Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast, where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
The AI hype is in full swing. We all are bombarded with new tools, new consultants, and. And the platforms are leapfrogging each other every day. However, there are some very practical hurdles that, that most companies have that I see, and I want this podcast today to be very practical for you because the big hurdles that I see in between people now and then actually leveraging AI is clean data, process management that's digitized, and then being able to actually make better decisions. And Bob Mueller is on the show today. He runs the document management division of Image 1. It's a blast from my past because I built up the document management division of my old company. And don't hit stop right now because you're here in document management. This is a very practical and useful podcast because Bob is going to talk about change management, like, how do we actually get our processes digitized? And a lot of it has to do with change management. He's going to walk through how they do this in organizations for the accounting department, customer service, purchase orders, lifting that data from the analog world, digitizing it, and then being able to see all your processes so we can maintain our margins and scale our margins and have more throughput, then we can leverage AI because we have good data and we have a clear outcome. So Bob is full of unbelievable amounts of practical tools and approaches to understanding change management, how to look at your data, how to think about it, and then how to leverage technology to enhance your margins. You're absolutely going to love this podcast. Thanks everybody for tuning in and I hope you enjoy this podcast with Bob. Bob, I am super pumped that we are going to be having this conversation. Our dear friends Rob Dubay and Pat Hobby thought we should have a conversation.
My old industry, you've been in the space that I was in. I had. It's been a hot, you know, minute slash, 11 years since I was in the software automation space. But what I thought I'll do, Bob, is I'll frame up why I'm excited to have you on this conversation and then you can give us a little bit of your background because I think your journey of how you got to where you are is very helpful context.
But the reason that I was pumped to have you is, you know, when I look at the owner's framework that is hovering in parallel with something like eos which you're familiar with, obvious at image one is how do you be, how do you manage the company from the boardroom, making sure the systems and processes are all tied to the financials that are making sure that they're on track with the ownership goals. And one of my modules in phase two, which is the build phase, is scaling operations and that everything that you're doing with software automation and making sure. And there's a lot of different rabbit holes we're going to be able to go down from data to automating different processes and increasing margins and all that kind of stuff. But I like outside of just how, you know, how applicable that is to the framework, I loved your space. I mean I loved what I used to do and like you're in the middle of it. So like I was like, yeah, now I get to talk about my old world. So Cool, cool, let's do it. That's kind of the it in a nutshell.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Yeah, fantastic. I'm really pumped to be here, excited to share whatever I can. It's a cool space to be in, you know, having been in for 20 years, a little bit longer than the 11, but I'm, I'm excited because it always changes. There's nothing that's ever the same.
They're talking about software and automation, so it's always an adventure.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Well, that's why when we, when we caught up on the pre recording I'm like, I was like any Doc and fortis and content center and all these tools and it was like big cap exes and like how much money people were spending and it was a one time fee and now everything's SaaS and it's just, it's changed a lot. But the purpose of automating processes and getting clean data and all that stuff all stays the same to increase our gross profits and increase our deliverability. But Bob, why don't you just walk us through how did you get to doing what you're doing? Because I think understanding operations of companies is just unique then applying technology to it. And I love the, I love the backdrop and I think the audience will like it too.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. I had no idea what I, what I was gonna do, to be honest. I, I went to school and, and did a lot of programming and did all the computer science work and realized very quickly I did not want to sit in a cubicle and just write code for the rest of my life. I just wasn't, wasn't for me.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: And so given AI, are you kind of happy you Didn' do that.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Probably a good career path, good career decision. 20 years ago. And my wife was looking at a paper out of all things and then found this job at a, at a local copier dealer at all places. And they were networking and like, you know what? I need a job. Let's go do this. I don't want to be a coder. And let's, let's give it a shot. And lucky for me at that time, this is back, you know, 2000, 2005, 2006, they had just started talking about something called document management. And like this brand brave new world of having having PDFs and digital documents. I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. What's this whole thing about? And so spent some time on the networking side and really get involved, kind of understanding what this document management thing was. The old Florida state, as you mentioned before, and really gravitated to it. So a lot of time working hand in hand with the director at that time and really starting to understand, you know, what technology is not what's important.
