reality.' - Jonno Voted the 21st Best Debate podcast for Growing Businesses. Thank you for downloading. If you enjoy today's podcast, please spread the word. Music Credits Because For Everything There Is Someone by pATCHES No.6 In My Dreams by Esther Abrami A Night Alone by TrackTribe Downloaded from the Youtube Media Library Twitter: @HawthornsClub Instagram: thehawthornsdebateclub

Todd Gernady is the Senior Manager Process Improvement, Business Architecture, and Organizational Change Management at United Airlines. After he discovered his passion for consulting, Todd went on to become a Lean Six Sigma belt and used that to share his passion for making a process run smoothly. He joins host Justin Lake to talk about the issues facing frontline workers.        Takeaways    Getting the right information for the frontline workers to do their job is one of the biggest challenges that they face today.  Having all the knowledge and information on a tablet or an electronic device can help mitigate the need for employees at airports to run all over the place. Technology can help to streamline a process and make communication easier. This works for airports as well. You want to catch mistakes when they happen. Don't just continue to go through the process because that mistake will threaten the integrity of the change.  Start with the process. You want to make sure that the process is solid before you bring it to people and find out that it doesn't work. You want to make sure that all instructions given to frontline workers are clear and make sure it's presented on a device where it is easy to read and understand the information given to them. Sometimes the simplest ways to reach frontline workers are through older techniques rather than technology. Leave signs in the break room or bathrooms or other public spots. Quote of the show   18:41 “We built a roadmap and it allowed us to remove some of those obstacles and avoid potholes down the road versus things that we would have stubbed our toe on. And reworking, I will guarantee you will often take you longer to resolve than it is to catch it in the moment. If you've ever built a Lego set with your kids, if you screwed up something on step 12 and you are on step 32, it is very painful to take those Legos apart. So you can fix that one piece and go back and do it again.” Links   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-gernady-0069831b/ Company Website: https://www.united.com/en/us/ Ways to Tune In:   Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS  Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/frontline-innovators/id1572329402 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/29m3wnK8pbFjdSvJ9wjmyS Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/frontline-innovators Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJvbnRsaW5laW5ub3ZhdG9ycy5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw YouTube - https://youtu.be/A7CkOLN1T98

There is often a tendency for companies to prioritize action and delivery over planning and analysis. More "Deliver the widgets!" and less "What does our company actually do?" This can be seen in places where decision making is driven by technology and timelines instead of desired business outcomes, where the "How" and "When" is obsessed over while the "Why" is practically forgotten. But friends! It doesn't have to be this way! In the world of effective Business Architecture, understanding the "Why" actually enables and accelerates the "How" and the "When". In other words, if people on Project XYZ actually see and understand what the company does, why it does it, what business problem is being solved by their project and how the thing they're delivering helps move the entire enterprise toward its goals... well... things go faster, smoother, cheaper and end up better for everyone. My 100,000-foot view sounds easy. To dig into the right level of detail and understand Business Architecture, how it works and what it can really do, I turned to my smart friends Whynde Kuehn, Oliver Cronk and Phil Yanov. (By the way, Whynde is a globally recognized expert, consultant and educator in this space. A quick peek at her LinkedIn profile will give you the scoop...) In this Episode: What the heck IS Business Architecture anyway? How is it practiced? What are the methods and frameworks? What benefits does it provide? Who in the company should care? What are good examples of Business Architecture practice? What are bad ones? How does Business Architecture relate to Enterprise Architecture? How can you, yes YOU, get started in Business Architecture either as an employee in a company or as a consultant? Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. Be sure to sign up for email updates whenever we post new content. It's right over there on the right hand side of the page >>>>> You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

For the episode show notes and full interview transcript, go to www.agileinnovationleaders.com  Bio: Tolu is the Founder of Career Transitioners where he's also a Lead Trainer (Business Analysis/Architecture and Agile). With a keen interest in using Agile approaches to help organizations go through change, he also consults for clients and has worked on Digital Transformation programmes with Organizations within multiple sectors including Banking, Telecoms, Housing, Energy & Utilities and Transport. Currently working towards a PhD in Education, Tolu holds a MA in Communications Management and an MSc in Organizational Behaviour and holds numerous Professional Certifications including BCS Diploma in Business Analysis, BCS Professional Certificate in Business Architecture, APMG Foundation and Practitioner Certificate in Agile PM, ScrumStudy SCT (Scrum Certified Trainer) and more. Tolu has been happily married for 9 years and is a proud father of two daughters (ages 6 and 1). Book/ Article: Flow: A Handbook for Change Makers by Fin Goulding & Haydn Shaughnessy Article about Flow https://itrevolution.com/fin-goulding-flow-taking-agile-forward/ Email/ Website/ Social Media: Email: tolu@careertransitioners.com Website: careertransitioners.com Twitter: @ctransitioners Instagram: @ctransitioners Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/careertransitioners/   Interview Transcript  Ula Ojiaku: 00:04 Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean, Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Hello everyone! This episode marks the end of Season 1 of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. However, it's not a final goodbye because we are already working on a new and improved Season 2 with an exciting line-up of guests. We'll share more about this in due time. But all you need to know is that after this episode, there will be  a bonus episode where I summarise Season 1 and then a brief break before we launch Season 2. Again, we'll give you more details in due time. My guest for this episode is Tolu Fagbola. Tolu is the founder of Career Transitioners, a training organization accredited by the BCS (that is, the British Computer Society). Tolu himself is a Lead Trainer at Career Transitioners. Tolu is also a SAFe Program Consultant and a Lean Agile professional who has worked on multiple digital transformation programmes with Organizations within multiple sectors including Banking, Telecoms, Energy & Utilities and Transport. During this conversation, Tolu candidly shared some of the lessons he and his team learnt from a ‘failed' programme that they were involved in many years ago. He also shared his view on the importance of leadership and organizational buy-in for a successful transformation effort. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Tolu. Enjoy! Ula Ojiaku: 02:20 Thank you so much Tolu for making the time for this conversation today. Tolu Fagbola: 02:23 You're welcome Ula; it's good to be joining you today. Ula Ojiaku: 02:27 So, could you tell us a bit about yourself, please? Tolu Fagbola: 02:29 Sure. I have been into Agile for about 10 years, I kind of stumbled into Agile when I decided that being a trainer was not enough. So, I was and still am a training and development professional. So, started off my career in the telecoms industry, leading companies' operational teams, and I moved into training and development. And at a point I got scared that computers were going to come in and take my job away. So, I thought I'd better get on board, this ‘IT thing' before I become obsolete. So, I got into e-learning, and I got interested in e-learning development and content development. So, I got into some developing, learning management systems for organization. And the first ever learning management system I helped develop for banks went atrocious. It was the traditional waterfall approach. We had a team of developers, who were amazing at what they did but it was just horrible. We had no requirements, we had no stakeholder buy-in, we had no commitments, we just overran and the plans were just atrocious. So, from that point on, I had to learn the hard way that Agile was a much more effective way to deploy solutions and engage in almost any kind of organizational change that involves technology. So yeah, that's kind of how I got into Agile and since then, I've been working with Agile teams and the training on Business Analysis, and Agile. I'm a big advocate for Agile business analysis and business analysts within Agile teams, because I think they are the glue between organization strategy and the development teams. So that's been my sort of journey over the last few years. Ula Ojiaku: 04:35 It's an interesting story, so thanks for sharing. You said you had a failed project. So, it seems like that was the tipping point for you into Agile… Tolu Fagbola: 04:44 It was an eye opener, because there were so many reasons, the program failed. And apart from being naive and inexperienced, and very excitable because we were focused on the product, without considering the organizational context and a cultural context, as well. Just to give you a little bit of background, I deployed these solutions within banks in Nigeria, so I didn't consider the cultural elements of deploying or working on projects that had to do with technology. Yeah, and I learned a lot from that experience. And I think it's made me a much more rounded Agile practitioner today. Ula Ojiaku: 05:29 Could you tell us a bit more about what you learnt? What were the key learnings?  I gather that you said there was no consideration for the cultural context… Tolu Fagbola: 05:37 Yeah. So, more than 10 years ago now, we… when I say ‘we', I mean myself and my team had already, sort of introduced this idea of rolling out a Learning Management System within the organization. And it was signed off and it was agreed, costings agreed, and we thought it was just going to be a matter of deploying the solution within the organization's servers and the optic will be great, and it will be all fine. But we didn't consider things like organizational change, the fact that a lot of people within our organization were banking on, taking training on-site, in person. And moving to an e-learning model was going to be a significant cultural change to them, apart from the fact that they get to go away from the desk, sometimes they get stipends, they get lots of perks… Now, you know, moving to an approach where almost 50% of all the training that they would have had, will now be at their desks, or at home, via an electronic medium was quite a significant change from the users perspective. Also, from the… Ula Ojiaku: 06:54 That wouldn't have made you popular… Tolu Fagbola: 06:57 Yeah, absolutely. It made perfect sense for us, it made perfect sense for the business – they were cutting a lot of cost. It made sense financially and technologically. But culturally, from a user's perspective, it really didn't go down as we imagined. So little things like, sort of mapping out a user journey, we failed to consider, to understand what the process was for the students or candidates or employees to come to a training course, to take the course, to get feedback, to get the next course, to get to their appraisal done, and all the other impact that that one learning event will have on them. So… learnt a lot in a lot of ways. Another thing that I think was really pertinent learning for me particularly was the impact of operating models. Ula Ojiaku: 07:55 Yes… Tolu Fagbola: 07:56 …or the significance of operating models when going through organizational change, because that's what it was. It was a significant change for them. But it seemed like an IT project, but it wasn't an IT project, there was a business change product that leveraged IT. So, understanding the change to the organizational model, the operating model, the fact that they needed to have an administrator, the fact that they needed to have access, user control, the access rights, the fact that they needed different ways of evaluating learning, all of those things we'd totally left to the