American global information technology company
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Join Tom Fox and hundreds of other GRC professionals in the city that never sleeps, New York City, on July 9 & 10 for one of the top conferences around, #Risk New York. The current US landscape, shaped by evolving policies, rapid advancements in AI, and shifting global dynamics, demands adaptive strategies and cross-functional collaboration. At #RISK New York, you will master the New Regulatory Reality by getting ahead of US regulatory shifts and their impact. Conquer AI and Tech Risk by Safeguarding Your Organization in an AI-Driven World and Understanding the Implications of Major Tech Investments. Navigate Financial and Crypto Volatility by Protecting Your Assets and Exploring Solutions in a Dynamic Market. Strengthen Your GRC Framework by Leveraging Governance, Risk, and Compliance for Strategic Advantage. Protect Digital Trust by addressing challenges in cybersecurity and data privacy, and combating misinformation. All while meeting with the country's top #Risk management professionals. In this episode, Tom Fox talks with Gwen Hassan, the Chief Compliance Officer for Unisys Corporation, about her role and the upcoming #RiskNYC conference. Gwen shares insights into Unisys' operations, including the various technologies and services they provide, and highlights her responsibilities in managing global ethics, compliance, and trade compliance risks. She also gives a teaser about her panel presentation on the compliance and ethics risks associated with artificial intelligence, stressing the importance of understanding AI's impact on company culture and regulatory compliance. Gwen expresses her excitement about the conference, emphasizing the value of engaging with fellow risk management experts. Resources: #Risk Conference Series #RiskNYC—Tickets and Information Gwen Hassan on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Deep Dive into HR Consulting and OutsourcingIn this episode, we spoke with Jim Cichanski, founder and CEO of Flex HR, about the evolving landscape of HR consulting and outsourcing. Jim shared his extensive experience in the industry, highlighting how Flex HR has grown over the past 25 years to become the largest HR consulting and outsourcing firm in the Southeast. Flex HR provides a comprehensive range of services, including employee onboarding, payroll management, and compliance oversight, helping businesses navigate the complexities of HR as they scale. Jim emphasized that professional HR support becomes essential as startups grow, enabling leaders to focus on core operations while ensuring compliance and employee satisfaction.Jim also discussed the increasing impact of technology and AI in the HR space. While automation can streamline processes like payroll and benefits management, he stressed the importance of maintaining a human touch in HR interactions to build trust and engagement. Flex HR serves companies with 50 to 500 employees, offering tailored solutions for both small and larger organizations. With a team of 50 consultants across the country, Flex HR is committed to mentoring and supporting HR professionals, ensuring businesses develop strong HR practices and maintain compliance with evolving regulations.As the episode concludes, Jim highlights the value of trust and transparency in leadership, underscoring the importance of clear communication and consistent follow-through. Flex HR also offers webinars, training sessions, and other resources to empower HR professionals and business leaders. For those interested in enhancing their HR functions and fostering a positive work environment, Flex HR provides the expertise and tools needed to ensure long-term success.About Jim Cichanski:Jim, the Founder and CHRO for Flex HR has 50+ years' experience in human resources, holding senior level positions in companies that were privately held, pre-IPO, foreign owned, joint venture, Fortune 50 and one labeled the “fastest growing F1000 in America.” He has a solid background in high tech, manufacturing, services and management.His background in human resources includes organizational process evaluation and improvement, labor laws, integration of businesses, cost reduction, organizational development, and all functional areas of human resources. These include but are not limited to Benefits, Compensation, Staffing, Diversity, ERISA, DOL Compliance, Immigration, Learning & Development, Stock Administration, Executive Compensation, Employee Relations, and over 350 Mergers & Acquisitions. Jim's experience includes operational HR management knowledge globally in 32 countries and has transitioned companies from 30 to 67,000 employees worldwide. Companies he has worked for include Unisys, Novell, Premiere Technologies and PaySys International. Jim is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt.Jim also spent 27 years in the Army National Guard achieving the rank of Colonel, was inducted into the Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame, and received numerous awards including the Legion of Merit. Jim holds a BA in Applied Behavioral Sciences, is a graduate of the Department of Defense Equal Opportunity Institute, has served on the board of HealthSource of Georgia, recently served on the Board of Directors for HomeStretch and was an inside board member of 17 companies. He is an active member of many HR professional organizations.Flex HR has been named one of the “Top 25 Most Promising HR Outsourcing Service Providers” in Outsourcing Gazette Magazine in October 2015. In September 2008, 2012 and 2013 INC Magazine recognized Flex HR as an Inc 5000 “Fastest GrowingAbout Flex HR:Flex HR is co-located in the...
Personally, I have had to inform employees that their jobs were being eliminated. Sometimes because of a budget cut, sometimes due to their performance. How we handle these events is important to the people directly impacted and also to those who remain behind. This podcast will be addressing both topics and how to better structure a layoff scenario—and do it with empathy. Jim Cichanski, the founder, and Chief Human Resources Officer of Flex HR, has 30+ years experience in human resources, holding senior level positions in companies that were privately held, pre-IPO, foreign owned, joint venture, Fortune 50 and one labeled the “fastest growing F1000 in America.” He has a solid background in high tech, manufacturing, services and management. His background in human resources includes organizational process evaluation and improvement, labor laws, integration of businesses, cost reduction, organizational development, and all functional areas of human resources. These include but are not limited to Benefits, Compensation, Staffing, Diversity, ERISA, DOL Compliance, Immigration, Learning & Development, Stock Administration, Executive Compensation, Employee Relations, and over 300 Mergers & Acquisitions. Jim's experience includes operational HR management knowledge globally in 32 countries and has transitioned companies from 30 to 67,000 employees worldwide. Companies he has worked for include Unisys, Novell, Premiere Technologies and PaySys International. Jim is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt. Jim also spent 26 years in the Army National Guard achieving the rank of Colonel.Please visit our sponsors!L3Harris Technologies' BeOn PPT App. Learn more about this amazing product here: www.l3harris.com Impulse: Bleeding Control Kits by professionals for professionals: www.dobermanemg.com/impulseDoberman Emergency Management Group provides subject matter experts in planning and training: www.dobermanemg.com
In celebration of Women's History Month, Tech Simplified is honored to welcome Dagnija "Daggie" Lacis, a true trailblazer in the technology industry. From becoming one of the first female programmers in the U.S. to making history as the first female vice president at Unisys, Daggie's career has paved the way for generations of women in tech.Daggie shares her incredible journey—from breaking into the male-dominated IT world in the 1960s, to helping modernize Latvia's IT infrastructure after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her memoir, The Wall Falls, A Woman Rises, releases on March 18, 2025, highlighting her pioneering achievements and personal resilience.
Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews)
Unisys CTO Dwayne Allen joins Technovation to discuss how he is leading AI-driven innovation and shaping the future of IT services. Dwayne shares insights into Unisys's transformation from hardware to IT solutions, the democratization of digital acumen, and how the company's AI training program has driven adoption across 13,000 employees. He also highlights the promise of generative AI, ethical use policies, and emerging technologies like quantum computing. Tune in to learn how Dwayne's strategic leadership is driving Unisys forward and empowering clients globally.
With more than $7 billion in annual revenue and 24,000 employees, SAIC provides engineering, digital, AI, and mission support to defense, space, intelligence, and civilian customers. CEO Toni Townes-Whitley took the helm a year ago, after stints as a senior executive at Microsoft, CGI Federal, and Unisys. She discusses her approach to strategic transformation at SAIC through fine tuning and employee upskilling, rather than wholesale change. She also shares how the company is incorporating cutting edge technologies, like generative AI, with appropriate safeguards for government clients.
In today's fast-paced technology landscape, innovation and leadership go hand-in-hand, driving businesses forward in a competitive market. In a recent episode of *Anchoring Hope*, David Mansilla sat down with Gary Wang, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at DMI, a global consulting and IT services company. Gary shares his inspiring journey from being a system engineer to becoming a respected leader, as well as the lessons he has learned along the way about leadership, technology, and growth.Here's more about Gary Wang:Gary Wang is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at DMI, a global consulting and IT services company. With over two decades of experience in the technology industry, Gary has held leadership roles in major corporations like Lockheed Martin, IBM, and Unisys. His expertise spans across digital transformation, cloud security, AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity. As a visionary leader, Gary is responsible for driving innovation, developing cutting-edge solutions, and delivering transformational technology services to both public and commercial sectors. His journey from system engineer to CTO showcases his deep technical expertise and passion for empowering teams to explore new technologies while aligning them with business goals.
Andy Leonard and Frank La Vigne are joined by experts Baruch Lev and Feng Gu to uncover the complexities and pitfalls of mergers and acquisitions. We'll discuss the controversial "killer acquisitions" in the pharmaceutical industry, which regulators fear stifle innovation and harm public health.Our guests will share insights from their upcoming book, "The M&A Failure Trap," which critiques current acquisition strategies and introduces a unique 10-factor scorecard for assessing potential success. From data analysis on 40,000 mergers over 40 years to the challenges and market trends affecting merger outcomes, we'll explore why up to 75% of mergers fail and how decision-makers often benefit at the expense of employees and shareholders.Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to navigate M&As or a data enthusiast curious about the numbers behind these strategic moves, this episode offers a data-driven look at the forces shaping mergers and their real-world impacts.Show NotesThe M&A Trap Book Link (no affiliate) https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Trap-Mergers-Acquisitions-Succeed/dp/1394204760Highlights00:00 Exploring data science, AI, mergers with experts.04:43 Extensive data-driven analysis of mergers' failures.09:22 Investment bankers pressure companies to finalize acquisitions.11:15 Managers get bonuses for concluding acquisition deals.14:26 Global economy affected; star performers leave.17:32 Mergers often lead to employee departures, layoffs.20:24 Managed data engineering team during Unisys acquisition.26:28 Analogies highlight misapplication of causal thinking.28:58 Complex model reveals hidden variable impact.31:01 Correlation can mislead; avoid single-focus traps.37:14 Comprehensive analysis of acquisitions and their impacts.38:39 Analyzed LinkedIn data on employee turnover trends.41:50 Creative metric developed for private acquisition premium.46:01 Acquisitions are widespread, impacting various industries significantly.52:11 Unique 10-factor acquisition scorecard predicts success.55:45 Deep dive into mergers and acquisitions data.Speaker BiosBaruch Lev is a professor emeritus at NYU Stern School of Business, where he has taught and conducted research on mergers and acquisitions for decades. He worked formerly at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago. His work has been widely cited in academic and professional circles (over 63,000 Google Scholar citations), and he is a leading authority on corporate finance and valuation.Feng Gu is a professor of accounting at the University at Buffalo and has extensive experience in analyzing the financial aspects of corporate acquisitions. His research focuses on the economic consequences of corporate decisions and has been published in top-tier academic journals.
On this week's show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week's cybersecurity news, including: SEC fines tech firms for downplaying the Solarwinds hacks Anonymous Sudan still looks and quacks like a Russian duck Apple proposes max 10 day TLS certificate life Oopsie! Microsoft loses a bunch of cloud logs Veeam and Fortinet are bad and should feel bad North Koreans are good (at hacking) And much, much more. This week's episode is sponsored by Proofpoint. Chief Strategy Officer Ryan Kalember joins to talk about their work keeping up with prolific threat actor SocGholish. This episode is also available on Youtube. Show notes Four cyber companies fined for SolarWinds disclosure failures U.S. charges Sudanese men with running powerful cyberattack-for-hire gang Hacker Charged With Seeking to Kill Using Cyberattacks on Hospitals | WIRED Risky Biz News: Anonymous Sudan's Russia Links Are (Still) Obvious Microsoft confirms partial loss of security log data on multiple platforms | Cybersecurity Dive Risky Biz News: Apple wants to reduce the lifespan of TLS certificates to 10 days Encrypted Chat App ‘Session' Leaves Australia After Visit From Police Crypto platform Radiant Capital says $50 million in digital coins stolen following account compromises North Korean hackers use newly discovered Linux malware to raid ATMs - Ars Technica Brazil Arrests ‘USDoD,' Hacker in FBI Infragard Breach – Krebs on Security Here's how SIM swap in alleged bitcoin pump-and-dump scheme worked - Ars Technica Critical Veeam CVE actively exploited in ransomware attacks | Cybersecurity Dive FortiGate admins report active exploitation 0-day. Vendor isn't talking. - Ars Technica Hackers reportedly impersonate cyber firm ESET to target organizations in Israel The latest in North Korea's fake IT worker scheme: Extorting the employers
At the heart of The Prophets' vision are “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes.” What are they? Find out, and see the future yourself. Click here In this episode of the Auto Supply Chain Prophets podcast, Beth Crowley, Chief Resilience Officer and president of the Crowley Group, joins hosts Terry Onica and Jan Griffiths to dive into the topic of resiliency and its significance in today's auto supply chain.Beth starts by defining resilience, explaining that it's more than just an industry term; it's the ability of organizations and supply chains to adapt and bounce back from challenges. The pandemic has heightened the urgency for companies to adopt resilient practices, and the data suggests that major disruptions are becoming more frequent. That's why Beth suggests that resilience should be woven into the culture, with everyone—from the front lines to the C-suite—playing a part in strengthening the supply chain.Reflecting on the common tendency for companies to prioritize immediate crisis management over proactive planning, they discuss how automotive culture often glorifies the "firefighters" who save the day rather than encouraging a resilient mindset from the start. Beth suggests that organizations shift this perspective by training an "army of problem solvers" and integrating resilience into daily operations. She shares practical advice for training teams, suggesting that even small organizations can identify recurring issues and use them as learning opportunities to build a stronger problem-solving culture.Beth urges leaders to invest in their people, build resilient processes, and rethink their view of contingency planning—not as a task but as an integral part of their organizational mindset. Tune in to discover how to turn resilience into a foundational practice that drives success for your supply chain!Themes discussed in this episode:Understanding resilience in today's automotive supply chainThe importance of organizations adapting to unexpected events and preparing for future disruptionsThe role of leadership in building resilient organizationsCreating a culture where all employees are equipped and empowered to solve problemsMoving away from a “firefighting” mentality to a proactive approach focused on continuous improvement and long-term resilienceRethinking contingency planning as an ongoing cultural practice rather than a one-time taskWhy investing in people and problem-solving training are essential components of a resilient organizationFeatured on this episode: Name: Beth CrowleyTitle: President, The Crowley GroupAbout: Beth Crowley's passion for Operations and Continuous Improvement runs deep in her family, tracing back to her grandfather's pioneering work at Ford during World War II. After earning a BA and MBA in Supply Chain Management from Michigan State University, Beth's career began with roles focused on Lean and Continuous Improvement. She has since held positions at companies like AlliedSignal, UNISYS, and Maytag, where she advanced her expertise in transforming organizations. A Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Beth is now a sought-after consultant, part-time faculty member at Oakland University, podcast guest, and regular contributor to the Lean community.Connect: LinkedInMentioned in this episode:
In CXOTalk episode 849, Michael Krigsman hosts Peter Altabef, Chair and CEO of Unisys, to explore the transformative role of AI in enterprise technology and the pivotal role of CIOs in this evolution. Altabef provides insights into how Unisys integrates AI to improve client solutions and internal operations while emphasizing strategic investment and leadership.*Episode Highlights:**AI as a Catalyst for Innovation:* Learn how AI, especially generative AI, reshapes business strategies, fosters innovation, and redefines customer engagement.*CIO Leadership in AI Transformation:* Discover how CIOs are crucial in driving AI initiatives, managing risks, and fostering cross-departmental collaboration to achieve success in a rapidly changing landscape.*Disciplined AI Investment:* Understand Unisys's strategic approach to AI investment, focusing on projects that align with business objectives and deliver measurable ROI.*Cultural and Leadership Transformation:* Explore the importance of cultivating a culture of continuous learning and servant leadership to navigate AI-driven changes successfully.*Future Technologies:* Explore the potential of emerging technologies like quantum computing to expand AI capabilities and drive future growth.*About the Participants:**Peter Altabef:* Chair and CEO of Unisys, with a wealth of experience in leading technology companies.*Michael Krigsman:* Industry analyst and CXOTalk host, recognized for his digital transformation and leadership expertise.#enterpriseai #digitaltransformation #ceo #cio #cxotalk #unisys
Deke Copenhaver served as Mayor of Augusta, Georgia from 2005 through 2014. As mayor he helped recruit over $1 billion in investment in the local economy and created thousands of jobs by building on the strengths of Augusta's diverse labor force and bringing in major employers such as Automatic Data Processing, T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Unisys. … The post Deke Copenhaver: Former Mayor of Augusta, Georgia on Leadership That Transcends Polarization (Episode # 485) first appeared on TRANSLEADERSHIP, INC®.
By Adam Turteltaub In some ways it's still the Wild West when it comes to AI, with developments happening faster than most can fathom and the law can respond. At the same time, though, the sheriff has begun to arrive. Gwen Hassan (LinkedIn), Deputy Chief Compliance Officer at Unisys and Adjust Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law explains that the EU already has a law in place with a particular focus on ranking the risks of AI, including those that must not be taken, and an emphasis on the privacy implications. In the US, there is legislation proposed that would require clear notification when content is created using generative AI. It has yet to pass. Thus far the strongest direction in the US comes out of the White House, where President Biden issued the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. The order urges ethical generative AI guidelines, sets key goals for what good uses of AI are and calls upon various departments of the government to provide further analysis and direction. So what should compliance teams do now, despite the legislative holes? She recommends looking at how to extend the existing compliance program to AI and, as AI evolves, develop more specific programs that maps to its risks. Listen in to learn more about the emerging regulatory climate for AI.