Yes, it's a piece of it. But that process and understanding kind of the business side, that's what is kind of the main selling point. And so I just got all kind of geeked out with that. And so on the project management side, did all the technical work and got to see all the inner workings.
As you're working with companies through those processes, you just kind of through osmosis, learn kind of how different companies operate. And that knowledge has served me very well because an AP process is not any different from company to company. The end result's the same, but the means of getting there is such a unique path. Just being able to see that throughout these companies was, was so exciting. So I got hooked, I got hooked on it and I've been doing it for 20 years now.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: And what I find so fascinating about, I'm curious on how you think about this, but like what I liked about like when I built out our document management division, same thing, it was like so interesting for the copier industry because you're cannibalizing your print revenue.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: And so like they were like reluctantly going into it and like back, you know, in the days that you said when we started it was like all lip service, like we're doing this but just so we can sell more print and like, but then like the right. So were you the gold, like, were you like the stepchild for a long time in these copier businesses? Because like we're pretending we do this.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: You know, you know what, you go through all the financials and it was, it was copiers and, and, and CPP and click rates and paper. And then at the very, very bottom we talk about this, this automation is documentation.
Yeah, it's like, oh yeah, that's right. There's these guys over in the other room. We put them in the basement someplace and that's what they do. But you're exactly right. It was, it was this weird, you know, sort of cannibalization of what the core business was because you, you start taking away that paper. Paper equals process is something we talked about for years and it's like, well wait a minute here. Do we really want to take away the paper and put it in a different process? So yeah, it was def. Was a slow road, slow road going. But you know, I think over time, kind of the inevitability of it all, you kind of realize, well okay, this, something's going to happen and either we're gonna, we're gonna be at the forefront of it and actually start talking about it or someone else is and then you know, we're not gonna have any of the copiers or any of the. Cause they're gonna go work with somebody else who's doing it.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: And so what I. Cause there's a couple of different. I'll just plant some seeds and I'll try and navigate us back to them. But data management is something that I think is worth us talking about. And then processes and like operations and how technology can be applied to automate them and, and again even for the audience too, like talking about like where AI as people are hearing it now fits into what you're doing and how to like just see them as different things, I think would be a helpful topic, Bob. And then, but before we even get into some of the more kind of mechanics of that and how all that data ends up on the financials because at the end of the day we have to be able to look at a set of financials, go on track, off track of revenue, gross profit and free cash flow and how's that growing value. And I think this is a great topic on figuring out how to do that. But what I would love to hear on your experience and how you got into understanding operations. So we talked about a little bit this on the, on the pre call one of like it because you wanted to be a quarter. I'm curious if like the creativity of coding I think applies. Like when I remember Bob, when I was like. Because I'm similar, like I just like, love to see how things work. And when you're like in a law firm or like we have Minnesota Wild, or like this archway, which was the largest ap, you know, automation project we did, or the Salvation army hr. I was like, I get to learn how all these companies operate. And you'd be sitting there mapping out what people do and you realize that people are just making shit up every single day and they don't really know why they're doing anything. But like, how, how did you start learning about operations? How, like, what are some entry point stories? Like, like the first time you're in a conference room trying to figure out how a company works and how did you unpack this, like, curiosity of how operations of companies work?
[00:09:26] Speaker B: No, great. Yeah, great, great question. I think, yeah, you're spot on. I remember my first, my very first projects when I started is one of our largest accounts, Biggest accounts. They had, you know, copiers all over the place, tons of CPP revenue. And we're going to walk in and talk to them about this whole new concept, whole idea and you know, sit in executive boardroom, everyone's kind of sitting around the table and here I'm like a 23, 22 year old kid, like, what the hell am I doing here? It's like, okay, and just kind of follow along.
And it was so interesting because you got about 10, 15 minutes into it and you realize that they had no idea what it is that they really wanted to do.