business, and they had no clue what they were to do. So now I'd have done it very, very differently. So yeah, I'll say I learnt a lot from that one experience. And the next program was definitely a lot smoother in the sense that, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I mean, the learnings that I needed to have, and I knew how I could sort of get my stakeholders' buy-in from the start and sort of build stability and develop incrementally and iteratively. Have little releases quickly and get feedback very quickly and, and increase the uptake of the solution in a way that delivers value to the business and to the users. So, it was a lot different the second time around, it still had its own challenges, but yeah… Ula Ojiaku: 09:21 Yes. I can imagine. I've also been involved in some less-than-ideal projects. And yes, it makes a whole lot of difference involving all the stakeholders especially the end users right from the onset, so that everyone is at the same table, because there are usually contexts that we would miss if they're not involved right from the onset. So, is it all work for you then, Tolu? What leisure activities do you do? Tolu Fagbola: 09:52 I do much reading these days, anything outside of my academic journals and books is… (a luxury). I probably don't have a lot of time on my hands to do much else. So, I'll give you a little picture of my life at the moment. So, to work nine to five as a consultant, run a training business in the evenings, developing a learning management system for the commercial market - got a team working on that, and I spend pretty much all of my weekends working on my doctorate and doing a doctorate in education. So I'm in the library reading or writing a thesis or doing some research. So yeah, (I'm) pretty maxed out at the moment… Ula Ojiaku: 10:41 I can imagine and with a lovely young daughter as well. So… Tolu Fagbola: 10:44 I've got a four-year-old, she's going to be four next month, so I have to schedule time to take her to bouncy castles. Cos she doesn't forget now. (She's like) ‘Daddy you promised me you were gonna take me to bouncy castle tomorrow. It's tomorrow now…' You put in time for that. I'm a massive sports fan and I'm into boxing. The only sport that I have time to watch right now is boxing. Ula Ojiaku: 11:14 Yeah, interesting. My late dad also liked two sports and boxing was one of them; football was the other. But what's the attraction - because I still don't get it? Tolu Fagbola: 11:25 Okay, so yeah, boxing. It's amazing. All you need to do is watch the next Anthony Joshua fight and you'll know what I'm talking about. When we're fighting our first live in New York Madison Square Garden, and I'm going to be there. Ula Ojiaku: 11:40 Oh, really? Wow! That's serious then! So, no PhD thesis work…? Tolu Fagbola: 11:45 June is my celebration month. Because it's my birthday, it's my wife's birthday, it's our anniversary. So, the first couple of weeks in June is always a holiday. Ula Ojiaku: 11:57 Nice. Tolu Fagbola: 11:57 That's the only break we're probably going to get through the year. Ula Ojiaku: 11:59 Well, congratulations to you and your wife in advance. So hopefully your wife is also going with you to Madison Square. Tolu Fagbola: 12:06 Well, I've told her that I'm going and if she would like to come… Ula Ojiaku: 12:09 You've ‘told her'!!! That doesn't sound like… Tolu Fagbola: 12:16 She says she will, but I'm not sure she would like to, to follow through. Yeah, no, she's definitely gonna come. Ula Ojiaku: 12:24 Okay, there was a silence before you now said, ‘I've told her…' It reads a lot to me... Let's move swiftly on - on to other topics. What would you say is your preferred Agile framework and why? Tolu Fagbola: 12:39 I can't say I have a preferred Agile framework. I'm a real strong believer in adapting the style, the approach, the framework to the context. So, depending on the organizational problem, or the problem we're trying to solve, I always look for the right approach or the right framework. I think every single Agile method out there has something to offer. And I don't think there is one method that trumps all, I don't think there is a one size fits all approach. I can tell you the approaches that I have used extensively as opposed to the one that I prefer. So,  Scrum is the one that I will say I've used extensively. I'm currently working in a Scaled Agile environment right now. SAFe - Scaled Agile Framework. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that approach. So… Ula Ojiaku: 13:35 Yeah, I'm an SPC …yeah Tolu Fagbola: 13:40 Oh - impressive! So, you know what I'm talking about. I'm currently working in the Scaled Agile Framework and I'm working as an Agile Coach right now, looking after a couple of Scrum teams, running the PI events and coaching the organization. That the teams are mature, but the organization itself is not very mature. So, there's a lot of work to do on that front. So, we've adapted a little bit. It's not 100% SAFe, but mostly SAFe. We do the PI, programme increment events, we have epics features stories, and we have multiple Scrum teams. And, you know, we have system demos, we have the Agile release train… We have a lot of the elements of SAFe and it works perfectly well for organizations looking to the, you know, what it says on the tin – scale agile and use multiple teams. And it's much more effective for enterprise level approach than let's say Scrum, which is amazing for individual teams. But a lot of teams have challenges with issues from outside of the team. So, Scrum doesn't account for a lot of issues that are, that reside outside of the team. So, I'm an advocate for SAFe, I'm an advocate for Scrum, Kanban in very volatile environments with lots of moving BAU activities. I'm an advocate for Lean. There's a new one that I'm high on right now, it's called Flow, I'm an advocate for Flow because… Ula Ojiaku: 15:22 Flow? Could you tell us a bit more about Flow? Tolu Fagbola: 15:26 Yeah, well, Flow is considered post Agile, where it looks at the challenges that executives within an organization have and guides them through visualizing a lot of their business problems and challenges. And it uses a lot of design thinking processes, uses a lot of very genuine customer centric approaches, and really guides the executives upstream in a way that allows them to articulate the business problem. And the way they would like to solve those business problems very concisely, effectively, efficiently before the midstream teams; like Scrum teams, kind of pick it up and deploy. I like what Flow is doing in terms of the very visual elements that they adopt. So yeah, I'm a big, big advocate of a lot of Agile approaches. And I think they all have something to offer. And I think the strength of a good Agile practitioner, is to know which approach that suits the right business problem, and be able to support an organization, regardless of the approach they choose to use, even if it's not Agile, or a framework within, you know, the Agile family. Ula Ojiaku: 16:51 I agree with you, my, what, the phrase I use is that, you know, these frameworks and methodologies are really to be considered as tools in a toolbox. So you know, you pull out the one you need depending on the context of the task of the objective at hand. So, that brings me to the next question, do you think that… So, for example, if an organization starts off with Scrum, must they stick with Scrum all through the lifecycle of a program or a project? Or is it possible to, at various stages, maybe change or even mix frameworks? Tolu Fagbola: 17:28 I think that's a loaded question. There's lots of different elements to that question. So, I'll answer some parts of it. The part about, should organizations change their approach midway through program? I think that's a very interesting question. I'm a big advocate for being clear on how you're going to do the work. You've committed to an approach, then I believe you should follow through until it doesn't serve you anymore. On the other hand, there is the concept of Agile being adaptable and flexible. So, organizations really should, in my opinion, be flexible and really look out what approach works best for that period, and for that particular business problem that you trying to solve. So, I think, it almost has to be on a case by case basis. And I don't think there should be a rule that says you should or shouldn't, when it comes to Agile, because environmental context changes all the time, and organizations needs to be flexible and adaptable and nimble. And you've got to be decisive and, but also reduce or minimize the risk and minimize the chaos, and give the teams and the individuals some sort of stability from the perspective of, should I call it the cadence of the work within.  Because a lot of the things that Scrum sort of advocates is that you get better and better and you get more effective, the more you get into a rhythm. So that rhythm I think is important. So, I don't think organizations should stop and start without just cause. I do think they should be flexible and adaptable depending on the context. I don't know if I answer your question the way you'd like… Ula Ojiaku: 19:31 No, no! It's not about how I like, it's about, you know, your view. You said, organizations should be committed to following a framework or course of action until it no longer serves them. What will be the indicators, you know, that's maybe an approach is no longer serving …? Tolu Fagbola: 19:48 For me, the biggest indicator will be size of the personnel. Let's say you were a 10-person team, and you had to double or you're doing so well, your product is selling so well, you've had to double in size. Well, you kind of need to have guardrails now, for where you could either let the team do certain things, but now you need to maybe adapt a framework, maybe you do something slightly different. I think the size is probably the biggest indicator, for me, of when you need to change. On the other hand, significant political factors, or external factors that you have to react to that are significant, not just because our competitor is doing a little better this quarter, we've got to change our approach. Ula Ojiaku: 20:40 Do you have any… what kind of (example)? Tolu Fagbola: 20:43 Ermm, Brexit. Well, let's say, something like a political factor like Brexit, yeah. Now you've got to prove the whole new business model while you were doing something for competition locally, now you're going to do it internationally. You kinda need a slightly different approach for stuff like that. Or, you know, there's a new entry in the market and it's really sort of having an adverse effect might need to change the way you do things. So, a significant external factor, I think, will be another indicator for me, doubling the size or significant increase in personnel will be an indicator. But reasons like new manager, I don't think should result in changing your Agile approaches, because a new manager likes Kanban, the old one likes Scrum. I don't think that should stand in the way. Ula Ojiaku: 21:32 That's a brilliant response to the question. I'm sure that the audience… you know, there might be people with different view points, as well as people who agree with what you say. What would be your tips for effectively managing Agile teams? Tolu Fagbola: 21:49 For me, I think the one thing that I've learned a lot over the last few years is being disciplined. Where Agile almost has this paradoxical effect, where it promotes flexibility and agility and being nimble. But it, on the other hand, it could potentially create a lackadaisical approach. So, being able to kind of find that balance where you're able to be disciplined and committed to the process that you've chosen to follow. It's very easy… So little things like protect the team or only the team should speak out daily stand ups, it's so easy to let it go out of hand. It's so, so easy, where a solution architect might just decide to come in, but they can't help themselves, and they've just got to say something, then it becomes a habit, and then, it affects the morale of the team, and then the team are not empowered anymore, and then, the team starts to look to that solution architect for decisions. And all of a sudden, you've lost the whole essence of why you're doing what you're doing in the first place. So being disciplined, I think is one of the things that I will always say should be something that a Scrum Master should have on their priority list. And it's very easy to be not disciplined, which is why I've kind of made that a point to be disciplined. Ula Ojiaku: 23:29 How can you blend being disciplined with the notion that the Scrum Master is a servant leader? Tolu Fagbola: 23:35 Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question. For me, the concept of servant leadership is exactly what it says on the tin: being able to support the team in a way that's coaching rather than telling or managing. So, when you are