In this episode of Careers in the Business of Law: Legal Data Intelligence Series, David Cowen hosts Laura Kibbe, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Global Head of Litigation, Legal Operations, and Chief of Staff to the GC at Unisys. Laura shares her transformative journey from traditional litigation at Texaco to pioneering eDiscovery at Pfizer, providing invaluable insights into the evolution of the legal industry and the impact of new technologies. Key Highlights: The Accidental Pioneer: Laura recounts her unplanned yet transformative transition from traditional litigation to eDiscovery at Pfizer. She describes learning on the job with early computer systems and handling vast amounts of data. The Relativity Revolution: Laura discusses the launch of Relativity by Andrew Sieja and its revolutionary impact on the legal industry, transforming document management and data handling processes. Beyond Litigation: Laura explores the shift from traditional litigation to addressing diverse data sources and new legal challenges, emphasizing the need for a multifaceted approach to privacy, security, and governance issues. Embracing Vulnerability and Creativity: Laura talks about the importance of creativity and vulnerability in her career, sharing how admitting what she doesn't know and learning from experts has been key to her success. Mentions: Jack Welch: LinkedIn Andrew Sieja: LinkedIn Texaco: Texaco Kay Scholer: Kay Scholer Unisys: Unisys George Socha: LinkedIn Tom Barnett: LinkedIn Monica Bay: LinkedIn Sanjay Batra: LinkedIn Outro Song: Livin'On A Prayer
Andrew Schydlowsky is the Founder and CEO of TrackStreet, a cutting-edge SaaS platform that empowers brands by leveraging eCommerce data. He has been involved in eCommerce since 1998, starting with an innovative idea to sell sports nutrition products online. As a serial entrepreneur, Andrew founded Performance Unlimited, Inc., Soma Distribution, Inc., and Kala International, Ltd. He also established Soma Internacional, S.A. in Peru. His diverse experience includes roles as Chief Growth Officer for a retail chain and Corporate Trainer for Unisys in Beijing. In this episode… With the digital landscape evolving and new technologies emerging, brands must navigate rapid eCommerce growth and AI integrations. Where should businesses focus their energy to avoid being misled by shiny objects or overwhelmed by an influx of data? With over 25 years at the helm of eCommerce, Andrew Schydlowsky affirms that brands can leverage technology and AI to make strategic business decisions but must recognize their risks and potential to derail progress. Before adopting any new tool or software, systemize your data and assess your tech stack regularly to ensure responsible use and long-term stability. By maintaining a clear vision for your business, you can evolve your business with the market while staying savvy about the implications and pitfalls of trends. Tune in to the latest episode of The Digital Deep Dive as Aaron Conant speaks with Andrew Schydlowsky, the Founder and CEO of TrackStreet, about the intricacies of eCommerce, technology, and AI. Andrew talks about leveraging AI to automate data and decision-making, the evolution of the digital landscape, and TrackStreet's mission.
Victoria Guido hosts Robbie Holmes, the founder and CEO of Holmes Consulting Group. The conversation kicks off with Robbie recounting his initial foray into the tech world at a small web hosting company named A1 Terabit.net, chosen for its alphabetical advantage in the white pages. This job was a stepping stone to a more significant role at Unisys, working for the state of New York's Department of Social Services, where Robbie inadvertently ventured into civic tech and public interest technology. Robbie shares his career progression from supporting welfare systems in New York to becoming a technological liaison between the city and state, leading to a deeper involvement in open-source solutions. His journey through tech spaces includes developing websites, diving into the Drupal community, and eventually establishing his consulting business. Robbie emphasizes the serendipitous nature of his career path, influenced significantly by community involvement and networking rather than a planned trajectory. Additionally, Robbie gives insights on the impact of technology in public services and his stint with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), where he contributed to significant projects like vets.gov. Robbie promotes the value of community engagement in shaping one's career, stressing how connections and being in the right place at the right time can lead to unexpected opportunities and career pivots. Follow Robbie Holmes on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbiethegeek/), X (https://twitter.com/RobbieTheGeek), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/robbiethegeek), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/robbiethegeek), or GitHub (https://github.com/robbiethegeek). Check out his website at robbiethegeek (https://about.me/robbiethegeek). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Robbie Holmes, Founder and CEO of Holmes Consulting Group. Robbie, thank you for joining me. ROBBIE: I'm so happy to be here. It's great to talk to you, Victoria. VICTORIA: Yes. I have known you for a long time now, but I don't know everything about you. So, I thought I would start with the question: What was your first job that you ever had? ROBBIE: My first technical job, I ended up working for an internet web hosting company called A1 Terabit.net. And note the A1 because it came first in the white pages. It was a really small web hosting company run by a man named [SP] Maxim Avrutsky. I worked there for about six months before I submitted my resume to an online job forum. That's how old I am. And it ended up in the hands of Unisys, where I eventually worked for the state of New York. VICTORIA: Wow [laughs]. So, what a journey that you've been on to get from starting there, and what a marketing ploy back in the day with the white pages. So, tell me a little bit more about how you went from that first job to where you are today with having your own business in consulting. ROBBIE: Yeah, I wasn't even aware that I was jumping into the sort of civic tech space and public interest technology because the job I ended up with was working for New York State in the Department of Social Services. And welfare is federally funded and distributed to states and then states to localities. And New York City and New York State have a weird parasymbiotic relationship because over 50% of the welfare in New York State goes to the five boroughs in New York City. So, so much of my job was supporting the welfare system within the city, which was run by the human resources administration. So, that just led to this cascade of me, like, getting invested in supporting that, and then eventually jumping over to the other side where I worked for the City of New York. And at that point, I ended up becoming sort of a technology project manager and almost a tech liaison between the city and state. And I was out in the welfare centers, helping get the job centers up to a new application called the Paperless Office System, which was a client-server app that was a wrapper around welfare. All of that ended up leading to me finally making it to the network operation center for the City of New York, where I started replacing expensive solutions like HP OpenView with open-source solutions like Nagios and another open-source solution that provided an interface. And it really opened my eyes to the idea of open source. And I had really paid attention to a lot of open-source operating systems. So, I was kind of just a general tech nerd. And eventually, I started building websites, and that led me to the Drupal community in New York City, which was sort of this cascade that led me to communities. And I think that's sort of a through line for my entire career is I don't really think I ever had a plan. I think my entire career has been this sort of a lucky happenstance of being prepared when an opportunity arose and sometimes being in the right place because of my connections and community. VICTORIA: That's interesting about being involved with the people around you and seeing what problems are out there to solve and letting that lead you to where your interests lie. And then, following that, naturally led you to, like, this really long career and these really interesting, big projects and problems that you get to solve. ROBBIE: Yeah. And I think one interesting aspect is like, I feel I spent a lot of time worried about what I was going to do and where I was going to do it. I don't have a bachelor's degree. I don't have an advanced degree. I have a high school diploma and a couple of years in college. Well, 137 credits, not the right 125 or 124 to have a bachelor's degree. I have enough credits for a couple of minors though, definitely Greek art history, I think mathematics, maybe one more. I just never got it together and actually got my degree. But that was so interesting because it was limiting to what jobs I could find. So, I was in the tech space as an IT person and specifically doing networking. So, I was running the network operation center. I helped, like, create a whole process for how we track tickets, and how we created tickets, and how things were moved along. And, in the process, I started building websites for family and friends. And I built a website for our network operation center, so that way we could have photos to go with our diagrams of the network. So that way, when we were troubleshooting remotely, we could actually pull up images and say, "The cable that's in port six goes off to the router. I think that port is dead. Can we move it to the port two to its right, and I'll activate it?" And that made a really interesting solution for something we weren't even aware we had, which was lack of visibility. So many of the people in the fields were newer or were trying to figure it out. And some of us had really deep knowledge of what was going on in those network rooms and hubs. It led me to this solution of like, well, why don't we just start documenting it and making it easier for us to help when they're in the field? That led me to, like, the Drupal community because I started building sites in the Drupal CMS. And I went to, like, my first Drupal meetup in 2007, and there was, like, five of us around the table. That led to eventually me working for Sony Music and all these other things. But the year before I found my way to the Drupal community, I probably sent out, like, 400 resumes for jobs in the tech space, didn't really get any callbacks. And then, I met the community, and I started attending events, and then eventually, I started organizing events. And then, Sony I interviewed and talked to them a couple of times. And then, a friend of mine became the boss. And she contacted me and was like, "Hey, are you in the market?" And I was like, "I don't know. Why? What's up?" And she's like, "I became Doug." And I was like, "What?" And she was like, "I'm now replacing Doug at Sony. I'm running the team." And I was like, "Yeah, I'm happy to talk." And that was the big transition in my career from IT to sort of development and to delivery, right? Like, when it comes right down to it, is I became the manager of interactive media at Sony Music, which was really a job I landed because I was connected to the community, and running events, and getting to know everyone. VICTORIA: Yeah. And I think it's really cool that you had this exposure early on to what you called civic tech, which we'll get into a little bit, and then you went from the community into a commercial technology space and really getting into engineering with Drupal. ROBBIE: Yeah, it was an interesting transition because what they needed at Sony was sort of somebody who could ride the line between systems engineer, database administrator, and Drupal engineer, and also probably pre-DevOps DevOps person. So, I was responsible for all deployments and all tickets that came in. I was sort of both the technical arm of the help desk. When I joined, there was 24 websites on the Drupal platform, and when I left, there was over 200. And we upgraded it from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 while I was there. So, I was heavily involved in all of those updates, and all those upgrades, and all of the deployments of all the new themes, and all the changes to all these sites. So, what was great was they, I believe, if I understand it correctly, they actually created a role for me out of, like, two or three jobs because they needed a me, and they didn't have a role that existed. So, all of a sudden, they made a manager of interactive media role. And I was able to work there for two years, sort of being what I jokingly say, like, a digital janitor. I used to say that I had, like, an eight-bit key ring in a push broom. And I was always mad at your kids for trying to break my stuff. VICTORIA: [laughs] That's so good. A digital service janitor [laughs]? The connection for me between that and where I met you in the U.S. digital service space [laughs] I feel like there's a lot of parallels between that and where your career evolved later on in life. ROBBIE: Yeah. What's amazing is I did all this early work in my career in civic tech and didn't realize it was civic tech at the time. I just realized what I was doing was providing this huge impact and was value. You know, I spent a couple of years in the welfare centers, and I used to say all the time that the two hardest jobs in the welfare center are the person applying for welfare and the person deciding whether or not that person gets welfare. So, being a technologist and trying to help make that as simple as possible or easier and smooth the edges off of that process was really important. And it really taught me how important technology is to delivering service. And I really never thought about it before. And then, when I was working for Phase2 technologies, I was a director of Digital Services. And I read in a blog post, I believe that was written by Mikey Dickerson, who was the original administrator for USDS, and he talked about HealthCare.gov. And he walked in the door, and he said, "How do you know HealthCare.gov is down?" And I think there was some allusion to the fact that we were like, we turn on the television and if they're yelling at us, we know it's down. And Mikey was like, "We know how to monitor things." So, like, if you don't know Mikey Dickerson, he's the person who sort of created the web application hierarchy of needs in Google. He was an SRE. And his pyramid, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, was all over Google when I was there. I was so impressed with the idea that, like, we aren't talking about how do we solve this problem? We're talking about knowing when there's a problem. And then, if we know there's a problem, we can put some messaging around that. We can say, like, "We're aware," right? Like if the president calls the secretary, the secretary can say, "We know it's down. We're working on it," which is building up political capital. It's a really amazing process that I kept reading this blog post, and I was like, God, that's how I would approach it. And then, I was like, wow, I wonder if I could use my skills to help America, and very shortly submitted an application and was like, well, we'll see what happens. And about six months later, I walked in the door at the VA and was the eighth employee of the Digital Service team at the VA. That was a franchise team of the USDS model. VICTORIA: And can you say a little bit more about what is the U.S. Digital Service and expand upon your early experience there? ROBBIE: Yeah. So, the United States Digital Service was created after HealthCare.gov had its issues. Todd Park had convinced President Obama to reach out to get support from the private industry. And the few of the people who were there, Todd convinced to stick around and start creating a team that could support if there was this kind of issue in the future. I believe the team that was there on the ground was Mikey Dickerson, Erie Meyer, Haley Van Dyck, and Todd. And there was a few other people who came back or were very close at the beginning, including the current administrator of USDS. She has been around a long time and really helped with HealthCare.gov. It's amazing that Mina is back in government. We're very lucky to have her. But what came out of that was what if we were able to stand up a team that was here in case agencies needed support or could vet solutions before these types of problems could exist? So, USDS was what they called the startup inside the White House that was created during the 2014 administration of President Obama. The team started that year, and I joined in May of 2016. So, I would be, like, sort of the beginning of the second team of the VA U.S. Digital Service team. So, USDS supported this idea of tours of duty, where you're a schedule A employee, which meant you were a full-time government employee, but you were term-limited. You could do up to two years of duty and work, and then you could theoretically stick around and do two more years. That was how these roles were envisioned. I think there's lots of reasons why that was the case. But what's nice is it meant that you would come in with fresh eyes and would never become part of the entrenched IT ecosystem. There are people that transition from USDS into government, and I think that's a huge value prop nowadays. It's something that I don't know they were thinking about when the original United States Digital Service was stood up, but it was hugely impactful. Like, I was part of the team at the VA that helped digitize the first form on vets.gov and all the work that was done. When the VA team started, there was a team that was helping with veteran benefits, and they worked on the appeals process for veteran benefits. And I joined. And there was a team that was...eventually, it became dubbed the veteran-facing tools team. And we worked on vets.gov, which was a new front door to expose and let veterans interact with the VA digitally. And over time, all the work that went into the tools and the solutions that were built there, everything was user-researched. And all of that work eventually got brought into VA.gov in what they called a brand merger. So, we took, like, the sixth most trafficked front door of the VA and took all the modern solutioning that that was and brought it into VA.gov, the main front door. So, all of a sudden, there was an identity, a login provided on VA.gov for the first time. So big, impactful work that many people were a part of and is still ongoing today. Surprisingly, so much of this work has now fallen under OCTO, which is the Office of the CTO in the VA. And the CTO is Charles Worthington, who was a USDSer who's the epitome of a person who goes where the work is. Charles was a Presidential Innovation Fellow who helped out in the times of HealthCare.gov and, joined USDS and did anything and everything that was necessary. He interviewed engineers. He was a product person. Charles is one of the most unique technologists and civic tech people I've ever met in my life. But Charles, at the end of the Obama administration and in this transition, realized that the VA was in need of someone to fill the CTO role. So, he came over to become the interim CTO because one of the values of USDS is to go where the work is. And he realized, with the transition, that Marina Nitze, who was the CTO who was transitioning out, there was going to be a need for continuity. So, he came in to provide that continuity and eventually became the full-time CTO and has been there ever since. So, he has helped shape the vision of what the VA is working towards digitally and is now...he was just named the Chief AI Officer for the agency. Charles is a great person. He has successfully, you know, shepherded the work that was being done early by some of us into what is now becoming a sort of enterprise-wide solution, and it's really impressive. VICTORIA: I appreciate you sharing that. And, you know, I think there's a perception about working for public service or for government, state or federal agencies, that they are bureaucratic, difficult to work with, very slow. And I think that the USDS was a great example of trying to really create a massive change. And there's been this ripple effect of how the government acquires products and services to support public needs, right? ROBBIE: Yeah, I would say there's a couple of arms of the government that were sort of modernization approaches, so you have the Presidential Innovation Fellows, which are the equivalent of, like, entrepreneurs and residents in government. And they run out of...I think they're out of the TTS, the Technology Transformation Service over at GSA, which is the General Services Administration. But the PIFs are this really interesting group of people that get a chance to go in and try to dig in and use their entrepreneurial mindset and approach to try to solve problems in government. And a lot of PIFS work in offices. Like, Charles' early team when he first became the CTO included a lot of Presidential Innovation Fellows. It was basically like, "Hey, the VA could use some support," and these people were available and were able to be convinced to come and do this work. And then, you have the Presidential Management Fellows, which I think is a little bit more on the administration side. And then, we have 18F and USDS. The United States Digital Service is a funded agency with an OMB. And we were created as a way to provide the government with support either by detailing people over or dropping in when there was a problem. And then, 18F is an organization that is named because the offices of GSA and TTS (Technology Transformation Service), where it's housed, are on the corner of 18th Street and F in DC. And 18F is sort of like having a technology or a digital agency for hire within the government. So, they are full-time employees of the government, sort of like USDS, except government agencies can procure the support of that 18F team, just like they would procure the support of your company. And it was a really interesting play. They are fully cost-recoupable subcomponent of TTS, which means they have to basically make back all the money that they spend, whereas USDS is different. It's congressionally funded for what it does. But they're all similar sibling organizations that are all trying to change how government works or to bring a more modern idea or parlance into the government. I used to say to people all the time that at USDS, you know, we would set a broken bone say, and then we would come back around and say, like, "Hey, does your arm hurt anymore?" The idea being like, no. Be like, "Cool, cool. Maybe you should go to the gym, and you should eat better." And that would be, like, procurement change. That would be, like, changing for the long term. So, all the work I was doing was building political capital so we could do better work in changing how procurement was done and then changing how the government delivered these things. So, what was awesome was, like, we used to have these fights at USDS about whether or not we were a culture change or we were firefighters. And I think the reality is once we're involved, culture changes happen. The bigger question is, are we going to be there for the long haul, or are we only there for a shorter period of time? And I think there are reasons why USDS teams had both plays. And I think it really is just two different plays for the same outcome. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes sense. And to pivot a little bit, I think, you know, our audience, we have clients and listeners who are founders of products that are aimed at making these, like, public service needs, or to give some examples, like, maybe they're trying to track Congressional voting patterns or contact information for different state representatives, and they're trying to navigate this space [laughs]. So, maybe you can give some advice for founders interested in selling their products to government agencies. What can they do to make it more appealing and less painful for themselves? ROBBIE: I wouldn't consider myself a procurement expert, but at USDS, the procurement team called themselves the [SP] procurementati. And I was a secret member of the procurementati. I often was the engineer they would call to evaluate statements of work or sometimes be on technology evaluation panels. And it was fun to be a part of that. Things that most companies don't realize is government agencies will put out things like request for information or sources sought in the government space. And this is a way for industry to influence how government tries to solve problems. If you are trying to go after government work and you're only responding to an RFP, you're probably behind in your influence that you could have on the type of work. So, you'll see if a procurement seems to be, like, specifically focused on an approach, or a technology, or a framework, it's probably because some companies have come through and said, "I think this would probably solve your problem," and they gave examples. So, that's one way to be more connected to what's going on is to follow those types of requests. Another is to follow the money. My wife is this amazing woman who helped write The Data Act and get it passed through government. And The Data Act is the Data and Transparency Act. And that led to her heading over to treasury and leading up a team that built USAspending.gov. So, there is a website that tracks every dollar, with some exceptions, of the funding that comes out of Congress every year. And what's great is you can track it down to where it's spent, and how it's spent, and things like that. For education purposes, I think that is a really good thing that business and growth people can focus on is try to see and target where competitors or where solutions that you've looked at have gone in the past. It's just a good set of data for you to take a look at. The other piece is if you're creating a solution that is a delivery or a deliverable, like a SaaS solution, in order for something to be utilized in the government, it probably needs to be FedRAMP-approved, which is a process by which security approvals have been given so that government agencies have the green light to utilize your solution. So, there's tons of documentation out there about FedRAMP and the FedRAMP approval process. But that is one of those things that becomes a very big stopping point for product companies that are trying to work in the government. The easiest way to work your way through that is to read up on it a bunch, but also find an agency that was probably willing to sponsor you getting FedRAMP approval. Most companies start working with a government agency, get an exemption for them to utilize your product, and then you get to shape what that FedRAMP process looks like. You start applying for it, and then you have to have some sort of person who's helping shepherd it for you internally in the government and accepting any issues that come along in the process. So, I guess FedRAMP approval is one that's a little complicated but would be worth looking into if you were planning on delivering a product in government. VICTORIA: Right. And does that apply to state governments as well? ROBBIE: So, lots of state-related and city and locality-related governments will actually adopt federal solutions or federal paradigms. So, I think in the state of California, I think FedRAMP as one of the guiding principles for accepting work into the state of California, so it's not consistent. There's not a one-to-one that every state, or every city, or every locality will pull this in. But if you are already approved to be a federal contractor, or a federal business, or a federal product, it's probably going to be easier to make your way into the local spaces also. VICTORIA: Right. And as you said, there's plenty of resources, and tools, and everything to help you go along that journey if that's the group you're going for [laughs]. Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. VICTORIA: So, kind of bringing it back to you, like, you're saying you want those partnerships within the government. You want someone advocating for you or for your product or your service. Drawing that back to what you said earlier about community, like, how do you form a community with this group of people who are in the state, or federal government, or civic tech spaces? ROBBIE: Yeah, I think it's an interesting problem because so much of it feels impenetrable from the outside. Most people don't even know where to start. There are organizations out there that are pretty good community connections, an example I would give is ACT-IAC. It is a public-private partnership where people from within the government, experts in their fields, and people in the private industry who are experts in their fields will be together on community boards and engaging in panels. And so, it's a really nice way to start connecting those dots. I have no direct affiliation with ACT-IAC. But if they'd like to give me my own account, that would be great. But it is one of those organizations I've seen be successful for people trying to find their way into a community that is a little harder to find. I think, also, so much of the community engagement happens at conferences and around...so, like, if you're in the healthcare space, this last month, you've had multiple conferences that I think were really great for people to get to know one another, you know, an example is ViVE. It just happened out in LA, which is a little more on the private sector health space, but still, government agencies were there. I know that the Department of Veterans Affairs had people there and were on panels. And then, HIMSS is another conference that takes place, and that just took place down in Miami. And in Miami, HIMSS happened and a whole bunch of other social community events took place. So, I'm close with a thing called the Digital Services Coalition, which is 47 companies that all try to deliver good government based on the Digital Services Playbook that was created by USDS that lives at playbook.cio.gov and the way that they try to accomplish this work. And that organization, while they were in Miami, hosted a happy hour. So, there's a lot of connections that can be made once you start seeing the players and getting to know who's around. So, it's a little bit about trying to find your way to that first event, and I think that will really open up everything for you. Within a week or two, I was at an International Women's Day event at MetroStar, which is a really great company that I've gotten a chance to spend some time with. And then, I was at an event for the Digital Services Coalition talking about open source in government. So, there's a lot of stuff out there for you to be a part of that isn't super cost-prohibitive and also doesn't take a lot once you start to open the door. You know, once you peek around that corner and you find some people, there's a lot more to be done. VICTORIA: Yeah. And you touched on something at the end there that wants me to bring up some of the advantages you can have being a small business, a minority-owned business, or woman-owned business, or veteran-owned business, so thinking about how you can form those connections, especially if you have one of those socio and economic set-asides that you might want to consider if they're looking to work with the government as well. ROBBIE: Yeah. Those socioeconomic set-asides include small businesses, woman-owned small business. I think it's Native and Alaskan 8(a), which is historically underrepresented and service-disabled veteran-owned. So, there are also sub-communities of associations, like there's the Digital WOSB, the digital Women-Owned Small Business alliance that was founded by Jess Morris from Pluribus Digital, and a bunch of other companies in the Digital Services Coalition. I believe she's the president of the Digital WOSB right now. That is a sub-community of women-owned small businesses that are trying to connect and create a community that they can support one another. And that's just one example of the type of connection you can make through those types of socioeconomic set-asides. But once you have those official socioeconomic set-asides, it will allow you to get specific contracts engagements in the government that are not allowed or available for others. So, the government procurement process will have some amount of these specific socioeconomic set-asides that need to be hit. Like, 8% of all procurements need to go to this and 10% of all procurements need to go to this. So, I think the VA is probably one of the most effective at hitting any of the socioeconomic set-asides, specifically related to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. So, if you happen to be a person of color and you found a business and you are female presenting, right? You may have 8(a) woman-owned small business. If you also happen to be a veteran and you're service-disabled, all of those things stack. You don't just get to have one of them. And they can be really effective in helping a business get a leg up and starting out and trying to help even the playing field for those communities. VICTORIA: Yeah. What I really appreciated about my experience working with Pluribus Digital, and you, and people who had had that experience in the U.S. Digital Services, that there is this community and desire to help each other out and that you can have access to people who know how to move your product forward, get you the connections that you need to be competitive, and to go after the work. So, I love encouraging people to consider civic tech options. And maybe even say more about just how impactful some of it can be. And what kind of missions are you solving in these spaces? ROBBIE: Yeah, I often try to remind people, especially those who are heading towards or considering civic tech, there are very few places in this world that you can work on something that can impact millions of people. Sure, I was lucky enough. I have tons of privilege. I worked at a lot of wacky places that have given me the access to do the type of work that I think is impactful, but very little has the kind of impact. Like, when I was interviewed by Marina Nitze as, my last interview when I joined USDS, she sent me an email at the end of it and said like, "Everything was great. I look forward to working with you. And remember, every time you commit code into our GitHub, you'll be helping 8 million veterans." And then, she cc'd Todd Park. And Todd was the CTO of the U.S., and he responded back within a minute. Todd is one of the most busy people. It was amazing to me how fast he responded. But he was like, "Lemme tell you, as somebody who can talk on behalf of our president, our country needs you." And those kinds of things they're hard to comprehend. And then, I joined the Digital Service team at the VA. And one of the first things that I got to support was the 10-10EZ. It's the healthcare application for veterans. And before I got there, it was a hosted PDF that we were trying to replace. And the team had been working for months to try to build a new, modern solution. What it was is it was, like, less than six submissions were happening a day because it only worked in Adobe Acrobat, I think it was 6.5 and below, and Internet Explorer 8.5 and below. And if you think about the people that could submit utilizing that limited set of technologies, it was slowly becoming homeless veterans who were using library computers that had not been upgraded. So, there was a diminishing amount of value that it was providing. And then, on top of it, it was sort of lying to veterans. If the version of the Adobe Acrobat was out of date, or wrong, or too new, it would tell them to upgrade their browser. So, like, it was effectively not providing any value over time. We were able to create a new version of that and that was already well on its way when I joined, but we were able to get it out the door. And it was a React frontend using a Node backend to talk to that SOAP API endpoint. Within the first week, we went from 6 submissions a day to 60 submissions a day. It's a joke, right? We were all 10x developers. We were like, "Look at us. We're killing it." But about three years later, Matt Cutts came to a staff meeting of USDS, and he was the second administrator of the USDS. And he brought the cake that had the actual 10-10EZ form on it, and it said, "500,000." And he had checked with the analytics team, and there were over 500,000 submissions of that form, which means there are 500,000 possible veterans that now may or may not have access to healthcare benefits. Those are big problems. All of that was done by changing out one form. It opened up the world. It opened up to a group of veterans that no one else was able to do. They would have had to go into a veteran's office, and they would have had to fill it out in paper. And some veterans just don't have the ability to do that, or don't have an address, or don't have a...so, there are so many reasons why having a digital form that worked for veterans was so important. But this one form that we digitized and we helped make modern has been submitted so many times and has helped so many veterans and their families. And that's just one example. That's just one form that we helped digitize. But now the team, I mean, I'm back in the VA ecosystem. There's, like, 2,500 people in the general channel in the office of the CTO Slack organization. That's amazing. There's people there that are working all day, every day, trying to solve the same problems that I was trying to solve when I got here. And there's so much work being done to help veterans. But that's just one example, right? Like, at USDS, I know that the digital filing for the free version of your tax form, the IRS e-file Direct, just went live. That was something that USDS had been working on for a very long time behind the scenes. And that's going to impact everybody who submits their taxes. These are the kind of problems that you get to work on or the scope of some of the problems if you work in these types of organizations, and that's really powerful. It's the thing that keeps drawing me back. I'm back supporting the VA again through some contracts in my business. But it's funny, like, I was working for another agency. I was over working at DHS on an asylum project. And a friend of mine kept telling people to tell me, "Man, veterans need you. If only there was another one of you to help us over here, that would be great." And eventually, it led to me being like, well, veterans need me. I'm going to go back to the VA. And that was my second tour at USDS at the Department of Veteran Affairs. And now I'm back there again. So, it's a very impactful place to work. There's tons of value you can provide to veterans. And, to me, it's the kind of work that keeps bringing me back. I didn't realize just how much I was a, like, impact junkie until I joined USDS, and then it really came to a head. I cannot believe how much work I've gotten to be a part of that has affected and supported those who get benefits and services from the federal government. VICTORIA: [inaudible 33:47] impact junkie. That's funny. But yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. That's really interesting. Let me see if you could go back in time to when you first started in this journey; if you could give yourself any advice, what would you say? ROBBIE: Yeah, I think I spent so much time being nervous about not having my degree that I was worried it was going to hinder me forever. And it's pretty amazing the career I've been able to thread together, right? Like, you know, I've hit on a few of them already. But, like, I started with a small web hosting company, and then New York State in the Department of Social Services, then New York City in the Human Resources Administration, Sony Music, Zagat Survey, Google, Johnson & Johnson, IDT telecommunications, Phase2 technologies, where I got to work on an awful lot of problems in lots of awesome places like NBA.com, and Major League Soccer, and Bassmaster. And then, the United States Digital Service where I got to work on things supporting the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security over at ADA.gov in DOJ. I helped them out. And I worked over at USDA helping get Farmers.gov off the ground. So, everything on my left leg, tattoo-wise, is something that changed my life from my perspective. And I have a Drupal tattoo on the back of my leg. I have a DrupalCon. So, anytime somebody said "Drupal" anywhere near a USDS person, I would magically appear because they would just be like, "Oh, Robbie has that Drupal tattoo." So, I got to work on a lot of dot govs that eventually landed or were being built in Drupal. So, I got to support a lot of work. And it meant that I got to, like, float around in government and do a lot of things that others didn't get to do. When CISA stood up, which is the office of security inside of DHS, it's one of the newest sub-communities or subcomponents, they built DHS SchoolSafety.gov, which is a cross-MOU'd site. And I got to sit in and help at the beginning of that because of my Drupal background. But it was really fun to be the person who helped them work with the vendors and make sure that they understood what they were trying to accomplish and be a sort of voice of reason in the room. So, I did all of that work, and then after that, I went and worked at Pluribus Digital, where I got a chance to work side by side with you. And then, that led to other things, like, I was able to apply and become the director of Digital Services and software engineering for my local county. So, I worked for Prince William County, where I bought a house during the pandemic. And then, after that contract ended, I had already started my own business. So, that's led to me having multiple individual contracts with companies and so many people. I've gotten to work on so many different things. And I feel very lucky. If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it's just, take a breath. Everything's going to be okay. And focus on the things that matter. Focus on the things that are going to help you. Focus on community. Focus on delivering value. Everything else will work itself out. You know, I joke all the time that I'm really good at providing impact. If you can measure my life in impact and value, I would be a very rich man. If you can measure it in money, I'm doing all right, but I'm never going to be yacht Robbie, you know, but I'm going to do okay. VICTORIA: Oh my god, yacht Robbie. That's great. So, just to recap, everything's going to be okay. You never know where it's going to take you. And don't be limited by the things that you think, you know, make you not enough. Like, there's a lot of things that you can do out there. I really like that advice. ROBBIE: And I think one last piece is, like, community matters, if you are a part of communities and you do it genuinely, how much that will impact your career. I gave a talk from Drupal NYC to the White House and beyond. And I talked through my entire resume and how everything changed when I started doing community engagement. When I went to the Drupal community in New York City and how that led to Sony, and that led to Zagat, which led to me getting acquired by Google, like, these things all cascaded. And then, when I moved to the DMV, I was able to join here and continue supporting communities, which allowed me to bring people into the local civic tech community from the local DC tech community. So, so many of the best USDS engineers, and designers, and product people I was able to help influence to come to government were people I met in the community or the communities I helped support. You know, I was an early revivalist of Alexandria Code and Coffee. It was a community that was started and then wavered. And then, Sean McBeth reached out to the community and said, "Do we want to help and support getting it off the ground again?" And I immediately said, "Yes." And then, that led to my friends at BLACK CODE COLLECTIVE wanting to create a community where they could feel safe and connected and create a community of their own. And then DC Code & Coffee started. And from there, Baltimore Code & Coffee kicked off. And it's just really nice that, like, it doesn't matter where I've been. All these things keep coming back to be a part of community and help support others. And you will be surprised at how much you get back in return. I wouldn't be the person I am today in my community. I wouldn't have my career if it wasn't for the people who started and helped shepherd me when I was starting out. And I feel like I've been trying to do the same for people for a really long time. VICTORIA: I love that. That's what I say, too, when people ask me for advice on careers and how to grow. And my biggest piece is always to go out and meet people. And go to your community, like, look and see what's happening. Like, find people you like hanging out with and learning from. And just that should be the majority of your time probably if you're trying to figure out where to go with your career or even just, like, expand as a person sometimes [laughs]. Robbie, I was going to ask; you mentioned that you had bought a house in Virginia. One of my other warmup questions was going to be, what's your favorite thing to put on the grill? ROBBIE: My house in Virginia definitely gets a lot of use, especially in the spring and the fall. I'm a big fan of team no extreme when it comes to temperature. But during those time periods, my grill is often fired up. My favorite is probably to make skirt steak on the grill. I'm a huge fan of tacos, especially made out of skirt steak. I'm in all day. That's one of my favorites. I also love to smoke. I have a smoker because I'm a caricature-esque suburban dude. I'm going to live into all of the possible things I could have. But I've had a smoker for a long time, and I love making sort of poor man's burnt ends. It's one of my favorite things to make. But you got to have some time. That's the kind of thing that takes, you know, 14 hours or 16 hours, but it's really fun to take advantage of it. A quick thing I love to make is actually smoked salmon. It takes longer to brine it than it usually does to smoke it. But it is one of the nicest things I've made on my smoker, you know, fresh pesto on a piece of salmon is pretty awesome, or everything bagel. Everything with the bagel seasoning is a pretty fun way to smoke some salmon. VICTORIA: Wow, that sounds so good. I'm going to have to stop in next time I'm in Virginia and get some [laughs] and hang out. Do you have any questions for me? ROBBIE: I'm excited to see where you've gone and how you've gotten here. I think this is such a cool job for you. Knowing who you are as a person and seeing you land in a company like this is really exciting. And I think you getting to be a part of this podcast, which we were joking about earlier, is I've been listening to probably since it started. I've been a big fan for a long time. So, it's cool to be here on this podcast. But it's also cool that my friend is a part of this and gets to be a part of this legacy. I'm really excited to see where you go over time. I know my career has been changing, right? I worked in government. Before that, I did all kinds of other stuff. Nowadays I have my own business where I often joke I have sort of, like, three things I offer, which is, like, consigliere services. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Robbie on your executive team without having to pay them an executive salary? You know, another one is like, you know, strategy and mentoring, but these are all things I know you do also, which I think is cool. But I've been working on contracts where I support companies trying to figure out how they modernize, or how their CTO can be more hands-off keyboard, or how their new director of business development can be more of a technical leader and taking on their first direct reports. So, I just enjoy all those aspects, and I just think it's something that I've watched you do in the company where we worked together. And it's always fun to see what you're working on and getting a chance to catch up with you. I feel like you're one of those people that does a really great job of staying connected. Every once in a while, I'll get a random text message like, "Hey, how you doing?" It always makes me smile. I'm like, Victoria is a really good connector, and I feel like I am, but you're even better at it on the being proactive side. That's how this all came about, right? We caught up, and you were like, "Why don't you come on the podcast?" So, that's really exciting. VICTORIA: Well, thank you, Robbie. Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about community is you meet people. You're like, "Oh, you're really cool. And you're doing cool stuff all the time. Like, how can I support you in your journey [laughs]? Like, what's up?" Yeah, for me, it was hard to actually leave DC. I didn't, you know, really think about the impact of leaving behind my tech community, like, that network of people. It was pretty emotional for me, actually, especially when we finally, like, stopped doing the digital version [laughs]. And I, like, kind of gave up managing it from California, which was kind of funny anyways [laughs]. Yeah, so no, I'm grateful that we stayed in touch and that you made time to be here with us today. Is there anything else that you would like to promote? ROBBIE: You know, just to remind you, you've done a great job of transitioning into where you are today, but anybody can do that, right? Like, before I moved to the DC area, I was in New York, and I was helping to organize JavaScript events. And I started looking at the DC area before I moved down here. And I found the DC Tech Community. And I found the Node School DC GitHub organization and reached out to the person who had ownership of it and said I wanted to help and support. I looked at this the other day. I think I moved on May 8th, and then, like, May 11th, when I walked in the door, somebody was like, "Are you new?" And I was like, "Yeah, I just moved here." And they were like, "Oh, from where?" And I was like, "New York." And they were like, "Are you that guy who's been bugging Josh about running Node school events?" I was like, "Yeah." And like, they were planning an unconference at the end of the month. And they were like, "Would you like to run a Node school at that unconference?" Like, 27 days later. So, it was amazing that, like, I immediately, like, fell from the New York Community where I was super connected, but I went out of my way to try to, like, see what the community looked like before I got there. And I was lucky enough to find the right people, and immediately I joked...I think I wrote a blog post that said like, "I found my new friends. By, like, going from one community to another, gave a person who was in his 40s a chance to meet new people very quickly." And it was pretty amazing, and I felt very lucky. But I did spend a little bit of energy and capital to try to figure it out because I knew it was going to be important to me. So, I think you've done a really good job. You've helped launch and relaunch things that were going on in San Diego and becoming a part of this connection to more people. I think you and I have a very similar spirit, which is like, let's find a way to connect with humans, and we do it pretty effectively. VICTORIA: Well, thank you. That really boosts my confidence, Robbie [laughs]. Sometimes, you show up to an event you've never been to before by yourself, and it's like a deer in headlights kind of moment. Like, oh God, what have I done [laughs]? ROBBIE: Oh, and the last thing I need to mention is I also have a podcast. I have my podcast about film. It's called Geek on Film. I used to record it with my friend, Jon. He's a little busy right now. But I used to pitch it as a conversation show about the current films that were going on. Now, it's one lone geek's ramblings about what he just saw. It's a great podcast for me because it gives me an opportunity to think a little more critically about film, which is one of the things that I probably have almost enough credits to get a minor in. But I absolutely love cinema and film in general. And it's given me an opportunity to connect with a lot more people about this subject and also to scratch the itch of me being able to create something around a community and around a thing I really love. VICTORIA: That's super cool. Yeah. You're top of mind because I also like films. I'm like, what's Robbie up to? Like, what's the recommendations, you know [laughs]? Do you have a top film recommendation from the Oscars? Is that too big of a question? ROBBIE: So, the one I will say that didn't get enough spotlight shined on it was Nimona. So, I'm a huge fan of the Spider-Man movies. I think Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse are both masterpieces. But Nimona is an animated film that was picked up by Netflix, and it is amazing. I don't know that I laughed or cried or was more moved by a film last year. And I don't know that it gets enough credit for what it was. But it did get nominated for best-animated film, but I don't know that enough people paid attention to it. Like it may have gotten lost in the algorithm. So, if you get a chance, check out Nimona. It's one of those beautiful, little gems that, if you travel down its story, there's all these twists and turns. It was based on a webcomic that became a graphic novel. One of the production companies picked it up, and it wasn't going to see the light of day. And then, Netflix bought its distribution rights. There's going to be a great documentary someday about, like, Inside Nimona. But I think the movie itself is really charming and moving, and I was really impressed with it. So, that was the one that got me, like, just before the Oscars this year, where I was like, this is the little animated movie that could, in my opinion. It's so charming. VICTORIA: I will definitely have to check that out. Thank you for giving us that recommendation. ROBBIE: Totally. VICTORIA: Final question. I just wanted to see if you had anything to share about being an advisory board member for Gray and for Hutch Studio. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? ROBBIE: Yeah. So, Gray Digital was founded by a friend of mine. We met through United States Digital Service. And his organization...I had been supporting him for a while and just being behind the scenes, talking to him and talking through business-related issues. And it was really nice. He offered to make me an official advisory board member. It was a great acknowledgment, and I really felt moved. There's some great people that are supporting him and have supported him. They've done really great work. Gray is out there delivering digital services in this space. And I think I was really lucky to be a part of it and to support my friend, Randall. Hutch is different. Hutch is an organization that's kind of like if you think about it, it almost is a way to support entrepreneurs of color who are trying to make their way into the digital service delivery space. Being an advisory board member there has been really interesting because it's shaping how Hutch provides services and what their approach is to how to support these companies. But over the last year, I've convinced the person who's running it, Stephanie, with a couple of other people, to open the door up or crack the door so we could talk directly and support the individual companies. So, it's been really great to be a Hutch advisory member to help shape how Hutch is approaching things. But I've also been a part of, like, many interview processes. I've reviewed a lot of, like, [inaudible 48:01] who want to join the organization. And I've also created personal relationships with many of the people who are part of Hutch. And, you know, like, you know me personally, so you know I run a Day of the Dead party. We'll just party at my house every year. I have a huge amount of affection for Mexican culture and, in general, the approach of how to remember people who are a part of your life. So, this is, like, the perfect way for me to bring people together at my house is to say, like, "Hey, my dad was awesome. What about your family? Who are your people?" What's really nice is that has given me an opportunity to host people at my house. And I've had Hutch company owners at my house the last couple of years and the person who runs Hutch. So, it's a really great community that I look at that is trying to shape the next emergent companies that are helping deliver digital services across the government. And it's really fun to be early on in their career and help them grow. Again, it seems silly, but it's the thing I care a lot about. How do I connect with people and provide the most value that I can? And this is a way I can provide that value to companies that may also go off and provide that value. It's a little bit of an amplifier. So, I'm a huge fan of what we've been able to accomplish and being a part of it in any way, shape, or form. VICTORIA: Well, I think that's a really beautiful way to wrap it up. ROBBIE: Really glad to catch up with you and be a part of this amazing podcast. VICTORIA: Yeah, so much fun. Thank you again so much. It was great to be here with you today. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on thoughtbotsocial@vguido. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.
How can you be in intergrity and hide part of your story? That was one of the big takeaways from my conversation with Jaime Konzelman, sales leader at tech company Rackspace. Jaime wrote a memoir called, "Dealmaker" that chronicles her life from college into exotic dancing and on into a stellar B2B sales career. Jaime has done big deals - hundreds of millions of dollars worth, at companies like IBM, Unisys, and Xerox. She leads teams of sellers now. Jaime knows her stuff. Let us know how you like the episode - and please give us a rating on iTunes if you will - and a comment - and share with other women to help inspire them. More on Jaime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkonzelman/ More podcast episodes from Women Sales Pros: https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ Shoutout to our sponsor, Skillibrium! https://skillibrium.com/
My guest this week is Umang Shah, Vice President of Marketing, Enablement and Effectiveness for Northwestern Mutual. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Umang has had stops at Xerox, Microsoft, Walmart, Unisys, among many others.
Maggie Peña is the Chief Experience Officer at Interlace Health (the next generation of FormFast), a 30 year old privately held healthcare IT firm that delivers scalable and cost-effective forms automation and eSignature solutions for healthcare organisations. She brings 22 years of experience in IT to her role and leads one third of Interlaces Health's employees. With a fierce focus on customer satisfaction and retention, Maggie created and built Interlace Health's customer support team and its customer implementation strategy, she built out the company's fully Spanish-speaking team for project implementation, and ongoing customer support, and she has managed the company's managed services program to create efficiencies for customers. She believes in a proactive approach to customer service, and it shows with happy and successful customers. Under Maggie's leadership, Interlace Health currently has a 97.4% customer retention rate. Maggie serves as a co-leader for the HIMSS Clinician Burden Reduction Task Force and was recently named Becker's 2023 Women in Health IT to Know list. Questions • Could you share a little bit about your journey, how you got to where you are today. • Can you tell our listeners maybe three key things that you've done consistently that you believe has contributed to the success of achieving a 97.4% customer retention rate? • Can you tell us maybe some of the criteria that you use to select those customers? What type of customer do you look for to ensure that they are the ones that you're joining your counsel? • Now, could you also share with our listeners what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? • Now we'd also like for you to share with us maybe one or two books that you've read. It could be a book that you read a very long time ago or even one that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you. • As a customer, what are maybe three things that are critical for you to actually say, yes, this was a great customer experience. • Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. • Are there are some key behaviours or competencies that you look for when you're hiring persons for those roles as customer support? • Where can listeners find you online? • Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track? This quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Maggie's Journey Me: So, just wanted to take some time before we jump into the meat of our conversation for you to share with our listeners a little bit about your journey. I know we would have read your bio, but we always like to ask the guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about how you got to where you are today. Maggie shared that it has been an interesting journey. When she started college, she wanted to be an accountant. But after her first accounting course, she quickly realized that was not her calling. So, the path that really paved her way to where she is today started in the financial industry during her junior year working part time for a local bank and the IT department, processing operations for almost 30 banks throughout the state, working with a Unisys mainframe and green screen terminals for the very first time. And she thinks she just might have dated herself, but that's okay. So, all kidding aside, it was a great learning experience nonetheless. By then, she had switched majors and was now pursuing a degree in Computer Information Systems. And her time at the bank confirmed and validated her interest in technology and how we can use technology to automate processes to increase efficiencies and customer service as we knew it back then, now that customer experiences tends to be a newer word, back in the day, we were thinking at it as customer service. She was lucky enough to stay at the bank for almost 7 years until the bank was acquired by an international bank with plans to move their IT operations someplace else. At that point, she knew that it was time to move on and look for something else. So, she joined a local health care system, also working in their IT department supporting the business and financial side of the hospital. After about a year, Interlace Health, formerly FormFast as said came into her life when the hospital purchased a forms automation solution. So, fast forward a couple of years, she had the opportunity to join the NRA Health team and have now been there for almost 13 years. Key Strategies that Contributed to the Success of Achieving a 97.4% Customer Retention Rate Me: So, in your bio, it says that you've managed to achieve a 97.4% customer retention rate. Can you tell our listeners maybe three key things that you've done consistently that you believe has contributed to that success? Maggie shared that at Interlace Health, they believe in putting people first, so that is their mission. They put people over paperwork, and it has reflected on the solutions that they provide their customers and the solution is that they innovate and so on, so forth. But even in the services, she has a belief that software alone doesn't cut it anymore, it just doesn't. Anyone can have a similar product or a similar solution as you, it really comes down to the level of service that you provide your customers and the experience that they encounter throughout the entire journey. So, first and foremost, they put people first, always there for their customers, they have also built a dedicated team within the services department at Interlace Health, always to be their specialized in what they do, enabled to deliver personalized and attentive support to their customers, they are there with them, they understand their business, they understand their needs, and they're always available. Again, to address it, regardless of what the need may be, the COVID pandemic was huge, it was terrible, but it was an opportunity for them to be there for their customers and continue providing the service, and not just the service, but continue providing the same level of service to enable them to continue providing the care that they needed to provide even more so during those difficult times. And then three, they embrace feedback from their customers, the good, the bad, and the Ugly, like the saying. They're always there, they have established a Customer Success Council and it's composed of their most engaged, knowledgeable customers who advises on their products or solutions, they share the best practices. And quite frankly, they give candid feedback. It's not always what they want to hear, but at the end of the day is what they want to hear, because their feedback and their insights have helped make informed decisions as they improve their products and services. And they are pretty much the ones helping them guide their path forward as it comes to their products and services. Criteria for Selecting Customers to Join Your Customer Success Council Me: Now, in addition to those three things that has contributed to your customer retention rate being at 97.4%. And I know you mentioned a customer council that you say you use to guide you. Can you tell us maybe some of the criteria that you use to select those customers? What type of customer do you look for to ensure that they are the ones that you're joining your council? Maggie shared that they offer various solutions. So, they try to get customers that are using different types of solutions, right? Because obviously, there's different needs that each solution addresses. First, they started with their internal team, and they asked them who are your champions? Who are your stellar contacts that are customers who know their products, they know it well, they're using it consistently and that's the criteria. It's also customers that are using their solutions successfully and consistently. But they try to get customers who weren't using it as much or adopting it as they would like them to, to get involved, to tell them why, what are your challenges? What are your staff or your patients telling you about your solutions or their solutions in this case, that is keeping you from using it to its fullest potential? So, it was really customers that were mostly engaged and customers that they have communication with, but not to the extent like the fully engaged ones, if that makes sense so that we could get both sides of the house, those that are using it a lot and those that are struggling for various reasons, they wanted to hear from them as well. App, Website or Tool that Maggie Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Maggie shared that she would say internally, Microsoft Teams. Prior to pandemic, Interlace Health, they've always been a remote company. So, mostly everyone was remote, she's been remote almost 13 years there. But since pandemic, she thinks Microsoft Teams have kept them very well connected not just internally but with their customers in the hospital setting, that is what they've seen use the most is Microsoft Teams. And then internally to keep track of their customers and their data and their metrics and so on, so forth. Everything that they need to know about their customers, they use Salesforce platform. Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Maggie When asked about books that have had a great impact, Maggie shared that The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen Covey. She loves that book and it's been a while, she's probably going to read it again. And the question got her thinking she needs to reread it again. But it's been a few years since she's read it. And she loves how it gives clarity into how trusted leaders do things differently, faster and at a lower cost. She's a true believer that trust drives everything, and how it produces better results. So, that's one. And then the second one not so much a book, because he's got plenty of books, but John Maxwell, anything, everything John Maxwell, he's amazing. She first heard him 5 years ago at a Global Leadership Summit. The one thing that struck the most from that Summit was when he was talking about looking for ways to add value to people, he called it be an added value liver. Where he was talking about throughout the day, going from knowing to doing, from thinking and looking to making sure it's an action. And at the end of the day, ask yourself, “Did I add value to people today?” Again, John Maxwell, he is someone who she constantly sees his videos, she's purchased some training, she even purchases trainings there at work for her direct reports as well to see and to encounter and to read and learn from his teachings. So, those are the two that she can think of. As a Customer, Three Critical Things to Have a Great Customer Experience Me: Now I know as your role as a Chief Experience Officer at Interlace Health, you are focused on providing the service to your clients. But I'd like to flip the script a little and put you in the in the hotbox where you are the customer. So, when you think about your own interactions with organizations that you do business with, what are maybe three things that are critical for you to actually say, yes, this was a great customer experience. Maggie stated that the sense of trust. She talked about trust, the book. So, she would say trust, transparency, and personalization, if she had to put it into just three words. This would be her top three that comes to mind right away. Me: So, trust, transparency, and personalization. Maggie stated that personal life experience, she's huge on that. Just, for example, even when she goes to restaurants, the first thing she looks at when the waiter approaches her is their name badge, because she wants to address them by their name. And she always does, it's just that personal touch and everything that we do, to her, that's very important. Me: It's always the little things. What Maggie is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that she's excited about, Maggie shared that just with the new CXO role, she's excited about it because it's going to allow her to work with the entire organization on the customer journey from the initial awareness to implementation support and beyond. So, she's excited to continue creating a more holistic customer centric culture at Interlace Health, while developing and implementing a comprehensive customer experience strategy. And Yanique did the bragging, she (Maggie) was going to brag a little bit about their customer retention rate. So, that's also exciting for them at Interlace Health at the moment, which is that customer retention rate of 97.4%. Key Behaviours or Competence for Hiring Customer Support Me: Could you also share with us with, your customer support team that you had built out, how many persons are on that team? Maggie shared that they have the team, they're thinking about everyone that's doing support, a good 10 people. Me: So, you got 10 people on that support team. And so, I just wanted to know if there are some key behaviours or competencies that you look for when you're hiring persons for those roles. Maggie shared that yes, they need competency, they need people that know what they know, that they're intelligent, and they know what's expected of them. But she looks more on attitude, because you can teach the skills that they need to know in order to support the customers. You'll teach them the product and the solutions and all the intricacies right of what they do. But the attitude, that is not something they can teach. So, she hires for attitude. And so, that's a big one for her. At Interlace Health, they look for people who are motivated and you have to, in this remote world, you have to be self-motivated. We're no longer in front of other people to help us get through the day. So, you need self-motivated individuals, absolutely intelligent, competent people, but people that have the attitude, who are going to be there for their customers, because not every single call is a good call, and that's life. Some calls aren't always the best calls, but they want people who are going to have the attitude and turn a not so good call into a positive call at the end of the day while we're helping their customers resolve their problems. Where Can We Find Maggie Online Website – https://interlacehealth.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiepeña/ Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Maggie Uses When asked about quote that she tends to revert to, Maggie shared that there's one that she has that she's used personally since a very young age. And that is simple, “If anyone else can do it, so can I.” and like she said, that since she can remember going through school, college, you name it, she's always had that in her mind if anyone else can do it, so can I. Then she has a second one too as it relates to her professional setting at work and with her team as they're looking to do something new, whether it's a new process, a new approach to something, anything new that they're talking about doing, she always tells them, “Let's try it, what's the worst that can happen?” So, those are the two quotes that you'll hear her say quite a bit depending on the situation. Me: Perfect. I love the second one, “Let's do it, what's the worst that can happen?” Maggie stated, what's the worst that can happen? If it doesn't work, it wasn't working anyway. Me: There's one that goes, “You miss all of the shots that you never take.” That quote kind of reminds me of that one. Maggie, I just wanted to express our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today. And sharing about your journey as well as what your organization is doing and just how it is that you've been able to really make customer experience shine in your organization and achieve the high level of retention rate, how it is that you focus on ensuring that your customers are getting what they need, and not necessarily what organization wants to give them but you have something in place where you really use the voice of the customer on a regular basis. And you can see it manifest into your customer satisfaction and retention scores. So, thank you again for joining us today. Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Links • The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen Covey The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!