Like, somebody had this idea that, hey, we got to take a look at our customer service and the way that we're processing orders, it's taking too long to get orders through.
We're hiring a bunch of, of temp work throughout certain parts of the season. We're paying for overtime. And so, hey, but let's set up a meeting and talk to us about what we could help to streamline that. And so one of the first questions we ask is, well, what's your current process today? What are you doing today? Just walk us through. So we get some groundwork at the framework of where to start.
And it was probably an hour later and they had gone around the table and everybody had a different idea of what they were actually doing to process orders. And it was kind of like this realization like, oh, okay, so maybe it's okay that I'm sitting in this room and you know, people really don't have it all figured out. And I'm kind of like you. I like taking things apart. I like seeing how things work. I really like to be a problem Solver and so just kind of dove in and start. Okay, our first problem is we got to get everybody on the same page and try to figure out like where are we going to start from? Otherwise this isn't going to go anywhere. And then slowly start working through those steps to, to come up with some sort of idea of what it could be.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Do you feel like kind of like with software programming where you start with the outcome first? I feel like the way your brain works was very advantageous to this because like when you sit in and when I, when I realized like no one knows what they're doing because they're all like siloed out into parts of these process. But at the end of the day there's one outcome you. So how did you like when you're talking about the outcome driven, what are some like different, you know, is it customer service accounts payable, like maybe walk through some of the outcomes and the processes that are like low hanging fruit for people and what are the outcomes that people are striving for?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Well, I think the outcomes have changed over time. So we can kind of talk about what I'm seeing today, if that works. I always go back and see what we saw.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: You know, 20 years ago, you know, today I think the outcomes people are looking for is their.
We have talent shortages. We have issues just hiring or maintaining keeping good people or keeping the people we have motivated and energized and in a role that's fulfilling. So you want to hang on to your talent. And so a lot of the times the outcome we're looking for is just trying to do more with less. Has been around forever. But do more with less. But also make it a position that is exciting, enriching, it's something that is enjoyable to do so I don't have to figure out what to do with that good talent that leave. So usually when we're starting, you know, for, for the outcome like on a customer service project or processing orders, you know, really any, any paper intensive or process intensive where we are handling, you know, throughput of documents or data, we, we try to understand at the very end, okay, what are we trying to get? Is this a cost saving measure? Is this a hiring problem?
Is this a acquisition? Am I trying to incorporate too much into my current workforce? That's really been the driving factor that we've seen today. I think previously a lot of times it was technology is cool.
Back way in the day it was CEOs, CFOs that were excited about bringing technology in and didn't really understand what it could do. And so the impetus for the employee factor wasn't necessarily as critical.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Interesting. There's a couple things that you said that struck a chord where, you know, when I think about, like, the companies are operating at the highest level right now, Bob.
It's clean data, so people can make decisions whether it's okay customer service, is it Net promoter scores at delivery time or whatever it is that they're trying to do, or if it's counts payable. Before it was like, okay, like accounts payable, receivable, all these different processes where if it's in paper, we don't have the data available to actually crunch data and make decisions. So it's this interesting way of going from the analog world into the digital world, cleaning it up so that way we can actually make operational data with it. So, like, is that, like, how do you. How do you see data as a. As a factor into.
Into the space of what you're working in it critical?
[00:14:14] Speaker B: You know, number one, number one point. I mean, you can't. It's hard to make a business decision if you don't have the right data. Right? And, you know, right data can be timely data, it can be accurate. Data can be a combination of both.
A lot of companies have gone digital. They don't have paper anymore, but they have emails and they have attachments and they have these images that are digital.
But I don't have access to the data. And that's really what I need is that information. So I think that's critical, especially when you're trying to make any sort of strategic decision without having that information, it's really hard to make the best decision.