doing that, with the team, you're being a servant leader to the team. Now, some of the things that we do as Scrum Masters or Agile practitioners are things that we commit to outside of the team. So maybe the relationship between the Scrum Master and the Product Owner might still have that element of Scrum, of servant leadership. But also consider that the Product Owner also needs support and also needs coaching as well. And also, not let the Scrum Master be the non-servant leader. And I've seen situations where product owners direct the team in a way that's not Agile, and kind of threw stuff into the mix, mid sprint and stuff like that. So being able to find that balance between coaching and ensuring that the team are protected as well as ensuring that the team follows the process and the organization also follows the process. So yeah, it's a hard thing to balance but having that at the back of your mind as an Agile practitioner, a Scrum Master is very, very important. Being able to still be a servant leader, but still be strong enough to be able to protect the team and being able to protect the team means having to have very difficult conversations with managers or executives outside of the team or having to sort of coach leaders of an organization about what the team are doing. They could be very difficult conversations but your servant leadership, in my opinion, is to the team. And to the organization it's more of a coach, rather than a servant leader to the organization. I believe your duty to the organization is to coach the organization and help them understand what the team has committed to, and what the team are doing and how the team is doing it. But it does require some level of strength and gravitas and some level of ability to be able to get that, that ability for the team to trust you as a Scrum Master to be able to protect them. I have seen Scrum Masters that are amazing with the team but don't have confidence that they can protect them outside of a team. The team don't have confidence that if they go to that PI meeting or go to that manager's meeting, they would not come back with 20 more tasks to do. To be able to have that balance of servant leadership and strength outside of the team I think is really, really important. And understanding the process is really important. And that's why I said discipline. So, to understand what the commitment is that you're making, that I think it really does help. Ula Ojiaku: 26:33 It's all well and good and I totally agree with what you've said. However, in the, say… spirit of being disciplined and protecting the team and you're speaking to say, leadership. Where does leadership buy-in come in here because if they're not involved, you think you can still be as effective as an Agile coach or Scrum Master in an organization? Tolu Fagbola: 26:56 Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question and that's always going to be a very tough question. And depending on the kind of organization it is, the level of organizational support will vary. And for me, I believe it's really important to have organizational support. But in my experience, it isn't the norm to have organizational support right from the top. It is, in my experience, not always the case that you will have organizational support all the way to the top. It's amazing when you do. One of the teachers that have worked for a few years ago, had Lean, they adopted Lean from top to bottom. And he would come to the boards and would be part of the teams. That was great. Everybody knew what it was, and they were committed to it. And it was very productive. On the other hand, I can say it's not very many organizations are like that. Most organizations that I've worked with, will say they are adopting an agile approach at a sort of board level or senior management level. But what they really are doing is developing solutions using Agile teams. So, the decisions, the program level activities are not quite Agile, except of course, they started something like SAFe. They usually still use the traditional way of work breakdown structures and project management and all of that stuff will exist. And most times Agile teams are fighting against the tide each time within their teams. They're doing great within the teams but the challenges come from outside of the team. So yes, it's great to have organizational support but I think we're still a way from having most organizations commit to Agile from the top all the way down to the bottom. I think most, most organizations still find difficult to let go. I think it's a word I like to use for that, and for us as Agile practitioners it's to continue to coach and have the ability to positively influence them and help them understand that there are other Agile approaches that they can adopt, that will serve them well, strategically - at a strategic level. Because I think that's where the challenges are, they don't realize that there are Agile approaches that work at a strategic level. For most strategic level stakeholders, Agile is for development. Agile is for teams, Agile is for downstream activities. They sort of do what they do organizationally. And you know, they've always done it that way. So that, that's the way it's always going to be. So, it's being able to educate them a little bit and help them understand that there are other ways to do it. And it will have a positive impact on the teams that already have working in an Agile way. Ula Ojiaku: 29:59 Interesting! So, how can the audience reach you or find out more about what you do? Tolu Fagbola: 30:04 Yeah, e-mail is probably the best way to reach me and, once in a while, Instagram, Twitter... Ula Ojiaku: 30:14 Ok. We will put these in the show notes. So, you said e-mail, Instagram and Twitter. What's your e-mail address please? Tolu Fagbola: 30:21 E-mail is tolu@careertransitioners.com, tolu@careertransitioners.com Ula Ojiaku: 30:29 Can you spell that please? Tolu Fagbola: 30:30 Career as in, ‘C-A-R-E-E-R'. Transitioners as in ‘T-R-A-N-S-I-T-I-O-N-E-R-S'.com. Okay. careertransitioners.com Ula Ojiaku: 30:46 Altogether, no spaces? Tolu Fagbola: 30:48 Altogether, no spaces or hyphens. Ula Ojiaku: 30:51 Okay. Twitter? Tolu Fagbola: 30:55 Twitter, ctransitioners, Instagram, ctransitioners, @ctransitioners, and Facebook, careertransitioners. Ula Ojiaku: 31:06 Okay. We'll put these in the show notes. Is there is anything you'd like to say in conclusion? Tolu Fagbola: 31:11 Yeah, sure. The one thing I like to say is, to anybody who's looking to get into Agile is that, I believe that Agile isn't one method, framework, technique. And it definitely isn't IT. Agile is a philosophy. Agile is a way of thinking. Agile is a way of working. And understanding what Agile is, is really important. And to really, truly embody the Agile principles and Agile Manifesto, and understand as many tools and techniques within the Agile family as you possibly can. I always tell my students, start with Scrum, and then build on that. And yeah, you can grow from that. Ula Ojiaku: 32:03 Great. So, the other thing is, you mentioned you run some training events. Are they public? And where can one find out your schedule? Tolu Fagbola: 32:12 Yes. So, website http://careertransitions.com. We've got our courses out there. We're a BCS certified training provider as well so we run a lot of courses in Business Analysis, Scrum, Agile, BA. I'm a big advocate of business analysis within Agile environments, and the role of BAs within Agile. I think it's really, really important to have someone a role that can bridge the gap between strategy and IT or strategy and the development team. Ula Ojiaku: 32:47 Business analysts are very important. Definitely. Thank you so, so much Tolu for your time. It's been a great pleasure speaking with you. Have a great rest of your day! Tolu Fagbola: 32:58 Thank you. Ula Ojiaku: 32:59 That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com. That's agileinnovationleaders.com or your favorite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com. Take care and God bless!

T.I.A (Ep 33). Deirdre Caren, a business analyst and business architect, provides an intriguing and inquisitive conversation about her early beginnings in the field, the main focus of business architecture, and the purpose of business capabilities, core competencies and value streams. Deirdre also discusses the tools and techniques that business architects use, and how business architects can lead change, and provide better governance in organizations. And, she provides some valuable tips on how to forge a successful path from a business analyst role to a business architect. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHGAQGEDi7w Deirdre Caren: Website: https://courses.agorainsights.com/; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdrecaren/; YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/teetray Sponsored by The Lewis Institute: Website - https://lewisinstituteinc.com/; Project Leader Courses (60% discount) - https://lewisinstitute.kartra.com/page/Wif255 Business Agility Institute: Emergence Journal - https://businessagility.institute/emergence; promo code "analyst" (for 10% discount on annual subscription)

What is enterprise business architecture? Listen to this segment and find out. Come join me. Follow along with this podcast on the BarcVox blog: Defining Enterprise Business Architecture. There you will find a transcript as well as illustrations to help you better understand the topic. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/barcvox/message

Does your organisation have a business architecture function with an enterprise vantage? Where does Enterprise Business Architecture belong in your organisation? It's not where you might think, and it probably isn't where it resides now. Join me and I share my thoughts. What are yours? Follow along on BarcVox.com, where you can find the segment and related content: http://barcvox.com/2021/03/16/business-architecture-where/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/barcvox/message

Lincoln Murphy's focus is customer success. He's currently the growth architect at Winning by Design, where he creates blueprints and playbooks for customer success managers and leaders. In the past, he founded Sixteen Ventures and led customer success at Gainsight. Using customer success to drive growth across the entire customer lifecycle, he has helped over four hundred SaaS and enterprise software companies accelerate growth and retain valuable customers. Contents On the website, click any timestamp to start listening to the episode at the noted location. Resources Mentioned in Episode Episode Transcript [00:00] Intro [Read] [02:27] Pre-SaaS Career in Supply Chain Management [Read] [04:14] Early SaaS Company for Mail Center Management [Read] [07:55] Early Days of SaaS [Read] [11:12] Before SaaS Was SaaS [Read] [12:56] Resistance to SaaS Adoption [Read] [14:08] Role of Corporate IT in SaaS Adoption [Read] [15:18] SaaS Business Model [Read] [16:27] Business Architecture [Read] [17:18] SaaS as a Business Architecture and SaaS Revenue Models [Read] [19:13] Recent Career [Read] [20:27] Sixteen Ventures [Read] [21:44] “The SaaS Guy” [Read] [22:16] Contrarian Views [Read] [23:57] Freemium in SaaS [Read] [25:10] Thought Leadership (or Getting Things Out of Your Head and Moving On)[Read] [26:06] Facts and the Contrarian Point-of-View [Read] [27:48] Customer Success Management [Read] [28:37] Customer's Desired Outcome [Read] [29:01] Customer's Required Outcome [Read] [30:06] Customer's Appropriate Experience [Read] [31:39] Appropriate SaaS Experience [Read] [33:26] Solve for Success Not Happiness [Read] [33:59] Successful Customers Advocate But Want More [Read] [34:49] Happy Customers May Not Be Getting Value and Then Churn [Read] [35:15] The Appropriate Success Vector [Read] [36:21] Customer Success and Company Valuation [Read] [37:15] Churn [Read] [37:50] Customers to Save and Customers to Let Go [Read] [39:41] When Churn Becomes a Non-Issue [Read] [42:03] Individual Contributions to the Customer's Desired Outcome [Read] [45:05] Personal Recommendations [Read] [46:34] Make Your Customers Powerful [Read] [47:20] Operationalize Customers Making you Powerful [Read] [48:16] Proactively Convert on Success Milestones [Read] [49:31] Customer Lifecycle Success [Read] [50:07] Tools to Monitor Customer Progress [Read] [51:01] Understand Desired Outcome Before You Operationalize [Read] [51:31] Start with the Customers and Tools Will Become Apparent [Read] [52:22] Saas Networking Recommendations [Read] Disclosure concerning affiliate links [Contents] Resources Mentioned in Episode Please see Disclosure* (below transcript) concerning affiliate links on this page. 7 Ways Customer Success Drives Company Valuation – This blog post by Lincoln Murphy on Sixteen Ventures discusses how Customer Success can impact the valuation of your company. Listen or read at [36:21]. ClientSuccess –Customer success management app mentioned