As we move towards the end of 2023, and after the major conferences of the year, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the state of the profession. Gwen Hassan, Deputy Chief Compliance Officer at Unisys and host of the #HiddenTraffic podcast, and Kim Yapchai, member of the Board of Directors for DirectWomen and former Senior Vice President, Chief Environmental, Social and Governance Officer at Tenneco joined Ellen Hunt and Lisa Fine talk about where the ethics and compliance profession has been, where we are today, and where we are going. They discuss what makes them optimistic, and what gives them pause. The Great Women in Compliance Podcast is on the Compliance Podcast Network with a selection of other Compliance-related offerings. GWIC is also sponsored by Corporate Compliance Insights, where we have a page where you can hear every episode. If you are enjoying this episode, please rate it and/or provide a review. Corporate Compliance Insights is a much-appreciated sponsor and supporter of GWIC, including affiliate organization CCI Press publishing the related book; “Sending the Elevator Back Down, What We've Learned from Great Women in Compliance” (CCI Press, 2020). If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review. Don't forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you're done, or if you can't bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat. If you enjoyed the book, the GWIC team would be very grateful if you would consider rating it on Goodreads and Amazon and leaving a short review. Don't forget to send the elevator back down by passing on your copy to someone who you think might enjoy reading it when you're done, or if you can't bear parting with your copy, consider it as a holiday or appreciation gift for someone in Compliance who deserves a treat. You can subscribe to the Great Women in Compliance podcast on any podcast player by searching for it and we welcome new subscribers to our podcast. Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.
Jaime Konzelman is a sought-after motivational speaker, executive coach, and 11x #1 best-selling author with 20 years' experience in complex services sales and leadership.As the Vice President of Global Strategic Sales at Unisys, a global IT Services Firm, she leads a multi-national sales organization responsible for over $1.5 billion a year in new logo business. As an executive coach she empowers individuals and teams to unleash their potential and awaken their dreams – one conversation at a time.Jaime's excited for the publication of her debut memoir, Dealmaker -- where she takes readers on a journey behind the closed doors of American's greatest strip clubs. Jaime's journey from college drop to headlining adult feature entertainer to eventually an enterprise-level sales executive and one of the top-rated Dealmakers in the world is one that inspires readers that anything they want in their life is possible through perseverance. Hailed as, "a coming of age story for the ages, " Jaime discovers the financial riches she had been chasing with vengeance was actually a deeper quest for personal worthiness and a way to serve others as access to fulfilling her deepest desires and greatest ambitions.A Harvard trained leadership facilitator, Jaime holds a plethora of coaching certifications and is a nationally ranked triathlete. She coaches private clients and works with corporations by facilitating leadership, sales, and wellness trainings known to transform organizational culture. When not speaking and coaching, you can find her engaged in a DIY home project, or spending time in her backyard with her wife and three Labradors.https://jaimekonzelman.com/ https://www.facebook.com/JaimeKonzelman/ https://www.instagram.com/jaimekonzelman/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkonzelman/
Unisys is a global technology solutions company dedicated to helping organizations drive innovation and excel at customer experience. The company recently reimagined its own customer journey by moving to a cloud-based customer experience platform — to better address what matters most to its clients and their users. What might have been a complex implementation was simplified with extensive planning, collaboration and communication, as well as taking an agile, test-and-learn approach. In this episode, Aron Meyer, Digital Workplace Solutions Architect at Unisys, explains how the company was able to eliminate seven legacy platforms and move more than 100 client organizations from across 12 global locations to that cloud-based customer experience platform.
This week on the Revenue Insights Podcast we are bringing you a very special episode all about deal slippage. Featuring insights from our previous guests Sandeep Wagchoure, Jeremy Bono, Steven Birdsall, Joey Gilkey, and Jaime Konzelman, this is an episode you don't want to miss out on. Sandeep Waghchoure is the Vice President of Sales Operations at insightsoftware. His career has primarily revolved around Dell, where he assumed several significant leadership positions, culminating in the role of Senior Director of Global Finance Operations. In 2022, he embarked on a new chapter, joining insightsoftware, where he is spearheading the development and expansion of operational capabilities aimed at achieving enhanced sales productivity and accelerated quote-to-cash velocity within a dynamic and rapidly growing environment. Jeremy Bono is a visionary leader with a record of developing and executing strategies that drive growth and profitability in hyper-competitive markets. As the current GM/VP Sales at Phenom, he is responsible for leading enterprise and industry vertical sales teams. He is further an Executive Member of Pavilion, hosting monthly standup meetings with other members to create a community to share and learn. Steven Birdsall is an impressive and passionate man, having been a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) four times over, and a Chief Operating Officer (COO) six. His most recent role was as the Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Qlik, and prior to that he was the Head of HCM Cloud Application Sales at Oracle; CRO at Anaplan; and the Executive Vice President and CRO at Radial Inc. Joey Gilkey is a serial founder and entrepreneur with multiple high-value exits behind him. He is the CEO of Apex Revenue which operates as a fractional VP of Sales to ramp sales results at established B2B companies. He is an innovative thought leader because he thinks outside of the box, strips away what's superfluous, and focuses on the core drivers of sales outcomes. Joey believes that with the evolution of technology and processes, companies have added multiple layers over the core processes hence losing sight of what counts. Jaime Konzelman is the Vice President of Sales at Unisys. Jaime has also held the position of Vice President of Sales at Atos. Before that, she was a Marketing Manager at Acxiom, Luxor Hotel and Casino, and Posterscope. She also has vast knowledge and experience in business and people management and is constantly looking for ways to improve relationships that will foster business growth.
Today we're going to talk about prioritization and how to, as advisors both within and outside of a company, balance the things customers need to have versus what you know they need. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Bobby Arbuthnot, Director Solutions Management, Employee Experience at Unisys. RESOURCES Unisys website: https://www.unisys.com The Agile Brand podcast website: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/theagilebrandpodcast Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-brand/ For consulting on marketing technology, customer experience, and more visit GK5A: https://www.gk5a.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems.Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Janice Burg-Levi is a former Business & Marketing Executive with a diverse background in financial services, global telecommunications, media, and technology.She has spent her career leading business strategy and marketing at companies such as AT&T, Avaya, Unisys, Accenture, and KPMG, and now is the owner and CEO of Intracoastal Marketing and Strategy Group, LLC.She is also the host of a national podcast called It's Great Business.In today's episode of Smashing the Plateau, you will learn how a career-leading business strategy and marketing for global companies empower the success of a new CEO in her own business.Janice and I discuss:Her career, relationships, and community [02:39]How community led to Janice's podcast [08:28]What caused Janice to start her own business [11:18]The hidden cost of not having a marketing plan [15:16]Business transformation you can achieve with effective marketing [17:31]Learn more about Janice at https://intracoastalmarketingstrategy.com and get in touch with Janice at janice@intracoastalmarketingstrategy.com.Thank you to Our Sponsor:The Smashing the Plateau Community
The current transition to an ESM approach can't only rely on IT-based practices, processes, and frameworks. Certified coach John Worthington unlocks the power of Unified Service Management and explains how adopting this method can help achieve the standardization of services across the whole organization. He highlights its simplicity and the fact that it is able to support all coexisting frameworks as its strongest points to create a solid and stable foundation for enterprises to count on. John Worthington is an ITIL V3 expert, an XLA master, and a certified USM coach. He has over 40 years of experience in Information Technology. John began his career managing sales for a custom app dev team at Unisys and doing sales and quality improvement at AT&T. He moved into Service Management and business development for a few companies before starting MyServiceMonitor. He now serves as a major contributor and fan to the expansion Unified Service Management method in the United States.
We talk a lot here about Edge-based AI and all the things that it can accomplish. But that leaves out a significant portion of the market, that being Cloud-based AI and machine learning.According to one expert, Christina Mongan, the Director of Emerging Technologies on the Innovation Ecosystem and Emerging Technologies team at Unisys, Cloud-based AI is experiencing significant growth. To understand why that's happening and what can be expected going forward, I spoke to Christina on this week's Embedded Executives podcast.
Camila and Ana chat about Canada's first standardised and purpose-built computer for eduction, the Icon. Prior to launching in 1984, it made promises of a hypertext learning utopia where it simplified lives of both students and teachers. The girls kick off by exploring the definition of failure (after Camila had gone to see the Minitel at the Museum of Failure), and end by discussing the criticisms of top-down government projects that stumped potential hypertext projects.Follow us on Twitter @OurFriendCompAnd Instagram @ourfriendthecomputerMain research for the episode was done by Ana who also audio edited.Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)OFtC is a sister project of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder. References:- Musuem of Failure, https://museumoffailure.com/- Wierzbicki, Barbara, “Icon: Canada's system for schools”, InfoWorld, 7 Nov 1983, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0C8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA33&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false- UNISYS > Icon, www.old-computers.com, https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=971- Eckert, Jason, “ Ontario's Computer: The Burroughs ICON”, 3 Apr 2022, https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/icon-computer/
We talk a lot here about Edge-based AI and all the things that it can accomplish. But that leaves out a significant portion of the market, that being Cloud-based AI and machine learning. According to one expert, Christina Mongan, the Director of Emerging Technologies on the Innovation Ecosystem and Emerging Technologies team at Unisys, Cloud-based AI is experiencing significant growth. To understand why that's happening and what can be expected going forward, I spoke to Christina on this week's Embedded Executives podcast.
In this episode of the Revenue Insights Podcast, host Lee Bierton is joined by Jaime Konzelman, Vice President, Sales North America & Canada at Unisys. They explore the intricacies of cultivating meaningful connections with individuals, delving into various subjects that encompass the significance of relationships and effective strategies for building them in the year 2023. Additionally, Jaime shares valuable career guidance to leaders on navigating and prospering in times of economic downturn.
Weston Morris is the Senior Director for Global Strategy for Digital Workplace Solutions at Unisys, and the podcast host of the Digital Workplace Deep Dive. The conversation dives into the quickly evolving world of Experience Level Agreements (XLA) are changing the way we look at IT services, focusing on actual business impact and employee productivity. Find out how Unisys research found out that the typical employee loses between 1-5 hours of productive work time per week and what that could mean in monetary terms in different business contexts. Key Takeaways Experience management recognizes that the end-user expectations of experience changes over time. The new view and desired view of IT is an enabler of productive work, closely linked to the bigger company goals. The new conversation between IT and business uses experience management as a tool to understand the end-users in new ways. XLA 1.0 was mostly about measuring technical data, the DEX scores XLA 2.0 collects data from multiple sources, are persona based XLAs and linked to business goals. Links Digital Workplace Deep Dive Podcast: https://www.unisys.com/dws-deep-dive/ Weston Morris LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/westonjmorris/ From surviving to thriving in hybrid work report: https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/microsites/hfs/hfs-from-surviving-to-thriving-in-hybrid-work.pdf To learn more about how HappySignals Built-in XLA Management works: https://www.happysignals.com/product/xla-management
The ultimate goal for tech should be to improve people's everyday life, both employees and customers. Rocky McGuire (Unisys) shares with us what leaders should be putting their eye on, and some of the crucial parts of running a world class service desk team. He points out the value of investing in people, serving the community, and finding purpose in the workplace. He also takes a look into the future, where proactive and predictive solutions should be central and the customers' holistic experience should be priority. Rocky McGuire is the Experience Manager at Unisys, an award winning HDI Certified Service Desk. He has worked for many years in service and support experience for the IT Industry. Starting out as a service desk agent, he then took on a leadership role as a Team Lead Training Coordinator. He finally transitioned first into an Operations Manager and then into an Experience Manager.