by Lincoln Murphy as an alternative to Gainsight to measure customer success milestones. Listen or read at[50:18]. Customer Success: How Innovative Companies are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue* – Book by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy. Lincoln did not mention the book during the interview. I recommend you digest the information in this podcast episode, read Lincoln's Customer Success: The Definitive Guide, and then read the book. The book is broken down into three parts: (1) Customer Success: The History, Organization, and Imperative; (2) The Ten Laws of Customer Success; and (3) Chief Customer Officer, Technology, and Future. Each of the Ten Laws is covered in a chapter. Customer Success: The Definitive Guide – This is a 2016 update to Lincoln's original post The Definitive Guide to Customer Success. A PDF of the guide is available from the site. If this podcast episode interests you, I would recommend you read this next. I brought this up during the interview. Listen or read at [27:48]. FlipMyFunnel – According to the website, FlipMyFunnel is a “B2B Marketing and Sales Conference.” Lincoln Murphy mentioned that he would be speaking at the 2016 conference in Austin, Texas, but the conference moves. Check the website for info. Listen or read at [52:22]. Gainsight – Lincoln Murphy's former employer. Gainsight is a customer success management platform to measure customer success milestones. According to the website, Gainsight is: “Community, Best Practices, and Platform to Drive Business Transformation.” If you scroll to the bottom of their homepage (as of this writing), you'll see several useful guides listed. I have not checked them thoroughly, but they look good. Listen or read at [50:18]. Heroku – PaaS (Platform as a Service) for web app development and deployment. Lincoln Murphy mentioned this during the interview because he was once involved with a startup that was a competitor. That statup is gone, but Heroku remains and is well-respected. Listen or read at [18:35]. Influence: Science and Practice (5th Edition)* – Book by Robert Cialdini about the factors that influence us to say, “Yes.” According to his research, there are six such factors or principles: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. This is a well-written book and must-read for anyone interested in how people are influenced. Lincoln Murphy recommended this book. Listen or read at [45:33]. Intercom – According to the website: “Intercom is a customer platform with a suite of products for live chat, marketing, feedback, and support.” Lincoln Murphy mentioned this with other tools to operationalize customer success. Listen or read at [50:18]. Lincoln Murphy on Twitter @lincolnmurphy. Listen or read at [53:56]. Ruby on Rails – Ruby on Rails is an MVC (model-view-controller) framework based on the Ruby programming language used for web development. Mentioned in passing by Lincoln Murphy. Listen or read at [18:35]. SaaS Business Model [graphic] – SaaS Business Model graphic by Lincoln Murphy on Sixteen Ventures site. I mentioned this during the interview with Lincoln Murphy because it has his definition of customer success. Listen or read at [15:18]. SaaStock – European B2B SaaS conference. Listen or read at [52:22]. SaaStr – Annual conference, podcast, academy, and extensive blog about SaaS. According to the website: “SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple attempt via a WordPress blog, together with a few answers on Quora, to help share back Jason M. Lemkin's learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR with the next generation of great SaaS and B2B entrepreneurs.” Mentioned by Lincoln Murphy. Listen or read at [52:22]. SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) – According to the site: “SIIA is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.” Mentioned by Lincoln Murphy in passing at [23:23]. Sixteen Ventures – Sixteen Ventures is a company founded by Lincoln Murphy. The site contains blog articles about SaaS back to 2007 and Lincoln's current speaking. Mentioned in numerous places during the interview. Listen or read at [01:54], [19:13],[20:27], [20:41], [27:48], and [53:43]. The Reality of Freemium in SaaS – PDF by Lincoln Murphy mentioned during interview. Listen or read at [23:57]. Totango – Customer success management app mentioned by Lincoln Murphy as an alternative to Gainsight to measure customer success milestones. Listen or read at[50:18]. Winning by Design – According to the website, Winning by Design has a “proven customer-centric SaaS process for sales organizations” to assist with the design, implementation, and scaling of SaaS sales organizations. See their How It Works tab for more information. This is Lincoln Murphy's place of employment as of this writing. [Contents] Episode Transcript Intro [00:00] Ron Gaver: This is the SaaS Business Podcast, episode 16, an interview with Lincoln Murphy. [00:16] Lincoln Murphy: I'll tell you what: this is one of the most powerful concepts that I've ever come across in business, and that's kind of a big statement, but I believe it to be true If you understand what your customer's desired outcome is, what they need to achieve, and the way they need to achieve it, I think it changes everything. [00:45] Ron Gaver: Hello, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Ron Gaver. Thank you for listening. This is the podcast designed to help you put the pieces of the puzzle together to start, grow, and succeed in your SaaS business. Before we get started with the show, I would like to invite you to visit the podcast website. The URL is SaaSBusinessPodcast.com. On the website, the most important thing to do is to sign up to get your copy of the current free download. This will also put you on the list for future free downloads and updates. For your convenience, there's also a page on the website for each episode, where you will find show notes for the episode. The show notes will contain links to resources mentioned in the episode. Just enter the base URL, a forward slash, and the three-digit episode number. [01:33] If you enjoy this podcast and find the content to be valuable, please consider giving us a five-star rating on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Five-star ratings help the show stay visible so that new listeners can easily find us. [01:54] Ron Gaver: [Guest intro. See top of page for text.] Welcome, Lincoln. [02:22] Lincoln Murphy: Hey, Ron. How are you? [02:24] Ron Gaver: Fine! How are you? [02:25] Lincoln Murphy: I'm doing well. Good to be here. [Contents] Pre-SaaS Career in Supply Chain Management [02:27] Ron Gaver: Let's move back to 2004, roughly. You're getting ready to go to San Francisco, you're about to board an airplane, and your task is to go out to San Francisco and lay off a bunch of employees (or at least give them the bad news). [02:42] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. [02:44] Ron Gaver: I think you had it pretty much up to your eyebrows at that point. What did you do? [02:50] Lincoln Murphy: I called my boss, and I told him that I wasn't coming out and that I was done. That's not what I signed on to do. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I didn't believe in the reason that we were laying off people, anyway. This was to move jobs—not the people, but to move jobs—from San Francisco to Dallas, and I knew that, fundamentally, the people were good people. I didn't want to do that for them. [03:17] Lincoln Murphy: But I also knew, fundamentally, this was the connection between us and our trading partners. This was in supply chain management, and if we lost these people with all this institutional knowledge—the systems were not great, we weren't all working off of one centralized database of customer data or trading-partner data, we weren't working off of one centralized form of documentation, processes weren't documented—I knew if we lost these folks, we would lose the relationship with our trading partners. And even in a situation where you have two giant corporations coming together, it still relies on just a handful of human connections. [03:50] Lincoln Murphy: And I thought it was a bad idea all around, and I had it at that point and was lucky enough (I don't know how it played out like this), got off the phone with my boss, called the airline, got a full refund (I don't know how that happened), and I said, “That's a good sign; this was the right decision.” Then I decided, “Well, I quit my job. Let me figure out what to do.” So I started a company, and it turned out to be a SaaS company, at the time. [Contents] Early SaaS Company for Mail Center Management [04:14] Ron Gaver: And you characterize that as a mail-center management for large businesses in the Texas area? [04:21] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. From a supply-chain-management standpoint, you have very structured data that moves between, what we call, trading partners; and it's what allows products to flow from supplier to vendor, and invoices and purchase orders and everything else to flow; and it's all structured, and it's all heavily—I don't want to say regulated, but there're rules in place, and that's cool. [04:42] Lincoln Murphy: But then I saw a part of the organization that isn't structured, yet a lot of really important information and other types of things—packages, things like that—flowed through this mail center. So you think of the mailroom at some companies, but your large companies actually have very sophisticated, very large mail centers, and there's a whole industry out there involving mail-center management; and I said, “Look, I think that is an area of the enterprise that could be automated—not fully automated, but we could bring technology there and maybe provide visibility into the process and have it not be such a black box, where some really important information (things like checks and packages) are coming in.” And I said, “Let me just take that and run with it.” And—you know what—we did. [05:29] Lincoln Murphy: I pulled in some partners and we built a product—very much a minimum, viable product based off of what we now know as customer development (didn't really have the term for that), but I spent a lot of time going to industry meetups. I spent time with the post office, trying to understand how mail is routed through the U.S. Postal Service. I spent time with anybody that would let me go to their mail center and their mailroom. I remember Greyhound was nice enough to let me have some access. Pitney Bowes was a company that did a lot of outsourced mail-center management. I got to sort of piggyback on what they were doing for other companies. I went down to Exxon in Houston and toured there. [06:09] Lincoln Murphy: Actually, I'll tell you a little trick I used: I went to a company that does inbound mail-sorting automation; because I thought, “I want to, number one, be able to connect into their technology for our product.” But what I ended up doing was having them take me to some of their clients to show me their products in action, which also allowed me to get my foot in the door at ExxonMobil and at Frito-Lay, and a couple of other big companies, and so I met the right people based off of an interest in buying and also partnering with these makers of these really big, automated, mail-sorting machines. So that was a little hack that I used. But the bottom line is: I started understanding this market a little bit better and understanding what the needs were. And so you take a company like ExxonMobil that actually has a very distributed workforce, yet all of the mail comes in through their Houston mail center and then it has to be sent out. One of the things we did was created a way to view your mail. It comes in the mailroom, it goes on one of these sorters, those sorters actually have really high-speed cameras, we take the picture, and now that can be visible to somebody in Alaska, working on the North Slope above the Arctic Circle. They don't actually have to get the physical mail sent to them; they can go through and say, “I don't need that. I don't need that. I actually do need that.” And that actually cuts down on the cost of sending mail across the world, which, for a company like that, is actually a pretty significant cost savings. [07:30] Lincoln Murphy: Bottom line is: very interesting, lots of customer-development work, a lot of understanding of the market; and then, ultimately, the understanding that, no matter what, that market was not as exciting as I thought it was. It was just really slow to take up new technology—a lot slower than I was willing to or comfortable with waiting out—and we ended up selling to a competitor; I like to say I ended up not owing too many people too much money. But I learned a lot. [Contents] Early Days of SaaS [07:55] Ron Gaver: This was in a time when SaaS was not as ubiquitous as it is now. How is it that you decided that that was the right place, that was the right thing to do, SaaS was the answer? How was it you even came to know about SaaS at that particular time? [08:10] Lincoln Murphy: In all of the supply-chain-management stuff that I was doing—this will kind of go back to even the early '90s, when I got into that world—it was a network-centric, business architecture. If you think about the way that information is passed between companies, none of that really matters if you can't actually connect to the other companies. It absolutely relies on having this network centricity. And that was kind of the world that I grew up in. It was all about, ultimately, what we would refer to as B2B ecommerce. At the same time, of course, B2C ecommerce was coming up, and I was doing a lot of work with Web technologies. Even as the supply-chain world sort of evolved, we started taking on these dedicated networks and what we called value-added networks where—if you think about it—it was literally a server that two companies would dial in to—literally dial in to with old-school modems and things like that. You would have different types of computers, and we would have different format standards that we would use, and we'd upload a file to these systems. Those systems would translate the file into what the other company could use, and that was how we did business. [09:13] Lincoln Murphy: Well, we started moving that to the Internet, started using more standard technologies, more standard formats and things like that. I was doing a lot of really hardcore business work, using Internet technologies, so when I decided to move outside of where I had been in the supply-chain management world into creating a startup, Web technologies—that was what I knew more than anything else. I really had no idea how you would even build an on-parameter client-server piece of software, and I had no real interest in that. And like you said, SaaS wasn't a thing yet. And, certainly, ASPs—application service providers—had been around. People were “delivering” software over the Web. I saw this as a way to, not just deliver software, but if everybody signs into the same system (what we now know as multitenancy and things like that)—if everybody's signing into the same product, the same system—now we have that network centricity. And I wasn't really sure what we could do with that, but I did know what we've seen with companies like Workday that sort of upset or displaced previous types of products, like PeopleSoft in the human capital management space. One of the reasons Workday really took off is the fact that, for a distributed company, all they have to do is have Internet access to be able to get to the system. They don't have to have a server set up in a room somewhere and then dedicated circuits, or even VPNs, to get to this centralized server that, for all of their remote offices, all they have to have is Internet access. [10:44] Lincoln Murphy: Well, I saw that same thing in this case, where, at a company like Exxon, all they have to do is scan the content, put it on the server (which is on the Web), and then all the different remote locations could all log into that; and you don't have to have any of that dedicated IT infrastructure. So I saw that as a real positive. It was kind of two-fold: (1) I didn't come from an enterprise-software background, so that wasn't even on my radar, and (2) I really saw the benefits of having everything on the Web. So that's kind of how I went into that. [Contents] Before SaaS Was SaaS [11:12] Lincoln Murphy: It was hard to find information, certainly, on this, because there wasn't one thing that we called it. We didn't call it SaaS, didn't call it Cloud, so we kind of had to just feel around in the dark, but we eventually realized that this was a SaaS company. Right around the time we were getting ready to exit this venture, I think SaaS was becoming a term. But it was a real learning experience from all sorts of angles, and, you said it yourself: it wasn't ubiquitous. Really going out and selling this stuff to very staid, old-school companies who were technologically forward in the places where it mattered to them—Exxon was technology forward when it came to drilling, and some of the other companies were really technologically forward when it came to supply-chain management—but when it came to things like this, especially in a part of the business that was kind of considered a cost center (not really that important), they were not really looking to take any chances; and, of course, the management of the mail centers were not looking to take any chances, so they would bring IT in, and IT would say, “We have a lot of concerns.” And it was all of the things that I'd heard. Later on, you heard there were challenges for SaaS. We went through all of those, and so it was not ubiquitous. [12:22] Lincoln Murphy: But at that time, when SaaS was becoming a term, you would hear things from Silicon Valley (from investors and pundits and the press) that SaaS is everywhere and it's the next big thing, which was true. It was absolutely the next big thing. But in terms of being everywhere, in terms of being the norm or the way that you do business, it was hard. It was rough. And so we had a major uphill battle. When I came out of that, it was hard, but we were able to sign a number of fairly sizeable accounts, even with all of those challenges. And I thought, “Man, I think I've learned something that other people might be able to benefit from.” [Contents] Resistance to SaaS Adoption [12:56] Ron Gaver: You mention a variety of challenges. One of the challenges that I continue to read about is the disinterest on the part of corporate IT departments in adopting any kind of a SaaS infrastructure or a SaaS product. Do you see that still as a large problem, or do you think that that's gradually eroding away? [13:16] Lincoln Murphy: It depends on several things: everything from geography—I think in a lot of places in Europe, overseas markets are (I say this in the most kind way) a little bit behind where we are. They just haven't adopted it as much. I think you're still going to run into some of those things. [13:32] Lincoln Murphy: Certainly, there are regulatory issues. There are probably going to be some markets in the U.S. that are more reluctant, but there was a time when banks, financial institutions of any kind, healthcare—these guys will never, never do SaaS, and now it's basically in every market. Again, there may be some—and maybe there're some that should be. I don't know about building a SaaS product to run nuclear reactors, but save from that, maybe we're not really seeing too many of those barriers in one entire vertical. But I think you're still going to find that every once in a while. Certainly, older companies that haven't evolved, I think, are going to be there. [Contents] Role of Corporate IT in SaaS Adoption [14:08] Lincoln Murphy: That said, IT still plays a very important role, and the more your product is mission critical to the organization or to very important departments, I think, the more IT is there to vet your security. And so, you, as a vendor, need to know—when you're selling into a particular type of company, into a particular market or vertical—you need to know if IT is going to be a part of the sales process and what they're going to be looking for. Oftentimes it's as easy as putting together a one-pager that just says, “Here is what we do for security. Here are all the things we have in place,” and just allowing IT to kind of look at it, check the boxes, and be good to go; or follow up from that, and you'll have a much quicker conversation. [14:54] Lincoln Murphy: If you understand your customers and their buying cycles and their buying process and everything, you should be able to be proactive in offering up those kinds of pieces of information to the different personas that are involved in the buying process. And where IT is involved, you want to make sure that you help them check those boxes. A lot of times, they can't say “yes” to a product; all they can do is really say “no,” and so it falls on you to make sure that they have everything they can do to not say “no.” [Contents] SaaS Business Model [15:18] Ron Gaver: Alright. Now you started by talking about your experience in supply-chain management, bringing that into what became known as SaaS. You have a graphicon your website, SixteenVentures.com, that shows your SaaS business model, or your model of what a SaaS business looks like, and at the very center of that is network centricity and surrounded, then, by four other balls—customer success, revenue model, technology and core IP, and marketing. So you went from supply-chain management, you had this realization that network centricity was sort of at the core of what you wanted to pursue, and you went into the mail-center management; but it didn't turn out to be quite as much fun as you thought it would be, and so you got out of that, and then you started to do other things. What did you do from there? [16:09] Lincoln Murphy: It wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be, and what I mean by that is it was just really a slog to get these deals done, and they didn't end up being that lucrative and so we weren't really going to be able to build a very big business. I mean, we just had to be intellectually honest about that at some point. [Contents] Business Architecture [16:27] Lincoln Murphy: But what I had learned, I thought was valuable, and so I just started consulting with different companies, and, really, I started thinking a lot about the business architecture. Where I was when I left my supply-chain-management career is I had gotten to the point where I was what we called a business architect, which was really just looking at all the different ways that we can make things work. The mandate I had at my last company was: get us as deep as you can into our vendors', our suppliers', and into our customers' worlds. That was the coolest mandate I'd ever had. I mean, how do we infiltrate their business in really awesome ways, where it's not a bad thing, but how can we make sure that we know what our suppliers are doing and make sure we know what our customers are doing and try to get ahead of the curve? I tried to apply that thinking to mail-center management, and then, once I left there, I spent a lot of time applying that thinking to SaaS. [Contents] SaaS as a Business Architecture and SaaS Revenue Models [17:18] Lincoln Murphy: So SaaS had become a thing at that point, and I said, “Well, okay, it's not just delivering software over the Web. This really is something new.” And, of course, the SaaS business model was kind of the way people were talking about it, but I looked at it as almost something different. It was really this architecture of a business: it's how you would build a business; and the revenue-model part of it was one thing. I, from very early on, thought, “SaaS is not monthly subscriptions.” You can apply any revenue model to this architecture, which was fundamentally different than how everybody was thinking about it at the time. Most people were looking at SaaS as equaling subscriptions and a monthly fee; and today we're at a point where SaaS is the architecture, and the revenue models run the gamut from pay-as-you-go, to subscriptions, to multi-year contracts—they're just across the board. So SaaS today is kind of where I thought it would be a long time ago. I mean, I couldn't have predicted exactly what it was, but I didn't think it was just subscriptions. So I actually came up with seven different revenue models and that applied to SaaS. I did a lot of thinking about that, put that stuff out there, published that; and that got a lot of people interested in working with me, and so I would do a lot of consulting—and that was from, like, 2006 to 2008. [18:35] Lincoln Murphy: I joined a startup at that point. It wasn't one that I started; but, kind of early on, they built a platform as a service. At the time, you were starting to see you had SaaS and then platform as a service. Then you had infrastructure as a service, and all these different X-a-a-S things coming up. And this was one that was very much like Heroku is today. They were a competitor of ours. It was built for, at the time, Ruby on Rails apps to run, and since I had been doing so much around SaaS and had become kind of well-known as the SaaS guy, they wanted me to be the liaison or the evangelist to get SaaS companies to run their business, basically, off of our platform. [Contents] Recent Career [19:13] Lincoln Murphy: So I did some consulting; I did that, moved over to Morph, and then Morph ran out of money about the time that everybody else did—the banks and everything—at the end of 2008. That's when they shut down operations, and I decided to formalize my consulting with Sixteen Ventures. That's the company name I came up with, which is a story in and of itself. Over the next eight years, I took a couple of years and worked with another startup called Gainsight the last few years; but along the way there, I kind of evolved with the market. [19:45] Lincoln Murphy: I was talking a lot about the business architecture in the early days. Well, then, it kind of solidified, and we were all somewhat in agreement on what it was, and I kind of moved into pricing and conversion optimization, especially around free trials. I spent a lot of time talking about free-trial optimization, and it's great to acquire customers, but what happens when they start to leave? Well, we need something to keep customers around. Once you eliminate churn—man, wouldn't it be cool if we could actually grow those customers? And that's where customer success comes into play, which is what I spend a lot of my time working on today. But I just kind of evolved with the whole market, when it comes to SaaS, over the last decade or more. Gosh, time flies. [Contents] Sixteen Ventures [20:27] Ron Gaver: I really want to get into customer-success management, but you threw out a couple of things there that I'd like to explore first, quickly. First of all, you said Sixteen Ventures was “in and of itself” a story. Is there something you can quickly tell us about the story behind that? [20:41] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. I was coming to the end of 2008, and I wanted to formalize my company within that year, but we needed a name. So, it's not a really exciting story, except some people would often wonder where that name comes from, and, honestly, I think I just said, “Well, you know, this is probably my sixteenth venture,” if you count all of the different things that I had tried over the years, and I think that's what took. Now I can back into the fact that my name is Lincoln, and President Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the U.S.