Interview With Alison Graham, Global Exec, Lead Dad AdvocateHOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVANAlison Graham, a native Australian, came to the States 25 years ago and has had a remarkable career in tech - Unisys. Computer Associates. IBM. Salesforce. Amazon Web Services. She credits her Lead Dad husband - who was also working in tech - with being the go-to parent when she was traveling at different times in her career. Hear what he did that mattered. ---Get our free newsletter covering all things fatherhood delivered straight to your inbox: https://thecompanyofdads.com/thedad/
Dr. Pat Baxter uses her extensive experience to lead high-impact culture change while retaining valuable talent. Her work has focused on developing leadership at all levels. Her industry expertise includes financial services, technology, customer service, retail and pharmaceuticals. She has served around the globe as a senior-level Leadership Development leader in UNISYS, CITI, Sykes Enterprises, Deloitte & Touche Consulting, Right Management. As an executive consultant and coach, she has worked with industry leaders such as American Express, Dollar General, Comcast, Toyota, and Quintiles Pharmaceuticals to name a few. Pat holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership, and an BS and MS from the City University of New York. She is certified in several well-known, validated assessments including EQ 2.0®; Crucial Conversations®; Conflict Dynamics Profile® and the Birkman®. Pat has served on numerous boards around the country and with several universities including the Center of Ethics at the University of Tampa and the Society of Emotional Intelligence. She is a founding member of the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association (HBA) in Florida. Pat is a recipient of the Society of Emotional Intelligence Ambassador Award and is the author of two books ‘Cool Change: Turning Emotions into Leadership Strengths' (2015) and ‘101 Ways to Grow an Awesome Team Using Emotional Intelligence” (2019). A native New Yorker, Pat is bilingual (Spanish), and currently resides in Jacksonville, Florida drpatbaxter.com
Happy New Year! Chad Jespersen retired from the United States Air Force in June 2021. With the COVID 19 pandemic ramping up as he was preparing to transition out of the service, he was forced to find innovative ways to network, which he did, including extensive use of Zoom and other online tools to meet people who could help him with his goal to find his next career. What was clear from our conversations, both this one and another that we had offline, Chad is a person who not only talks about the importance of networking, but practices it. Familiar with the numerous programs such as Hiring Our Heroes, Candorful, Fourblock, and American Corporate Partners, Chad is a walking encyclopedia. Now working for Unisys in HR and acquisitions, Chad is a great source for information and tips about making the transition from active duty to the civilian sector. His LinkedIn profile is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-jespersen/
Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, and Carrington Vanston Topic: Cause the Commodordian Is Keeping Up With You 1961 was all fine and good, but someone has made an accordion out of two Commodore 64s and a bunch of floppy disks. Topic/Feedback links: Neural net on a C64. Minus zero at fourmilab OS 2200 Unisys … Continue reading RCR Episode 261: Cause the Commodordian is Keeping Up With You →
In this episode, Matt Florian of Comerit rejoins Mustansir Saifuddin to discuss the importance of managing organizational change as enterprises take on cloud based analytics. It's not enough to choose an analytics tool. Successful companies take the time to look at how organizational change gets to be addressed; from awareness, decision making, implementation, and finally institutionalizing it. His key takeaway: Not addressing a change strategy will inherently increase your risk of not achieving your objectives for your cloud analytics initiative. Matt has more than 25 years of leadership in data and enterprise architecture in numerous industries. He has successfully delivered enterprise data transformation projects for government, telecommunication, retail, manufacturing, and financial services sectors. Matt began consulting focusing on data warehousing in telecommunication for national providers. Over the course of his career has consulted for Oracle, IBM, and Unisys across many industries. His leadership, experience, and clarity of technical topics earned him the trust of client executive leadership. Matt's talent to develop and lead teams is the key to his successful delivery of projects for clients. Connect with Us: LinkedIn: Matt Florian Mustansir Saifuddin Innovative Solution Partners Twitter: @Mmsaifuddin YouTube or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation. Episode Transcript [00:00:03.390] - Mustansir Saifuddin Welcome to Tech-Driven Business, brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this third episode of a multipart series, I welcome back Matt Florian of Comerit. Listen in as Matt and I discuss the importance of addressing organizational change. When you pursue a cloud analytics initiative, we'll drive into real-life scenarios to highlight the value of alignment of business and .IT [00:00:35.440] - Mustansir Saifuddin Hello Matt, welcome to Tech During Business. How are you man? [00:00:39.370] - Matt Florian I am doing very well. Mustansir, how are you sir? [00:00:43.840] - Mustansir Saifuddin Wonderful. Thank you for joining us today. [00:00:48.490] - Matt Florian I'm happy to be here, happy to join you once again. These have been fantastic talks and look forward to more. [00:00:56.360] - Mustansir Saifuddin Awesome. So I'd like to continue our discussion. I know we started this conversation some time ago where we dived into transitioning to cloud data warehouse and also looked into hybrid environments and some of the benefits that customers are reaping going that route. So today I would like to focus on organizational change in cloud analytics and why are they so important in the whole cloud journey? How does that sound to you? [00:01:29.020] - Matt Florian It sounds great. It's a conversation, a topic that is too often overlooked. So let's get to it. [00:01:36.640] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely. So I think let's start with the basics, right? I mean, can you help explain the role of organizational change when it comes to cloud analytics? Can you just simplify that? [00:01:49.690] - Matt Florian You know, it's such an important piece on the cloud analytics and like I said, it's not discussed often enough. Being in IT for over 25 years, and you and I have both been around the block quite a bit and worked with different companies of all shapes and sizes. And their failures in analytics always come down to a very common thing, and that is they didn't incorporate the change, the organizational change that is part of it. And organizational change is very difficult in and of itself. Right. The study of literature says that the estimates of organizational change initiatives failed 60% to 70% of the time, and that's something that hasn't changed since the 70s. It's just a consistent theme. So lack of having good engagement, bringing in experts like you and I to go and do this and then relying on us to actually convey it, well, that's a big cost. Because if we don't have managers involved in organizational change and institutionalizing that is who they are, then going to the cloud is not going to solve your problem. [00:03:05.590] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely. I think that being said, I know that's one of the biggest, bigger challenges especially is outside the realm of the technical delivery of objects. Right. But when you think about organizational change, what are some of the critical or change management components that customers get to have in place? Would you be able to dive into that detail about some of the critical change components that are very important? [00:03:39.560] - Matt Florian Sure. Organizational change, it's a body of knowledge that has been built up by business schools and organizational psychology has studied us and has given us a breadth of knowledge to build from and we have frameworks to work from. As a matter of fact, I think if you went and searched on Amazon today, you'd probably find 1000 books published in the last three or four years that talk about organizational change and how to succeed and everybody's opinion on it and what it comes down to. But I think that when you think about organizational change and you spoil it down and boil down what those 500 books, I have to say it really comes down to four really critical phases. That is awareness, making the decision to do something, implementing it and then institutionalizing it. And those are the four key phases of organizational change. [00:04:45.490] - Mustansir Saifuddin That's good to know and those are important areas, right? Especially when it comes to something that is new and it's very broad. When you talk about cloud analytics, we are talking about a lot of different things in play. So when you mentioned those critical change components, right, is there an example that you can share with us about any one of those? [00:05:16.910] - Matt Florian Yeah, so awareness really starts off with business and IT both come to an agreement, a recognition that there's a problem. And the problem is that you'll see when it comes to analytics are problems like we're not achieving our organic growth metrics, we're not lowering the cost, we're not gaining insights, we're reacting instead of being proactive and respond to the market. And those are all pieces of awareness. And awareness can also be that we're not making bright investments in technology. The business has been implementing different data visualization and analytics tools all across and nobody has a common platform. So as a result, spending a lot of money on a lot of different tools that are telling you different stories and those all can lead into that awareness. With awareness we have a problem, we're not achieving our goals, we're not controlling our costs, we need to do analytics better. And that really they can lead into decision, right? And those are all problems that everybody's seen, it's nothing new. And then the decision part then is, well we got to do something about this. And where I think a lot of companies stumble is that they jump to the decision and say, we're going to go cloud analytics. [00:06:49.390] - Matt Florian Well, cloud analytics is not a decision, it's an architecture, it's a technology. But the decision really needs to be a collaboration between the business and IT on what that vision is. Because they went and started using other analytics tools for a reason, they went outside and did things differently for a reason. There's a need that wasn't being met. So jumping to analytics and cloud analytics isn't the answer, it's creating a shared vision is the answer. What do we want this new vision to look like? And that very well could be cloud analytics. But it's cloud analytics and other things and other things in the cloud. So that really drives into that decision. We're going to do something and we now have a shared vision of what that is. We shared the architecture and our solution and how we're all going to do this. And we're going to achieve this within some set budget, which then drives us an execution go to do it. And execution still requires a whole lot of communication, though, because during execution, we may have had a great plan of what our decision was, but the execution comes down and we have to start making changes and adjustments and react to different things along the way. [00:08:07.470] - Matt Florian So we need to continue to communicate because we have a shared vision. We have to keep that vision alive. Everybody still has to be on board when we get done with this development that they're going to go, this is what I wanted, this is great, I want to be part of this. Then you get to that institutionalization. And this is where I think you and I both have seen these projects stumble hard, is the consultants get done, we leave, and the business is like, well, what do I do with this? How do I work this? And you know what? That's all right. I'm just going to go back to Excel. And they didn't institutionalize the change and all the work that you did and the business along that path, they need to develop their champions and they need to develop a pipeline of champions because the business owns that institutionalization side. [00:09:02.810] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely. I think, and that's really the key message that you mentioned over here. Especially, a lot of times we see when you go into these kind of conversations, one of the biggest challenges that organizations face is these silos, right? These business units doing their own thing based on their comfort level, based on a tool they were exposed to. And those silos need to be broken down in order to have a cohesive approach in terms of going to a cloud analytics approach, right. So that takes me to my next segue question. Can you share a success story on a particular cloud analytics project where you have gone through the cycle? And what are some of the implementation steps? The right steps, I'll call the right steps to address that organizational change in that case. Can you share? [00:10:03.340] - Matt Florian Yeah, well, I'm glad you asked for a successful one. They are the hard ones to pull out of the hat sometimes because some projects are kind of a mixed bag of what success is. But we worked with a client just a few years ago on a self service project and doing a big move into cloud analytics space. And that project began not with a move to say we're going to do cloud analytics. That project began with the question from the IT department of what is our current visualization tools that are out there? What are people using? So we did a survey of the business and evaluated and analyzed what the different business practices and organizations are coming back with. We're using to look at the data because business assumed, IT assumed, we got this big cognitive implementation. People are just hitting this thing all the time, they're using it everywhere. And the reality was that according to the business, they were using their cloud, their Cognos to download large data sets and analyze them in other tools. So we found Tableau, we found Power BI, we found Looker, we found Alterix and we found a whole lot of Excel. [00:11:31.460] - Matt Florian And as I said, the business had a need and the existing structure wasn't working. So that led to that awareness and having that discussion with the business leaders of what's going on. And IT led awareness like, well, we really do need to standardize in what we're doing. Everybody has a favorite, but it's costing a lot of money. So, working with the business, we built again, that shared vision. That said, there's a lot of people that like Power BI in that particular case. And you're already a Microsoft shop, you have a large Microsoft presence in Azure. So let's move your warehouse over to Azure and let's build a new vision of what analytics looks like and start freeing up data as data sets. So we built this model, this vision that IT would get out of the business of creating reports. And they would serve data, they would have data products. And in return, business would go and learn how to create their reports and consume the data that they needed so that both sides are being met. And the business was very much behind it. So when we built, we continued to work with the business on what this build looks like, what data sets are going to look like, and having very early testing in it, they're starting to build excitement and getting encouragement with it. [00:12:56.550] - Matt Florian And organizational change was a big part of this in my communication with the IT and the business owners. So we went on a roadshow, we would go and have host lunches with business stakeholders and people that are going to consume the data and say this is what the vision looks like, this is what the future is going to be, see how you can do all this stuff. And we let them go and hammer away on playing with dashboards and creating their own reports and creating excitement that says oh my God, I can go do this, I can make this happen. And when it finally came time to deploy and started deploying out different models, the business was on it and they picked up and they picked up their own community of practice, continued having champions of the data and continued to be champions of Power BI and build their own communities. And that institutionalized that change into their organization. So every now and then you'll have other trickles of Alteryx or Tableau come in from an outside consultant, but organizationally, they viewed themselves as a Power BI shop. And that's how they see themselves and that's how they react. [00:14:07.690] - Matt Florian And to this day, they still view themselves that way. And so it's like a good example of change, organizational change that took hold to support the deployment of a cloud analytics solution. [00:14:21.560] - Mustansir Saifuddin That's awesome. I think that the key takeaway for our listeners from this example seems like you completely flip the conversation. Make it more like ownership factor moves towards the business versus IT, and then business kind of took it on themselves to move forward with this approach, which is definitely the way to go forward. [00:14:47.210] - Matt Florian With cloud analytics, IT is just an enabler of that data. The actual consumer and taking action that's business; business needs to be very much part of this. [00:15:02.510] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely. I think that kind of takes me to a conversation which is very critical, especially on some of these projects. Right. When you talk about cloud analytics, what are some of the cost implications when you don't have the right organizational change strategy in place? Because that's always on top of the mind of folks. What can go wrong, especially from a cost perspective. Can you share an example of this? [00:15:34.960] - Matt Florian Sure. Did you ever hear about that bridge in Alaska that they built? They built a bridge in Alaska. It's called the Bridge to Nowhere because it just built and then funding stopped. It actually ends in the middle of nothing. It doesn't connect with anything. That's exactly what happens; what will happen and can happen with an analytics project if you don't have organizational change. You run a high risk of putting a lot of money and a lot of time, investment and energy into building what could be a very transformative tool to the business to achieve goals and their objectives. And it goes nowhere. And that investment is just lost. You'll have no ROI on it because nobody uses it. And nobody uses it because that whole user experience of the business consuming the data wasn't taken into account and how they're going to change. You're asking people to stop using Excel to analyze every little thing and instead be analytics minded. That's a major shift. And it's not a badge against Excel. Excel does great things. I use Excel to do some analytics all the time. But to drive the business and to make shared collaborative decisions, you need a tool that's more informative than Excel, and you need a shared vision by the business of what it's going to be important. [00:17:10.240] - Matt Florian So if you're going to go and say, I want to take an analytics journey, the first question you have to ask is why and who's on the journey with you? And if you don't if you don't take business on that journey, then it's a bridge to nowhere. [00:17:26.960] - Mustansir Saifuddin A great example, for sure. I think that's in time and time again, a lot of folks forget about that and they want to go to the decisionmaking or the actual execution part, which is definitely very important. But without having that upfront work, which seems like this example you very clearly articulated, you will not be able to reach the goal that you set out for yourself. So I think that takes me to my closing question on this topic. What is one takeaway, one key takeaway that you want our listeners to leave with today? [00:18:11.060] - Matt Florian The key takeaway is that if organizational change is not part of your plan, it's not part of what's incorporated, then you might as well just put it straight over into the project risk register; that you run the risk of not achieving your project objectives. Because without it that's some semblance of this, you are going to run a high risk of not succeeding and having cost runovers by redoing things because the business was not fully on board. The business had an idea of what they wanted. But you and the business aren't in alignment on what the shared vision is and what it's going to actually take in order to make it happen. So if you don't want to run that risk, incorporate it, make it part of the project, and you will mitigate the risk. There's no risks, but you'll mitigate that. [00:19:11.660] - Mustansir Saifuddin What a great advice. I think I love that. I think that's one thing that if folks pay attention to it very upfront in the journey, they will pay dividends down the road. So thank you for sharing that. So I think with that, I like to thank you, Matt, for joining us. Again, look forward to more conversations on this topic. [00:19:34.010] - Matt Florian Thank you, I look forward to as well. As always, great talking to you Mustansir. [00:19:43.460] - Mustansir Saifuddin Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Matt shared the value of addressing organizational change as enterprises get ready to take on cloud analytics initiatives. His main takeaway if organizational change is not part of your plan, you run the risk of not achieving your project objectives. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting Isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.
Allen Morris joined his father at The Allen Morris Company in 1980 at the age of 28. Since then, his company has developed 85+ successful award-winning commercial and mixed-use projects with $8.025 billion in business volume. Their portfolio of development projects includes the Florida headquarters for AT&T and multiple district headquarters for Bell South, Florida Power and Light, IBM, Unisys, International Harvester, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, and Lockheed Martin, amongst others. Allen believes his company's legacy of success is due to its unwavering commitment to placing the client's needs first, guaranteeing satisfaction, and delivering what they promise. I'm excited to be talking to Allen about his recently published book, All In: How to Risk Everything for Everything that Matters, which he wrote as a roadmap for how men can achieve greater effectiveness, fulfillment, and influence when they allow themselves to be vulnerable. He shares what happened when he had a serious accident flying an airplane and why it inspired him to really make his life count. Allen also discusses the connection between old wounds and intense emotions and why understanding that connection is so impactful for inspiring leaders. “I should not have survived an engine failure at night in an airplane over a wooded residential area — and it gave me a seriousness about wanting to really make my life count and to use my days as best I could.” - Allen Morris “We can lose our connection to the truth about ourselves and those around us because we've shut out our awareness of emotions.” - Allen Morris “Old Wounds and intense emotions have a profound, lifelong influence on our lives that we may not realize.” - Allen Morris This Week on The Wow Factor: Why Allen found his calling in the family business despite initially seeing it as a stepping stone to other opportunities How Allen's father built the Allen Morris Company How the business has grown and evolved over the years Some obstacles to a leader's personal success and what Allen has learned from his own leadership experience How Allen got burned out when he overcommitted, the physical symptoms it produced, and how he got to the heart of the issue Why our subconscious is actually outside of our everyday awareness Allen's experience of going to AA meetings and how they helped him despite him NOT being an alcoholic The value Allen finds in taking part in a circle of grace, creating a space of safety, and being honest with no judgment Why people can be so defensive about change Allen Morris' Word of Wisdom: Anyone aspiring to be an influential leader understands that it's got to start with you. You need to discover what is holding you back personally and where you can grow more deeply and find more freedom in your personal life because what happens there will be reflected in your business. Connect with Allen Morris: The Allen Morris Company Website all in: how to risk everything for everything that matters by W. Allen Morris All in Leaders Website Connect with The WOW Factor: The WOW Factor Website Connect with Brad Formsma via email Brad Formsma on LinkedIn Brad Formsma on Instagram Brad Formsma on Facebook Brad Formsma on Twitter