—that's also one thing. Ultimately, it was just kind of a fluke that I chose that name, but I'll tell you an interesting little side effect of calling it Sixteen Ventures is that, before that name became synonymous with just anything to do with SaaS and ultimately customer success, it got me into places because people thought I was a VC. I actually got access to things that I might not have otherwise had access to. So that was not planned, but it ended up being a pretty interesting side effect of calling it Sixteen Ventures. [21:39] Ron Gaver: I can see how that would happen. When I first saw it, I was kind of wondering the same thing. [21:43] Lincoln Murphy: Mm-hmm. [Contents] “The SaaS Guy” [21:44] Ron Gaver: Before we get into customer-success management… You became “the SaaS guy,” you said. How did you become “the SaaS guy?” You've now, at this point in your career, consulted with four-hundred-some-odd companies; there was, obviously, some sort of growth, some sort of transition that happened along the way that you went from supply-chain management, into your own venture, into your mail center—I don't remember the name of it. [22:10] Lincoln Murphy: Global Mail Technology. It was a wonderful name. [22:12] Ron Gaver: But then you became “the SaaS guy,” and I'm just interested: how did you become “the SaaS guy?” [Contents] Contrarian Views [22:16] Lincoln Murphy: In 2006-ish (and these posts are—while they didn't start out there—now at SixteenVentures.com; if you somehow get to the very first posts on the site, they are there), what I did is, after we sold the company and I took a few days (or weeks probably) and decompressed, I got kind of irritated, again, with all the noise that was coming out of Silicon Valley about how SaaS was ubiquitous. And I just wrote three or four pretty-lengthy blog posts. They were on Blogger at the time. It was easy to make noise back then because there wasn't a lot of it, and I just laid it out there. I was like, look, you guys are saying this stuff. I believe what you're saying will be true, but it's not right now. If you go into Middle America, into actual, regular corporations—not the things that are happening in Silicon Valley—you are going to be hard-pressed to very easily close a SaaS deal. That's what I laid out there, and I got a lot of people saying, “Interesting; thanks for sharing that.” I got a lot of people saying, “Who are you, and what right do you have to say anything?” [23:23] Lincoln Murphy: It worked, and it kind of got my name out there. And I met a guy, Ken Boasso, of Keychain Logic, basically out of East Bay in San Francisco. He was one of the guys who was, like, “who are you?” and ended up becoming one of my best friends. He'd been a sales guy, and I remember there was an SIIA event, I believe; and he knew people there, and he kind of got me in, and I think I asked some tough questions of a few of the speakers and probably irritated people, but I just made noise. And it was easier then, but it's certainly not impossible now. [Contents] Freemium in SaaS [23:57] Lincoln Murphy: Fast-forward a couple of years from there. I published a twenty-seven-page PDF that kind of went viral called The Reality of Freemium in SaaS—so, it was right at the beginning of 2009—and it just called out all of the things about freemium; and, based on companies that I'd been working with, why freemium was a cop-out. You didn't want to sell, didn't want to have to really try, so you just opened your product up for free and then hoped people become customers. And I laid it out there. That thing got some fifty thousand downloads, and it was being shared, and I think it's just wild because it was a really ugly PDF. It got me a speaking gig at Freemium Summit, the only one there that was sort of a contrarian and the only consultant on the event. It was just another case of me making noise, but it wasn't just noise for the sake of noise; these were things that I believed that people needed to hear that were not being put out there, that were not being said. And, of course, with the freemium paper, I wasn't being contrarian to be contrarian; I was saying, “Look, if you're going to do it, this is how you should do it.” Just like SaaS isn't ubiquitous, back then, yet, but it will be, and here are some of the things that I learned along the way. [Contents] Thought Leadership (or Getting Things Out of Your Head and Moving On) [25:10] Lincoln Murphy: So, there's making noise, and then there's causing people to pay attention to you by saying real things but also maybe adding value. So, what I learned from that was, “Hey, you know what? I have experience that people can learn from.” It just caused me to really start sharing. And that's what I've done. That's the story of how I am anything—how I've been able to maintain whatever this is that I'm doing for the last ten years; it's because, when I learn things from working with my clients, studying, and thinking, I put it out there. And some people refer to that as thought leadership—that's cool—but, to me, I just share these things, and a lot of times it's just to get it out of my own head. Once I get it out of my head, put it out there on the blog, then I can go move on to the next thing. But that's how it works. You have a podcast. Now you're getting to be known in this space. Everybody has a different way that they're going to do this. It's just a lot easier for me to write a bunch of words. Luckily, that still works pretty well. [Contents] Facts and the Contrarian Point-of-View [26:06] Ron Gaver: Even though you have a dissenting opinion—you are contrarian—you're not really just making noise for the sake of making noise; you really are trying to lay out the facts and say, “Here's a different way to look at this. You might not want to just buy into all the hype. This is the way I see it. You might want to consider this point of view.” [26:24] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. [26:25] Ron Gaver: I like that. [26:26] Lincoln Murphy: I appreciate that, and I like that, too. That's how I like to learn. So the people that I—and I couldn't name anybody right off the top of my head—but that I've know over the years, including when I was younger and growing up, I think those are the people that I gravitated to—that would say something that caught my attention but then add value. The people that just say things to be loud and obnoxious—I don't like that. I don't think anybody really likes that, and it's certainly not something that's built for longevity. I'll tell you, there were times people have called me—one word that sticks out is bombastic. I make these bombastic statements, and I'm, like, “Well, yeah, but it's true.” And then usually what happens is—this sounds weird—I like to make all this noise, but I'm not really good at bragging or tooting my own horn; but usually what happens is I get people that'll react negatively to what I say and then, eventually, it comes true. That's not to say that I'm a futurist and I can tell the future or anything like that, but it's just that it was true all along; and eventually people start to gravitate to see that it was actually the right way. That doesn't mean I'm always right, but when I am, that's usually how it plays out. At first, people kind of react negatively and then they come around. So, that's cool. [27:38] Ron Gaver: Logic often prevails over illusion. [27:40] Lincoln Murphy: Hopefully; usually. [27:42] Ron Gaver: Not always. There are many exceptions in history where that has not come true. [27:47] Lincoln Murphy: Exactly. [Contents] Customer Success Management [27:48] Ron Gaver: I would like to kind of get into the area that I said I was interested in—customer success management. I know that that's something that you talk about a lot, and I mentioned that in terms of your business model earlier. You've got a quote—I think it's your definition of what customer success is—and I'll quote it. It's: “Customer success is when customers achieve their desired outcome through their interactions with your company.” Not just with your product, but with your company. Maybe we could deconstruct that a little bit. I think you've deconstructed it in one post in particular that you've rewritten, which is the Definitive Guide to Customer Success, which is on Sixteen Ventures, and I'll link to that. There's a picture, also, there of you in front of a big screen, somewhere, with that definition behind you. So, the customers' desired outcomes… [Contents] Customer's Desired Outcome [28:37] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. I'll tell you what: this is one of the most powerful concepts that I've ever come across in business; that's kind of a big statement, but I believe it to be true. If you understand what your customer's desired outcome is, what they need to achieve, and the way they need to achieve it, I think it changes everything. Let me explain. Desired outcome is two pieces. [Contents] Customer's Required Outcome [29:01] Lincoln Murphy: What they need to achieve—I refer to that as their required outcome. This is the thing that they need to do. This is not using your product. This isn't even the job to be done. This is the outcome that they absolutely have to have. If I need to get from point A to point B, quickly, that's my required outcome. Now, I might choose to do that through commercial airline travel. That's one way. If I need to get more people to my event—that is my required outcome. I could do that in lots of different ways: I could print out flyers and hand them out, I could place ads on Facebook, I have a bunch of email addresses—maybe I could use email marketing. So if I choose to use email marketing, that's what I'm choosing to use to achieve my required outcome. Vendors need to understand that a customer is coming to you because they have a required outcome that they absolutely have to achieve but that they could do that in lots of different ways. We need to keep that top-of-mind, if for no other reason than it keeps our ego in check. [Contents] Customer's Appropriate Experience [30:06] Lincoln Murphy: Once they have chosen to do business with you, they've done so because they believe that you can help them achieve that required outcome; but they also believe—based on your sales and marketing, and how good you are at promoting your stuff—that you will help them achieve that required outcome in the appropriate way, giving them the appropriate experience. That's the second part of desired outcome. So, it's required outcome plus appropriate experience. And I use the termappropriate—you may have seen this in some of the articles where I write this out—I use the term appropriate because it's the appropriate word. Our customers have an experience that is specific to them, which means we need to understand the different customer segments that are doing business with us, and we need to understand what the appropriate experience is for them. That's why I don't say “a great experience” or “a high-touch experience” or “modern” or whatever. It's whatever is appropriate for that segment. So using the airline analogy, we have one airplane. There is a first-class cabin and there is the coach cabin. The first-class cabin—there's a particular customer segment that is going to do business with the airline on a first-class basis—and there's the rest of the airplane that's going to be filled with people doing business from a coach standpoint. It's the same required outcome: get me from point A to point B safely and quickly. But as soon as you understand that there are different customer segments that have a different appropriate experience, you understand why some people are going to pay a premium to sit in first-class and some people are going to try to save some money and sit in coach. [Contents] Appropriate SaaS Experiences [31:39] Lincoln Murphy: From a software standpoint or a SaaS standpoint, if I'm selling to very early-stage startups, I could probably get away with an API only. I don't need a graphical interface. I could probably just have some lightweight documentation and maybe a Slack channel for support for that customer segment. If I'm selling that same thing, the same underlying product, to a department in a Fortune 500 company, I'm probably going to have to have a full-blown UI, probably going to need some better documentation, maybe 24/7 support, maybe I need to be able to sell it to them on a three-year contract. There's going to be a different experience that is appropriate for each of those customer segments, but a lot of the time, companies don't think like that. They think, “Well, I'm just going to create one experience and sort of normalize it for everybody”—in which case they don't connect with really anybody and that's why they're struggling, or they just don't take into consideration that different customer segments are going to need a different approach. In a worst case, they don't resonate; best case in that scenario is that they actually overinvest resources. They throw a bunch of customer-success managers at these customers, and the lower-end customers that aren't paying much—they don't need that level of coverage—so we're overinvesting where we don't need to be overinvesting. The larger customers actually need a much greater level of touch, but we can't do that because we don't have enough people, and so we underinvest where we should be spending more. And so it just ends up being a problem. If we understand our product has different customer segments that use that product, and those different customer segments are going to have a different appropriate experience with us—again, not just in the product—then we can build out a strategy that really allows us to more effectively get those customers to be successful over time. [Contents] Solve for Success Not Happiness [33:26] Ron Gaver: Perhaps it's a corollary to that, but when you talk about what a successful customer is, you do say that you're not solving the equation for happiness; you're solving it for them to be successful—for them to have the appropriate and the required outcomes—not necessarily happiness. And I think that, a lot of times, people think that a happy customer is a good customer, but that might not be the thing because a happy customer, as you write, might walk away and do business elsewhere, where they get a better experience or where their needs are met a little bit better. [Contents] Successful Customers Advocate But Want More [33:59] Lincoln Murphy: Totally. I think what happens is, a lot of times, happiness is the wrong approach. We look at things wrong. We say, “Okay, this customer is just opening a lot of support tickets, they're always asking for different features, they're always pushing back on us to do more, and they just never seem happy.” But if you look at the actual context of what's going on—they've been around for a long time, they're continually adding more and more seats or they're buying more add-ons. They are our biggest advocates. They're actually the ones that will be references for us. They leave reviews. They speak at our events. They're actually the most successful customers. But if you ask, “Are these customers happy?”—you would probably say, “No, they never seem happy. They always want more.” [Contents] Happy Customers May Not Be Getting Value and Then Churn [34:49] Lincoln Murphy: On the flip side, customers that we never hear from, we might misinterpret that as being, “Well, they're happy; they're not complaining, so they're fine.” Or maybe they're even pleasant. When we do talk to them, they're happy, but then they contact us and they say, “By the way, we're going to cancel our account because we're going over to this other vendor.” And you're like, “I don't understand; I thought you were happy.” “Oh, I'm definitely happy; we just weren't getting any value from the relationship with you.” [Contents] The Appropriate Success Vector [35:15] Lincoln Murphy: So, if our customers are achieving their desired outcome—if they're on the right path to achieving whatever that desired outcome is that they have—then that's all that really matters. Customers that are doing that are, hopefully, emotionally happy. I have to be really clear: I don't want to be around people that are unhappy. I don't want people that I work with to not be happy. I just can't solve for your happiness. I can solve for your success. I can ensure that you are on the right track to your desired outcome; and if you are, hopefully, that will make you happy. But those are two different things. And I think from that standpoint, when we look at our customers to know whether or not they are on the appropriate success vector, we have to look at, “Are they on the right path to achieving that desired outcome?” If they're happy, great. If they're not, that's okay, too, because we're human, and I can't really solve for that. On the flip side, if we want to be taken seriously in customer success, or as a CEO we want customer success to be taken seriously by our board or anybody else within the organization, we have to get away from talking about fluffy metrics like “happiness” or “delight.” I have to be really clear: I don't want to be around people that are unhappy. I don't want people that I work with to not be happy. [Contents] Customer Success and Company Valuation [36:21] Lincoln Murphy: We need to really understand that customer success—and I just published a post the other day that goes into seven ways that customer success actually directly impacts the valuation that investors or acquirers will apply to your company—the value of your company is directly impacted by customer success. We need to be talking about customer success in those terms, and not in “happiness” and “delight” and things like that. If we talk about it in the way of, “Look, if we have this net revenue retention at the end of the quarter that's going to potentially impact the value of our company”—that is so much more powerful than “happiness” or “delight.” Again, I want people who I'm working with to be emotionally happy, but I just can't solve for that, and it doesn't actually end up moving the needle along the value of my company. This is too important to be thought of as just another way of creating happiness or delight. [Contents] Churn [37:15] Ron Gaver: You talked about customer retention. Well, one of the aspects that you often do refer to is churn; and, of course, churn is a topic, a subject, that comes up in the SaaS world all the time, but stopping churn when a customer is about to churn is like stopping a fire after it's already started. [37:34] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. [37:35] Ron Gaver: You need to attack that problem upstream. Customer-success management, I believe you say, is preventing that customer from ever wanting to churn, not looking at attacking the churn problem at the end. [37:48] Lincoln Murphy: Right. [37:49] Ron Gaver: I'm sure you can say it better that that. [Contents] Customers to Save and Customers to Let Go [37:50] Lincoln Murphy: From the conversation so far, you can see that I probably can't say it any better than that. You're absolutely right. I mean, if you have a fire, go put it out. We've got to put that fire out. If you have a customer who's about to churn, do what you can to try to save them if they have success potential. Some customers do not have success potential. They never should have been signed in the first place, or they never should have signed up or whatever, so we probably need to let them go because there's no way they will ever be successful. But if they have success potential, then do whatever you can to save them. That is not customer success, though. That's usually going to involve begging, maybe some discounts, whatever. That's not customer success. That's just doing what we can to try to save a customer. [38:33] Once they agree not to churn, then it's customer-success management's job to get them back on track. See, all we did was keep them from churning; we didn't actually make them successful. So they're still very much at risk. And where a lot of companies go wrong is they offer concessions and make promises and they keep the customer and then, a few months later, the customer—because nothing has changed—is still not successful, and so they churn out, only this time they're actually angry because you wasted their time. So, only save a customer if you have a plan to get them back on the path to success. But again, that's not customer success. And here's the thing: churn is just a symptom of a greater disease. So if you have a churn problem right now, then we've got to do what we can to triage that, do what we can to keep them around, then get them back on track; and if we get them back on track—and we do that by having a very clear understanding of customer success, what their desired outcome is, understanding how to orchestrate and operationalize that—then churn will actually start to go down. [Contents] When Churn Becomes a Non-Issue [39:41] Lincoln Murphy: And then eventually—if we do things right, including making sure that we're only signing customers that have success potential, we're not bringing on customers that have no potential for being successful with us—we actually get to a point where churn is just not an issue anymore. Then what? Well, then customer success really starts to come into play because now we're not only going to keep these customers around longer (which is great), but now we can actually start to grow customers and create an ascension model where customers not only stay with us but they actually expand their use. So whether that's inviting us into other parts of their organization, whether that's just buying more capacity, whatever that is, that's where we need to be. So churn may be your initial catalyst for looking at customer success, but, eventually, if you do things right, churn won't be something you even worry about anymore. Obviously, you want to make sure it doesn't creep back up, but if we're focused on the customers' desired outcome, we're ensuring that our customers are doing the things that they need to to get there. Churn won't be an issue, and now we can focus on growth. [40:42] Lincoln Murphy: So, I don't talk a lot about churn as much as I used to because I think customer success is about so much more than that. If churn is your initial catalyst, obviously that's going to be the thing you focus on. But, even then, you should look at customer success long-term as something that isn't just about churn-busting or firefighting; it's ultimately about getting your customers on that ascension path so that they're always growing, to the extent that I say the real measure of success isn't even having customers that are just sticking around—so it isn't just retention. If I have customers that are only sticking around, but aren't growing, to me that's not successful. I want customers that are on that ascension path, that are moving up, that are growing, because that means I have created an environment that really allows my customers to thrive and one that I really understand—that customers are always evolving and that they should be growing. And I think that's something, that, most of the time, when people are developing customer-journey maps and they're thinking about the customer, they kind of think of the customer as a static entity, but the reality is our customers are always evolving and changing, and that's good. That's what we want. And so we should think about, “What is a customer that signs today? What do they look like in five years? Are they just going to be the same, or could they be ten times as big of a customer as they are today?” That's how we need to be looking at that, and that's, really, to me, the real power of customer success. [Contents] Individual Contributions to the Customer's Desired Outcome [42:03] Ron Gaver: And as far as the customers' desired outcome and what's valuable to the customer, you say that, really, that's a question you should begin to ask when you're starting the company, when you're developing your product, when you're first starting out; and you should continue to ask that question over and over and over, and everyone in the company should really