In this episode of Tech-Driven Business, Mustansir Saifuddin continues the conversation with Matt Florian of Comerit on how enterprises can leverage hybrid cloud data warehouse solutions. Matt shares the value of hybrid solutions, how to approach creating a hybrid solution, and lessons he's learned along the way. His key takeaway: focus on flexibility and resiliency in your data architecture so you can create data products that can answer multiple questions. Matt has more than 25 years of leadership in data and enterprise architecture in numerous industries. He has successfully delivered enterprise data transformation projects for government, telecommunication, retail, manufacturing, and financial services sectors. Matt began consulting focusing on data warehousing in telecommunication for national providers. Over the course of his career has consulted for Oracle, IBM, and Unisys across many industries. His leadership, experience, and clarity of technical topics earned him the trust of client executive leadership. Matt's talent to develop and lead teams is the key to his successful delivery of projects for clients. Connect with Us: LinkedIn: Matt Florian Mustansir Saifuddin Innovative Solution Partners Twitter: @Mmsaifuddin YouTube or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation. Episode Transcript [00:00:03.010] - Mustansir Saifuddin Welcome to Tech-Driven Business. Brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this second episode of a multipart series, I welcome back Matt Florian of Comerit. Listen in as Matt and I discuss the value of hybrid cloud data warehouse solutions, including how to approach creating one, and lessons learned along the way. It's more than about just getting it in place. [00:00:35.510] - Mustansir Saifuddin Hello, Matt. Welcome to Tech-Driven Business. How are you, man? [00:00:39.130] - Matt Florian I'm doing very well Mustansir. How are you, sir? [00:00:42.860] - Mustansir Saifuddin Another beautiful day. Hey, thank you for our first conversation when we started off this whole cloud data warehouse topic, and I'd like to continue our discussion on this topic. And I think one area that I feel a lot of conversations are happening is the hybrid environment. So I thought we should talk about that in today's session and wanted to get your take on that. [00:01:15.190] - Matt Florian Oh, absolutely. It's a very common conversation that goes on with clients nowadays and trying to figure out what is it that they really want to go do and how much risk they want to carry on it. You'll hear hybrid pop up there every time. So I think one of the biggest problems they have is what the heck does hybrid need? [00:01:34.090] - Mustansir Saifuddin Yeah, I hear you, and I think this will be really helpful, especially with your experience. And when you look at across the board, doesn't matter what industry you're in, it seems like customers are not ready to make that jump. Right. They are looking at ways to either extend their environments into a way that they can sustain in the short term and then plan for the long term. [00:02:01.710] - Matt Florian Right. [00:02:01.930] - Mustansir Saifuddin So this conversation would be very beneficial. [00:02:05.820] - Matt Florian I completely agree. [00:02:08.890] - Mustansir Saifuddin All right, so let's start with this. Let's start with a very basic thing. I think I would like to have my listeners get an understanding of when we talk about hybrid. What do you really mean and why hybrid? I think those two questions I like to start with. [00:02:24.580] - Matt Florian Sure. You think of hybrid. Hybrid's about taking two options that are very similar to each other. They have overlapping functionality and saying. [00:02:40.720] - Matt Florian I want the safety and security of what I've been doing, but I want to start dabbling into another way to do it. And we see that a lot with SAP customers who have a lot of security inside of being inside of BW, and then maybe they want to dabble over into cloud computing with Snowflake. And how do you do that? There's different ways that looks at you. Same thing we said, like the security of SAC, but maybe I want to use Power Bi or Sigma or something like that and balance it out, but don't extend their risk and just jump and go do it. So SAP customers don't tend to be risk heavy. They like to avert it as much as possible. [00:03:32.590] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely. And that makes sense, right? Especially when you have big landscapes and you want to manage your environment, what's the best way to do it? Right? So I guess I heard two things right, and I'm talking about benefits. It seems like you want to avoid risk as much as possible. At the same time try out new technology. Are there any other benefits that you see from your viewpoint when you take a hybrid approach? [00:04:01.310] - Matt Florian So the hybrid is a benefit to using hybrid is that you get to focus on a particular use case that is of value and benefit to you. And I often see customers go down that hybrid because they want to go and have more flexibility to blend SAP data with other third party data and do it just easier. And so they'll go down this hybrid approach because, well, let's face it, BW does a lot of analytics well and don't break what's really working well for you. On the other hand, wanting to know your organic growth against other metrics that come from Salesforce or other CRMs or from Google Analytics, that's a whole other dimension. And that's hybrid really can help bridge that and be able to answer some questions that SAP doesn't answer easily. [00:05:04.990] - Mustansir Saifuddin Absolutely, I think so. You use the SAP reference over here, right? So I guess I'll come from that angle now. So I'm an SAP customer. Why would I want to think about a hybrid solution? And I believe you kind of dabbled into the answer, but give some examples that you can think of where an SAP customer would like to go the route of hybrid. [00:05:31.390] - Matt Florian So a couple of immediate use cases where hybrid can come into play and really help out is let's go with archiving and being able to look at archived data along with live data. Archiving into a cloud database is one option for archiving either a system that you've migrated off and you did a brownfield implementation. So you have historical data sitting in one place and all your new data building up in another. S/4HANA sitting over here, and you want to bring that together. Well, hybrid is a good option for bringing and looking at historical data along with your current transactions. So that's one area that you may want to go and dabble in. Another good use case is that you really want to implement machine learning and AI, and you want to watch streams of data and you want to train data models for machine learning. Well, that's a hybrid approach gives just a wide open ecosystem of tools that you can use for machine learning and AI, and it would really be beneficial. Again, just easier, for sure. [00:06:57.240] - Mustansir Saifuddin No, I like your examples. I think kind of puts things in perspective, right? I mean, especially like I said, if things are working, you don't want to break it. At the same time, how can I bring in new ideas, new technology, or new approaches to make my environment easier to maintain and maybe more future proof as far as where I want to go in the long run, right? [00:07:20.060] - Matt Florian Right. Absolutely. [00:07:23.360] - Mustansir Saifuddin That's great. So I think let's talk about when we are on that journey, especially folks who are maybe just starting or like to go this direction when we look at from a good practices point of view. Do you have any suggestions or ideas as far as timelines for keeping the hybrid environment? [00:07:48.860] - Matt Florian For keeping or building? What does it take to do? Is that what you're thinking? [00:07:55.610] - Mustansir Saifuddin So I'm thinking two ways, right. One, is a lot of times the question come up, right? If I want to go the hybrid route, what is the best way to do it? Do I have a strategy? Timline strategy like I'm going to sunset the system in a certain time frame versus going maybe a one shot approach. I'm going to shut down this existing environment and then move completely into cloud. But I feel like hybrid is becoming a lot more common practice these days. So what would be a good timeline as far as a use case that we can apply in this situation? [00:08:40.290] - Matt Florian Sure. So we'll go back to that migrating to S/4HANA as an example. If you're going to migrate to S/4HANA and you are going to go with a brownfield or even greenfield strategy on migrating over to that from a homegrown point of sale system to different ERP coming in, whatever it is. That's a great time to go and make that decision of, I'm going to do this hybrid and start the work even before your migration for your S/4HANA and start bringing that information in and building a common, unified model. That would be the place to start. A lot of companies begin that work way too late, and they're trying to play catch up and they want to have unified data at day one, but they don't because they didn't put in that work early enough to say, how am I going to unify my data? And there are strategies to do it, but you need to think it from the very beginning so that you have a solid strategy to make it happen. The other approach is if you're, let's say, you're going to incrementally go and build out your hybrid. In that case, you start with a very high impact use case, something that a lot of people would go and jump on and want to use, and oftentimes it's going to be directly related to sales. [00:10:16.690] - Matt Florian That's something that's driving top line growth and wanting to tie that to other third party. Start with a very foundational use case that you can build from and then build the processes out around that. That just builds. It just naturally grows from there. [00:10:38.810] - Mustansir Saifuddin For sure. You kind of touched upon two topics over here, and I like to jump a little bit deeper into this one idea that you just shared. Like, when I'm going the hybrid route, what should be the focus from an implementation perspective, when you go in the hybrid approach, what are some of the things that you should keep in mind? [00:11:08.210] - Matt Florian Well, you should keep in mind first what's your point of reference is going to be in that hybrid. By point of reference, the hybrid system needs to have something to anchor itself to. For instance, if you're going in and you're going to build out again, I'm going to go back to the SAP. If you're building S/4HANA out, your point of reference is that S/4HANA model and then blending processes into that S/4HANA model. So S/4HANA becomes that anchor, and then you're building out a hybrid model that is SAP plus Salesforce, SAP plus HubSpot plus Google Analytics plus Legacy. But that's your foundation. If you can keep yourself focused on a foundation topic, then you'll be successful. If you go in without that focus, then the lack of clarity creates easily, will create chaos in your hybrid, and then you'll have a high risk of your perception of failure because it didn't answer the set of questions. [00:12:29.510] - Mustansir Saifuddin Yeah, I think that's an interesting insight, what you just shared. Because I think it seems like in order for you to keep your hybrid environment, I'm looking at how to be successful in this approach. [00:12:47.140] - Mustansir Saifuddin It seems like if you anchor yourself with a certain system as a starting point, it allows you or it gives you the flexibility to build it out versus going it all out and try to do too many things at the same time will set you up for failure. That's how I'm reading into that. [00:13:05.650] - Matt Florian It will. If you build out based upon your process areas of the business, and you build out the models from that and connect them, then you have a hybrid environment that is able to answer a whole breadth of questions because they're tied. There's a logical story being told by the data. If you don't have that focus, then the data can't tell a story. And you want that data to tell a story. And all of it has story, and some of that story is from archives, from prior implementations. But it has a story to tell. And in order to do that, you have to give it context and focus. And that's why you need to start this way. You need to keep that something to ground it. [00:13:58.860] - Mustansir Saifuddin I think, for sure. And I think one of the things, one of the takeaways that I see from this conversation is the fact that a lot of customers may have, depending on the industry, you may have a different set of challenges where you want to use this approach. There are certain things that are working in your current environment. You want to keep that as is. But there are other things that you want to bring in multiple data sets. And you take this approach of going to Snowflake using this multiple data set approach. But having an anchor system in the middle try to leverage that as a starting point. Right? [00:14:37.210] - Matt Florian Yeah. Because really your anchor is if you think about it another way, your anchor is your process. What is your process today? And that is your anchor. The process is supported by a system of some sort, whatever it may be, but the process is the anchor. And using that as the point lets you go and have your insights and understanding about what it is that you're attempting to achieve. [00:15:08.140] - Mustansir Saifuddin That kind of takes me to this question which I always ask as one key takeaway. Right. And today's conversation is in a way fairly broad, but I like to keep it controlled and in a way that makes sense for someone who is looking this route. So what would be the one thing that you would share with them as far as if they are thinking of hybrid or they're already on a journey to hybrid? What are some of the key takeaways that you want them to leave the session? [00:15:41.140] - Matt Florian If you're thinking about go to hybrid and working that way, it's not going to be just focused on what that process is, but architecturally from a data perspective is that think of that hybrid in the approach of creating data products that can answer many questions. Don't try to just answer one. Build an architecture that lets you use that hybrid data as Lego blocks to build and answer other questions. Because if you try to just focus on answering a question, then you're losing other valuable insights that you can gather by blending more data. That's what your hybrid is going to do. You're going to blend data together and you have to architect with intent so that you can answer more questions and have flexibility. [00:16:39.860] - Mustansir Saifuddin Yeah, I like your way of thinking, especially when you are looking at the future state. A lot of times folks want to take a narrow approach of getting things done, but that may not be the right answer, right. [00:16:54.790] - Matt Florian It's not just about getting it done. It's about architecting for the future and for your resiliency. And there are many models, many approaches, methodologies that let you architect for resiliency. And when you go down this path, that should be a guiding principle of what that hybrid is built off of, is modeled and architected for that resiliency so that you can answer many questions and be more agile in your answering your questions to the business and respond to changing economic and market conditions. [00:17:35.660] - Mustansir Saifuddin Great, thank you. This is really helpful. [00:17:43.910] - Mustansir Saifuddin Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Matt shared some valuable information on hybrid cloud data warehouse solutions. His main takeaway: focus on a data architecture perspective so your data can tell a story and answer multiple questions. It's not about just getting it done. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.
Today I'm joined on the show by Andy Najjar, Chief Operating Officer at FutureSolve, an HR Tech company that provides high-quality advisory services and people technology for HR and business leaders. As the Chief Operating Officer at FutureSolve, Andy Najjar is responsible for leading FutureSolve's global operations and direction. He joins the company with more than 15 years of experience in the talent and Human Resources space. He is a technologist that is focused on how technology is changing the future of work. Prior to joining FutureSolve, Andy was instrumental in growing companies like HRsmart and TalentGuard from upstart talent management software companies to acquisitions by Deltek and Venture Capital funding. He also plays an advisory role with technology companies innovating in the HR Technology space and assisting in market fit and innovation direction. FutureSolve is founded by senior CHROs of companies like Comcast, Frito Lay, Suntrust Bank, Unisys, and more. Providing a wide array of technology and strategic CHRO advisory services, FutureSolve helps organizations prepare and position for the Future of Work. FutureSolve also provides benchmarking against the industry and performance index results delivered in a predictive AI analytics engine. "We put associates first and strive to leverage the internal organization to make clients self-sufficient." For show notes and to see details of my previous guests, check out the podcast page here: www.GetMoreHRClients.com/Podcast.
In this next episode of Tech-Driven Business, Matt Florian of Comerit, joins Mustansir Saifuddin to talk about the urgency and motivation for companies to move to a cloud-based data warehouse. This is the beginning of a series of episodes that will dive into how newer tools, like Snowflake, are changing the landscape for companies to blend in different types of data, including their existing SAP systems. Matt's takeaway: don't wait to start. There will always be something new coming on the horizon so start with a small project and buildup. Matt has more than 25 years of leadership in data and enterprise architecture in numerous industries. He has successfully delivered enterprise data transformation projects for government, telecommunication, retail, manufacturing, and financial services sectors. Matt began consulting focusing on data warehousing in telecommunication for national providers. Over the course of his career has consulted for Oracle, IBM, and Unisys across many industries. His leadership, experience, and clarity of technical topics earned him the trust of client executive leadership. Matt's talent to develop and lead teams is the key to his successful delivery of projects for clients. Connect with Us: LinkedIn: Matt Florian, Mustansir Saifuddin, Innovative Solution Partners, Twitter: @PragmaticEA, @Mmsaifuddin, YouTube or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation. Episode Transcript: [00:00:03.690] - Mustansir Saifuddin Welcome to Tech-Driven Business. Brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this first episode of a multipart series, I welcome Matt Florian of Comerit. Listen in as Matt shares his thoughts on why companies are moving to a cloud data warehouse with such a sense of urgency. With data volumes growing, it's important for companies to take advantage of the power of new technology tools that Matt talks about, including snowflake. [00:00:35.510] - Mustansir Saifuddin Hello, Matt. How are you? [00:00:37.600] - Matt Florian I'm doing fine Mustansir how are you? [00:00:40.090] - Mustansir Saifuddin Doing well. Welcome to Tech-Driven Business. It's a pleasure to have you on my show. [00:00:46.160] - Matt Florian I'm very grateful to be a member of it and be part of this with you, man. [00:00:51.710] - Mustansir Saifuddin Awesome. So today we will kick off basically the idea is to kick off a series of podcasts which will revolve around cloud based data warehouses. And we would like to dive into this topic of why companies are transitioning to cloud based data warehouses. Right. And at the same time, what are some of the benefits that they are getting with this move? How does that sound to you? [00:01:18.420] - Matt Florian That sounds great. Let's get talking. [00:01:21.110] - Mustansir Saifuddin Awesome. Okay. I know this topic is very near and dear to you, and I'm very glad that we have you on our show, and this will be a great conversation. So let's start with our why, right? So why it is so important right now, moving to a cloud based data warehouse? And the urgency. I think there's two components of this. Right. Why is it important for companies and the same time? What is the urgency behind it? [00:01:47.800] - Matt Florian Sure. Well, I think that a lot of companies have taken a fair amount of time in the last several years of getting their processes in place and fixing processes with implementations of like SAP and other large ERP. At the same time, you have other parts of the business that are trying to get process in place with a Salesforce or other CRM and other tools out there like that. And each of these platforms, they've been operating fairly independently. And you can do a lot outside of SAP, but getting the full value, I think businesses are looking to get leverage, full value of those implementations, that investment by blending that data with other data, with other stuff. And that's why there's a big urgency and a big move, because it's just being able to do that and do it easily. [00:02:48.940] - Mustansir Saifuddin That makes sense. Yeah. I think one key word that I got out of this conversation is you mentioned SAP being a central focal point for a lot of companies, but at the same time, they do have these other systems where they want to bring in this information together and blend it together. [00:03:08.220] - Matt Florian And even we see this a lot with SAP implementation right. That SAP is able to manage a good part of the process, but it doesn't always manage all of the process. There's still other third party applications outside of the SAP ecosystem that are part of the business process and part of the outcomes of the business. And so if you're measuring your outcomes, you have to look at all that data together for sure. [00:03:37.760] - Mustansir Saifuddin That brings up another point. What are some of the benefits of moving to the cloud? We talk about cloud in a lot of different contexts. Like when you talk about data warehouse and going to a data warehouse based cloud, what are some of the benefits that you see? [00:03:52.090] - Matt Florian Well, a lot of the new modern data warehouse and cloud applications up there for data management focus, the purchasing and how you procure that is a whole different paradigm today than it was even five years ago. Five years ago, we talked about moving to the cloud and putting stuff into Azure data warehouse or Amazon Redshift. And when you did that, that was good. But you're buying capacity way up front. And some of the more modern warehouses I try not to use the warehouse term overboard here, but the modern data platforms out there really moved over to a utility model where you're charged just for what you're actually using. And combining that with serverless technology, where you're spinning up compute as needed on demand and scaling it, all things that we can't do in even some of the traditional AWS infrastructure and definitely could not do on-premise. So we have such flexibility to solve big problems with data with these cloud applications done smart. [00:05:15.260] - Mustansir Saifuddin Yeah, I think the key word I hear from a lot of customers, and you mentioned it a couple of times here, is scalability. Right. And then the ability to control that which is not available or which was not available earlier in the traditional data platforms, if you want to use that terminology. Right. So it's a big win, especially when the data volumes are growing at a very rapid pace. And you do want to have that flexibility. And I think you do get both of them with this new move or the benefits that customers are seeing in real time now. [00:05:56.860] - Matt Florian And if you think about we pick on SAC for a minute. We think about the infrastructure that we have to design and build out for SAP. For a lot of those implementations, you have to preplan everything that you're going to do. And once you go outside of that planned infrastructure, then it requires replanning. And so businesses will often limit themselves to what data they're going to do in there, not because of the limitations of data, but limitations of the