be able to answer the question of what they're doing to provide the value to the customer—I don't remember exactly how you said it—but what are you doing that is worthwhile to the customer? [42:31] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. The way that I phrase it is to ask each individual contributor in your company: “How do you contribute to the customer's desired outcome?” And, a lot of times, when I'll go work with a company—and maybe the CEO brings me in because he or she really wants to make sure that customer success is really part of the overall DNA of the company, bringing that in at the high level—we'll figure out what the desired outcome is so that we're all on the same page. We know what we're talking about when we say, “What is the customer's desired outcome?” And then we go to that question, “How do you contribute to the desired outcome of the customer?” And every single person in the company should be able to say that, even somebody in HR or finance. HR brings on and keeps the talent that enables us to provide the desired outcome to the customer. Everybody has that impact. And the scary thing is, a lot of times, people building the products, people selling the products, people in customer success, can't answer that, and that's a problem. So we need to answer that. And then any new person that signs on, we tell them, “This is what the desired outcomes of our customers are, depending upon all the segments, and this is how you contribute.” And so now, from the very beginning, we're letting people know, “This is how you contribute to customer success.” It's so much better than just saying, “Hey, we're all in customer success.” Well, of course we are, but what does it actually mean? Let's actually get down to something tangible there and then reiterate that every time we do a performance review. Or if somebody changes jobs, okay, it's time to change the definition of how you contribute to the desired outcome of the customer. So you really want this to be a part of your organization at a DNA level. Those are some very simple, little things you can do that have a huge impact. [44:03] Ron Gaver: I feel like we could go on for a long time talking about this stuff, but I'm going to respect your time and start to ramp it down a little bit. Is there any particular subject or anything that you really wished that I had asked you that I haven't asked you? [44:18] Lincoln Murphy: Like you said, we could talk about this stuff forever. I think the main thing that I always like to talk about is desired outcome, and I think we did a good job with that. It's one of those things that I encourage you to go to SixteenVentures.comand read as much as you can about desired outcome. I'm really thankful for you, Ron, for bringing that up and having this as a topic because it really is one of the more transformative things. If you understand this about your customers and build your company around that from the ground up and continually evolve around that as you grow and as you scale, I think you're going to be a lot more successful than if you try to go the opposite approach, which a lot of companies, unfortunately, do. They don't thrive as they could be. They're kind of focused inward. They're focused on their desired outcome and not their customers'. That's the hard way. And I think the easy way, really, is to just make sure you're making your customers successful. [Contents] Personal Recommendations [45:05] Ron Gaver: Something I'm always a little bit curious about is the things that you would value as my guest, the things that have built you, and things that have had a positive influence on your life or your attitudes or whatever it may be on your business. It really could be just about anything. Is there anything that comes to mind right away that you would say, “This really means a lot to me, and I would recommend it without reservation to the entire audience?” [45:33] Lincoln Murphy: I think there are a lot of different things. I believe in karma and that what goes around comes around. If we think about that concept—and it's kind of the law of the universe; or even of science (one reaction has an equal and opposite reaction)—if we understand that and we focus on making our customers powerful, then that'll come back to us, and they'll make us powerful. And they'll do that by staying longer, buying more, and telling their friends. It's pretty simple. The other thing I would say—just because this book changed my life—it's a book by Dr. Robert Cialdini called Influence.*. It's just one of those things that I always recommend everywhere. The more you can understand about how other humans operate, I think, the better off you'll be in business but also just as a fellow human. It's called Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. I'd check that book out, too. Those are the two things—one's my operating philosophy, and one's a book that changed my life. [46:25] Ron Gaver: I'll definitely link to the book. I may actually already have it on the website. [46:29] Lincoln Murphy: Cool. [46:30] Ron Gaver: I'm familiar with the book. I have it on the shelf behind me. [46:33] Lincoln Murphy: Awesome. [Contents] Make Your Customers Powerful [46:34] Ron Gaver: As far as the karma that you mentioned… Something you've recently spoken about—flipping the funnel and taking the power back—just really inverting some of our concepts, and by satisfying the customer, your customer will also promote your product and will help you to become successful. [46:52] Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. That concept stemmed from some conversations I've had with CEOs and founders who are, like, “Look, customers just have too much power these days; how can we take some of that power back?” And the reality is, it's not our power to take. We all have power. It's equally distributed. The best thing we can do, if we need to use power as an analogy, is make our customers powerful so that they will, in turn, make us powerful. Now the secret is: it's not magic. This is where customer success management comes into play. [Contents] Operationalize Customers Making you Powerful [47:20] Our customers—we make them powerful, but we also have to operationalize them making us powerful. Don't just let advocacy, for example, happen by chance. Understand the points in time when it would be right for them to give us a review somewhere or to be a reference for us, and make sure that we reach out and enable them to do that. When it's time for them to buy more, don't just let them wait until they're ready to buy. If we know that it's a logical time for them to add this new product onto what they buy already or to add more seats, then let's proactively reach out and make that happen. It's about knowing when the right time is and doing what's right to ensure that they are moving in the right path, even if that means pushing them outside of their comfort zone sometimes, because we have to make sure that our customers are always growing and evolving and achieving their desired outcome. So we want to operationalize that stuff and not just hope that it happens. It is about making sure that what goes around comes around; and if we help our customers, they will help us. [Contents] Proactively Convert on Success Milestones [48:16] Ron Gaver: You just said something, and I'm really curious about this, and I actually even wrote a note in some of your material about this. You talk about being proactive rather than reactive—if you've got your customer on a trial, don't wait until the end of the trial to try to convert them or try to upsell them or whatever it may be, but monitor the process along the way, measure what's going on, determine where they are, what value you're providing, and then use tools to monitor that; and, as you said it, to be proactive rather than reactive. [48:48] Lincoln Murphy: Exactly. In a trial, for example, we need to know at what point is the most logical next step that they become a customer? Let's figure out what that is, let's work to get them to that point as quickly as possible, and if they get to that point on day three of a thirty-day trial, well, let's make the offer. That's the point where they're ready. Now if we, on day three, try to get them to convert and we don't know that's the point where they're ready, that's why I say, “Don't do things on a timed basis; do things on a success-milestone basis.” If we just do it on a timed basis and they're not ready, it's just not going to be met with a lot of acceptance. It could be off-putting. But if we know that they've gotten to a point where the next logical step is to become a paying customer, then, yeah, “make the ask,” as we would say. [Contents] Customer Lifecycle Success Milestones [49:31] Lincoln Murphy: So the same thing applies across the entire customer lifecycle. Know the success milestones. Know which ones are associated with an upsell or an advocacy ask, and reach out and make sure that we're moving them up that ascension model and make sure that we're taking advantage of their willingness to advocate for us by operationalizing them. This isn't all about being altruistic. If we make our customers successful, we should be able to also get some value out of that, too. And that's cool. If all we're doing is trying to get value without ensuring that our customers first get value, then that's not where we want to be. But if we, like you said, flip it around, make sure that we're focused on them, then we'll get what we get in return, which is awesome. [Contents] Tools to Monitor Customer Progress [50:07] Ron Gaver: And tools for monitoring your customer's progress and the value you're delivering to the customer—are there any favorite tools that you would recommend that you find to be extremely good for that? [50:18] Lincoln Murphy: It really depends on where you're at. Companies use everything from Excel spreadsheets to purpose-built, customer-success-management tools like Gainsight or Totango or ClientSuccess. I

https://entrearchitect.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mark-5162771920.jpg () Happy clients are the result of clients knowing what to expect, when to expect it, and how much it’s going to cost when their expectations are met. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Mark R. LePage shares How to Build a System to Manage Your Architecture Clients’ Expectations. How do we deliver services to our clients in a way that meets or exceeds their expectations? How do we ensure that every interaction results in a happy, satisfied client? Under promise, over deliver. Don’t say you’re going to do something and then fail to follow through. Always do, at the very least, what you say you’re going to do. Know the time it will take you to do something and give yourself more than enough time. Then delivery the results early whenever you’re able to. Manage expectations. Our clients want to know what to expect, when to expect it, and what it’s going to cost them when the expectation is finally realized. Managing their expectations manages their happiness. Create a system for client expectation management. Put together a step-by-step process of items that will keep your clients feeling fully in control from pre-contract through design and construction to the end of project close-out. Schedule time to review each project once you complete it. Once you have identified the various phases, figure out how to communicate the start and end of each phase to your client. How to Build Business Systems for Architects This month on the EntreArchitect Academy, founder of Business + Architecture and author of The E-Myth Architect Norbert Lemermeyer joins members as our expert trainer to share his knowledge and research on how to build business systems for architects. He’ll share his own templates for his proprietary Client Fulfillment System. EntreArchitect Academy expert training sessions are only available to members inside EntreArchitect Academy. For more information, https://entrearchitect.com/academy (click here) to learn more about our all-inclusive online membership program for small firm architects. Enrollment is open but is limited! https://entrearchitect.com/academy (Click here to enroll in the EntreArchitect Academy) Visit our Platform Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/architect (FreshBooks) The easiest way to send invoices, manage expenses, and track your time. http://freshbooks.com/architect (Access Your 30-Day Free Trial at FreshBooks.com/architect) (Enter EntreArchitect) Referenced in This Episode http://amzn.to/1Yb9moY (The E-Myth Architect) by Norbert Lemermeyer Join us in Philadelphia at the EntreArchitect Meetup Photo Credit: http://www.pixabay.com (Pixabay)   The post https://entrearchitect.com/podcast/entrearch/business-systems-for-architects/ (EA122: How to Build a System to Manage Your Architecture Clients’ Expectations [Podcast]) appeared first on https://entrearchitect.com (EntreArchitect // Small Firm Entrepreneur Architects).