infrastructure. So if I can change that dynamic and say, let's do this over in, say, a Snowflake data platform and do this inside a snowflake or inside a Snowflake, I can scale that infrastructure, the compute resources up and out dynamically. And that's something that you really cannot do inside of an SAP here and even in Azure data warehouse couldn't do that kind of scaling. So anybody that's able to make that easy like Snowflake did, that is a proof point right there to why we should move into the cloud. [00:07:16.390] - Mustansir Saifuddin Yeah, definitely. That makes sense. I think that being said, let's talk about some of the choices available. I think that is one of the key questions a lot of customers are looking for now after COVID has been over. There seems to be a lot of things are happening in the cloud, especially with the amount of choices customers have. I mean, would you like to share some experiences about what are some of the data platform choices that are available and how to the stack up from your perspective? [00:07:52.460] - Matt Florian Well, we've had opportunities to do cloud computing, cloud build, data warehouse in the cloud for several years now. And AWS and even Azure were very early into the gate of what you could do and they followed a model that was that procurement model inside of the cloud that says, hey, buy this much free capacity and you want to purchase that capacity. And that worked well. And I tell you, when we first did some Azure data warehouses, those warehouses screamed, we moved stuff off of Legacy to onprem into Azure and it was performing tremendously, but it also didn't scale. And how we moved data in was more complicated and it kept a lot of the Legacy mentality about infrastructure in place that you had to pre plan for. And so we didn't really see all the benefits that we should have seen out of it. The same can be said with AWS and Redshift, same kind of mentality, same idea. And it wasn't really until they said that Snowflake model came out that disrupted the marketplace. And I think you hear so much about Snowflake as being one of the predominant tools and platforms talked about today. [00:09:30.510] - Matt Florian That's because it's utility, right? If I can service 50 queries with one set of compute, then I'm only charged for that one set of compute for the seconds in which I use it and then it turns off. And if I need to go and open up another room, it's like having you a big conference center. If I can service everybody in one room, great, I'm paid for one room. But if I need to spill out into three rooms, I can just spill out the three rooms, turn the lights on and run it until I don't need those other two rooms again, and then come back down into the one without any interactions, without any really taking action. And that's such a big difference in the compute and how we think about data. But it also required at the same time that we end up needing to change how we think about how we're putting data in and building that data. It's a complete mind shift entirely. [00:10:34.240] - Mustansir Saifuddin That makes sense. I think that's the key piece, right? How you are able to get the flexibility and then control what you want and what you don't want at any given time, which is a lot of customers are asking for, especially when they don't know what the end state is going to look like. Right. I mean, this is what I need now, but it may change in a few months depending on what kind of information they want to bring into the platform and use it. Right. So that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's move away from this topic. Let's talk about on a personal note. You've been doing this technology for quite some time. What are some of the biggest accomplishment that you see you have accomplished over your personal or your professional career biggest. [00:11:26.820] - Matt Florian Accomplishments besides maintaining a career as long as I have, that itself can be an accomplishment. But there you go. It's funny, early on in my career, I was on a project when I worked as a consultant for IBM and we built an Oncology database for Emory University. And this database, the contract issues can be run into, but the client really wanted a Cadillac for a database and platform that they had, but they had the money for a Yugo instead. And we built just a very streamlined platform and data engineering to build out this Oncology database and take all this clinical data that in the end off of a low cost ETL tool that at the end of the year end up winning awards for the actual design and implementation because it wouldn't identify all these clusters. All these clusters where cancer was occurring and fed and resulted in policy changes and all this great stuff that happened with it. It was done off of a low cost solution to a big problem. And when you can achieve something like that, simplicity to solve something big, man Elvis doesn't get much better than that. [00:13:11.140] - Mustansir Saifuddin That's a great story. I think at the end of the day, I think it's just a lot of folks talk about data and building these huge data warehouse solutions, right? What is that? It's solving, right? And if you are solving a business case where the organization can see the value right off the bat, and I think that's what really stands out and that's what I got out of this story. So really awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I think this is really good. So that kind of gets me into my next question. It's a nice segue, which is the real meat of this conversation, right. How can organizations make the right choice? I mean, there's a lot of choices, like you mentioned earlier, how can organizations make the right choice of picking the cloud data warehouse that works for them? What would you tell them? [00:14:04.990] - Matt Florian So what I would tell them is to stop and take a look at what their end goal is for analytics and what it is that they're what type of measures and outcomes they're really trying to get at and build from there. Don't try to jump to the finish line without building a good quality data pipeline. We can rebuild things so much faster than what we used to. Now that being resistant to changing this because you're afraid of the cost and effort that it will take to rebuild your pipelines, that you have the tools that exist today. We can rapidly build and improve on pipelines. So it's taking a look at all the tools that you have and getting down to again, the simplest set of solutions to solve your biggest problems is achievable and it can be done. [00:15:12.490] - Mustansir Saifuddin It seems like, to me, it seems like almost like know your end state and then kind of work backwards. And as long as you can see your end state as an organization, I think it's much easier to make the right choice in terms of these clusters of choices out there for customers. [00:15:29.470] - Matt Florian Yep. And we help customers with that all the time. [00:15:33.260] - Mustansir Saifuddin Definitely. I think that's the key word, right. Especially when there are choices, there are always confusion. And the confusion takes over the choices sometimes and it feels like you're going in a direction but you're not sure if the direction is correct or not unless you have that insights like you mentioned. Start with the end state and then look back and see what you need to achieve and how you can achieve that. Right, so that's a great advice. [00:16:01.910] - Matt Florian It's confusion and just being stuck in old ways of thinking. [00:16:27.210] - Mustansir Saifuddin That's the mindset. Right. And we talk about change management, especially when it comes to going to the cloud based data platforms. There is a huge change management involved in this whole process. [00:16:27.210] - Matt Florian Yeah, we could have a whole episode just on the change management of going to the cloud [00:16:28.840] - Mustansir Saifuddin and that's the goal. So I think what you want to do with this episode right now is to kind of set the stage of what's coming next. Especially we talk about the choices, we talked about what should be the right way to go, move forward, especially when you are trying to start on this journey or maybe you're in the middle of the journey and you're not seeing the results. Right. All of those different topics that we will cover them as we move along in this series. What is one of the key takeaways that you want to leave with the listeners today? [00:17:03.710] - Matt Florian The key takeaway for those that are looking at cloud analytics and go into the cloud is to not wait to take that journey. Start it, you can start it with a small project and then build up, but start the journey and start getting there and going through that transformation. It's not a painful transformation, but it is a transformation and start making it happen. Don't wait, don't wait for the next thing to come out. There's always something else coming out, but there's some outstanding tools to go and make that move today, and there's no reason to wait anymore. [00:17:49.160] - Mustansir Saifuddin What a great advice. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's what I'm hearing, and I keep seeing that time is of essence, right? Especially when folks are looking at moving that leap of fate into this new platform. It seems like the approach has changed in the past. You're planning it out for so long and then you get on the journey. Now it seems like the journey is almost here for you. You just need to get on it and move on forward. [00:18:21.860] - Matt Florian Absolutely. [00:18:24.190] - Mustansir Saifuddin Well, it's a great conversation with you, Matt, and I'm really glad that we were able to cover this topic today. [00:18:36.640] - Mustansir Saifuddin Thanks for listening to tech-driven business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Matt gave a great overview on the power of a cloud based data warehouse and why organizations should consider the move. His main takeaway? Don't wait. Start with a small project and build up. There will always be something new to come down the pipeline. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting us at isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.
In this episode of the “I Am a Mainframer” podcast, Steven Dickens is joined by Patrick Stanard, Chief Mainframe Architect at Kyndryl US, from the show floor at the SHARE Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Patrick shares his career journey that started in data input (using punch cards!) at Michigan Bell Telephone and moved into data center operations working with Unisys mainframes, and then 35 years with IBM before joining the Kyndryl team. Their conversation also touches on the massive changes in the industry over the last several years, what customers are looking for from their mainframe, and the rise of hybrid mainframe computing and disruptive technologies. Don't miss this entertaining and informative conversation!
Our guest on this episode took the consumer electronics brand, Belkin, from $400 million to one billion dollars in annual revenue in only four years. As the president of Kenmore Craftsman Diehard for Sears Holding he transformed these iconic American brands by launching Kenmore and Diehard exclusively on Amazon with Kenmore becoming the first major appliance to be sold on Amazon. He is the former president of the Disney Stores Worldwide…and so much more! As someone who has seen just a few economic cycles while running major brands, I could not think of a better guide for us all than my friend, Tom Park, who offers specific and sage advice, especially for middle and lower middle market companies, as we continue to move towards increasingly uncertain times. We also talk about consumer product trends, managing expenses, focusing on the customer experience, building infrastructure to get ahead of the curve, employee retention, creating a culture of accountability to achieve budget, the importance of market share analysis, leading well and so much more. You're going to want to listen to this episode twice as Tom shares so many nuggets from his vast experience, all of which he continues to use today as Managing Director of Portage Point, where they offer interim management, performance improvement and board services to stakeholders in periods of distress, underperformance and transition. About Tom Park Tom Park joined Portage Point in December 2020 and currently serves as a Managing Director offering interim management, performance improvement and board services to stakeholders in periods of distress, underperformance and transition. He also currently serves on the Board of Directors for Howard's, a large independent appliance and consumer electronics retailer Prior to joining Portage Point, Tom was CEO of Incipio, a consumer products company, until he left in 2019. Tom served as President of the Kenmore Craftsman Diehard for Sears Holdings. Tom was hired in 2015 to transform these iconic American brands to maximize their value by externalizing the brands after nearly 100 years of being exclusively sold at Sears. Under Tom's leadership, the Kenmore and Diehard brands were launched exclusively on Amazon. Kenmore is the first major appliance brand to be sold on Amazon and included delivery and installation services performed by Sears. Tom was instrumental in negotiating the sale of The Craftsman Brand in 2017 to Stanley Black & Decker for $900m Prior to joining Sears, Tom held several executive positions at Belkin International, a global leader in mobile accessories, wireless networking products and IOT smart products. Positions within Belkin included President Linksys Networking Division, President of the Americas, Chief Operating Officer and CFO. During his tenure of a dozen years, Belkin saw significant growth, more than doubling the business to $1B. Prior to Belkin, Tom spent a decade with the Walt Disney Company where he was President of the Disney Stores Worldwide. In addition, he held executive positions with Disney Consumer Products. Tom was Controller for the $3B consumer products business and Controller for Walt Disney Imagineering, the design and development group for Disney theme parks Tom graduated from Villanova University with a BS in Accounting in 1979 and began his career with Unisys holding several positions in finance and accounting for over 12 years. Tom serves on several advisory boards, including the Villanova School of Business. Tom lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Lisa Adubato Park, and is the proud father of four children and one granddaughter. Connect with Tom Park LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-park-545717b/ Website: https://portagepointpartners.com/team/tom-park/ Email: Tpark@pppllc.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What do industry practitioners actually think of experience-level agreements? At the 2022 HDI SupportWorld Live Conference, Unisys' Weston Morris interviewed five conference goers about their XLA "aha moments" for the Digital Workplace Deep Dive podcast.
This episode features highlights from our first season. We hear from 7-time CIO Mark Settle, Brady Pyle, Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer at NASA, Tony Saldanha, former VP of Global Business Services at Procter & Gamble, and more. Together, they bring you the most relevant insights to help you attract and retain world-class talent, implement effective tech tools, and improve leadership skills.Quotes*“There is this trap we fall into of assuming we know what employees want and what they need. And we don't. We can make some generalizations, but we need to ask. We need to be asking the questions to understand truly what employees need inside an organization. And we need to understand that will evolve and change.” - Joey Wilkerson, Employee Experience Lead and Acquisition Integration Manager at Cisco*“I began to challenge some of those notions around leadership. And I have seen, I have observed and experienced that you can be yourself and be an effective leader.” - Brady Pyle, Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer at NASA*“How do we get engagement of 38,000 people so they feel connected? And engagement that doesn't stop. Engagement that is ongoing and engagement that makes them an active participant in our brand, in our vision, in our story in our strategy, and connected? That, for me, this is about being human. Yes, tools and technology. And we'll talk about tools and technology. And I know very likely to ask me about that as well. They play a role. But this is about connection, communication, empathy. Truly, it's about understanding each other.” - Marija Zivanovic-Smith, EVP of Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs at NCR CorporationTime Stamps*[1:27] 7-time CIO Mark Settle*[1:51] Joey Wilkerson, Employee Experience Lead and Acquisition Integration Manager at Cisco*[2:27] Nicole Alvino, CEO and Founder of Firstup*[3:32] Jâlie Cohen, Group SVP of HR Americas at The Adecco Group*[4:21] Aaron Gerlitz, Program Manager of Information Security at Lowe's*[4:53] Erica Cary, VP of Product and Services at Hilton*[5:36] Weston Morris, Director of Global Strategy for Digital Workplace Services at Unisys*[6:09] Brady Pyle, Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer at NASA*[6:35] Marija Zivanovic-Smith, EVP of Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs at NCR Corporation*[7:24] Alexander Senn, Head of People and Organization at Siemens Smart Infrastructure*[8:04] Lisa Cummings Penn, Executive Director of Employee Engagement in the Office of the CIO at Estée Lauder Companies*[9:01] Angie Grossman, Senior Employee Experience Specialist at WarnerMedia*[9:21] Tony Saldanha, former VP of Global Business Services at Procter & Gamble*[10:10] Quique Huerta, Global Employee Experience Officer at Liberty Mutual InsuranceLinksConnect with:7-time CIO Mark SettleJoey Wilkerson, Employee Experience Lead and Acquisition Integration Manager at CiscoNicole Alvino, CEO and Founder of FirstupJâlie Cohen, Group SVP of HR Americas at The Adecco GroupAaron Gerlitz, Program Manager of Information Security at Lowe'sErica Cary, VP of Product and Services at HiltonWeston Morris, Director of Global Strategy for Digital Workplace Services at UnisysBrady Pyle, Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer at NASAMarija Zivanovic-Smith, EVP of Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs at NCR CorporationAlexander Senn, Head of People and Organization at Siemens Smart InfrastructureLisa Cummings Penn, Executive Director of Employee Engagement in the Office of the CIO at Estée Lauder CompaniesAngie Grossman, Senior Employee Experience Specialist at WarnerMediaTony Saldanha, former VP of Global Business Services at Procter & GambleQuique Huerta, Global Employee Experience Officer at Liberty Mutual InsuranceThanks to our friendsThis episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io
How aviation weather intelligence affects airlines and airports, the FAA wants radio altimeters replaced, Easyjet has a solution to fly with less crew, Spirit Airlines says no to JetBlue, an electric airplane first, jail time for some unruly passengers, and Virgin Atlantic flight training requirements. Guest Scott Gilmore is the Global Vice President and GM of Aviation at Tomorrow.io, a company that provides an aviation weather and climate security platform. Scott has over 40 years in the aviation industry, including 27 as a pilot. He drives Tomorrow.io's aviation go-to-market offerings, including sales activity, revenue management, and the product roadmap. Scott explains the sources and uses of aviation weather data, and how weather intelligence results in fewer turnbacks, more payload, and better fuel load. He also tells us about the impact on airport ground staffing and de-icing planning. Tomorrow.io is deploying its own constellation of LEO weather satellites equipped with radar and microwave sounders. This will provide global coverage with a significantly improved refresh rate. Scott describes the goal of being able to machine generate a custom “TAF” (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) for any selected location. It's with noting that the non-profit TomorrowNow.org is committed to helping vulnerable populations adapt to the climate changes that are happening now. Prior to Tomorrow.io, Scott served as the Head of Flight Deck Solutions with The Weather Company, an IBM Business; Senior Manager of Strategic Partnerships at the International Air Transport Association (IATA); and Director Of Business Development Airline Industry Solutions, and Head Of Application Development Aircraft Mission Kit / Electronic Flight Bag at Unisys. Scott was a Senior Strategic Airlift Manager C-5, C-17, and Tanker Operations with the United States Air Force. He's an FAA Rated Flight Engineer with over 21,000 hours in the flight deck, an Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic, and a member of the American Association of Airport Executives. Aviation News FAA wants U.S. airlines to retrofit, replace radio altimeters The FAA wants to establish "an achievable timeframe to retrofit/replace radar altimeters in the U.S. fleet" due to possible interference from C-Band 5G wireless service. So they are meeting with telecom and airline industry officials where they can hear "options and commit to actions necessary to meet these objectives." EasyJet to take out seats so it can fly with fewer crew Staff shortages are affecting commercial flight schedules globally and EasyJet has a solution to reduce its cabin crew from four to three legally: Take out the back row of seats in its A319 fleet. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulates the number of cabin crew based on seats, not passengers on board. Nigerian airlines are threatening to ground domestic flights amid soaring jet fuel prices Nine Nigerian airlines issued a statement saying that the cost of imported jet fuel had increased nearly fourfold as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that they are threatening to stop domestic flights. Airline operating costs have increased from about 40% to nearly 95% Frustrated Alaska Airlines Pilots to Vote on Strike Alaska Airlines pilots have been without a contract for some three years. Pilots started voting on May 9 on whether to strike. Balloting will end on May 25. The Air Line Pilots Association is seeking higher pay and better scheduling for its pilots. Spirit Airlines rejects JetBlue's buyout bid, citing approval concerns The Spirit Airlines board rejected the $3.6 billion takeover bid by JetBlue Airways. They say Spirit will continue to pursue a merger with Frontier Airlines. The Board determined that the JetBlue proposal involves an unacceptable level of closing risk that would be assumed by Spirit stockholders. We believe that our pending merger with Frontier will start an exciting new chapter for Spiri...
Bob Perkins is the founder and chairman of the AA-ISP. As a nationally-recognized Inside Sales innovator, Bob Perkins has extensive executive experience building and leading highly successful inside sales organizations at recognized brands such as Unisys, SGI, United Health and others. During his career he has created unique Inside Sales systems and structures, including team selling models, compensation plans, rewards and recognition programs, performance management tools, and sales campaigns which have been adopted by many of the nation's largest companies. Among other things, Bob maintains a video channel, Inside Sales Studio, that discusses trends and tactics specifically relevant to Inside Sales leaders and today's digital transformation. His proven expertise with the interrelated aspects of leadership development, motivation, and sales strategy has made him one of the top Inside Sales authorities in the United States. https://www.linkedin.com/in/perkinsbob/ https://aa-isp.org/about-us https://www.youtube.com/c/Aa-ispOrg Sales Inside Sales AA-ISP American Association of Inside Sales Professionals Revenue Operations Please: Like and Subscribe Video it really helps in distributing our Content Sign up for our Newsletter Please consider supporting our Content on Patreon/SaasHoles. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/saasholes/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/saasholes/support
Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing. This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, who gave her a GIF history lesson.
Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing. This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, who gave her a GIF history lesson.
Today we're going to talk about XLAs - experience level agreements, and how they have an opportunity to transform how IT products and services are delivered and measured. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Weston Morris, Director of Global Strategy - Digital Workplace Services, Unisys .
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