So getting, getting that. That data off of a document, whether it's paper, whether it's a digital document, which is something that I think companies are missing out on. Like, just because it's digital doesn't mean it's useful. Like, getting that information off and into a usable format is. Is critical.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: So maybe we could, if you want, because I am very interested in, like, you know, how people are implementing these systems and what are the actual outcomes that they're experiencing? Because I think we could start with the outcomes and then talk about, like, the how, like, what is the big hurdles? And stu.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: That.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: But what are the outcomes to, you know, talent shortage? It sounds like. And like, I'm curious, like, so what is involved in that? And are you guys still, like, is accounts payable and receivable still big? And the reason, like, we always started there, and I don't know if like a lot of the, you know, the new, the systems, like they've, you know, bolted on all these modules to do that. But you know, with accounts receivables, like I don't know who owes me what and when and attaching those to contracts or payables, it was like, I don't know who I owe and when and why and what my customer discounts and all that. So it could be.
But like there were like big data opportunities to make better financial decisions right off the bat, but then it's migrated and sounds like it to other, other bigger business processes. But like what, what are the outcomes people are now striving for and how is this solving it?
[00:16:08] Speaker B: I think single, single pane of glass. I want someplace to go where I can see what you just described. I want to see what we're waiting to receive, what we are still what we have outstanding. You know, where are things in a certain process, what's critical from a service standpoint, what do we have to jump on in order to meet deadline? I want to be able to see that in one, one pane of glass.
And what, what we run into is the bolt on. Oh yeah, we have that too. Oh yeah, we have that too scenario where you have your main ERP that's running in all your financials and oh, we have a document just. Oh yeah, we have a workflow tool. Oh yeah, we have this piece and it doesn't quite give them what they want. There's still things that they need to go outside of the system to go find because the process downstream, or I should say upstream is not feeding the data into the tool in a timely manner. It's not accurate. Or guess what, the process still has it sitting in a paper or in an email format, something like that.
So having that single pane of glass to make those decisions, I think is, is, is important and what people are really striving for.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: And do you still struggle with prospects or clients defining document management compared to like workflow management where things are at in a process? Because I think what you said is like a really important piece where people are like, well, I have a software ERP system, whether it's NetSuite or whatever, you know, industry specific they have.
And then I've also got SharePoint where there's a bunch of file folders so like maybe kind of fill in the gaps. Is that still one of the objections?
[00:17:44] Speaker B: That's absolutely one of the objects. Oh, and SharePoint's free because we get it with our, with our subscription With Microsoft. And so that's always a big part of it too. We try to distinguish your business critical documents, what you need to make, you know, kind of this conversation, your financial decisions. I want things that immediately impact my cash flow. It's a business critical document. It needs to be in an appropriate tool set for that. There are other cases where we have shared documents. You're working on maybe a standard operating procedure documents or you have HR type documents, those kind of companies shared, you know, informational, you know, things you need to give access to. Well, that might be better served in something like a SharePoint or a OneDrive or someplace where it's just a shared resource. And then same thing with your, you know, the netsuite. So the add on tool, they do a great job managing all the data, they do a great job dealing with all the financials. They tend to just have an attachment for some kind of document. And a lot of times when you're trying to answer a question for a customer or a vendor who's calling on the phone, you want to be able to have like the entire picture in front of you in one pane of glass once again and not have to, okay, I'm going to go over here to find this information. But realize what I'm really looking for was a delivery document or their goods receipt or a purchase, whatever it might be to actually answer the question. And so that's a lot of the conversation is around, how do you make sure that you can combine this all in one easy to use, easy to find system? And that typically is a content or a document management system that's, that's leveraging and complementing something like an ERP or your CRM and where they use the tools for their, you know, what their main purpose is.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: So would it be helpful to. You probably have like a handful of stories which are like your favorite. Like this is the shitstorm they were in.
This is what we did.
This is the outcome. Do you have a couple favorite stories that you're willing to share?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah, let's see what stories I can share. Yeah. Without getting myself into too much.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Well, you can always just whatever. ABC company.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah. No, no, I'm kidding. Yeah, let's start. So I like, I shouldn't say I like companies that have, that are distributed across multiple footprints, multiple states. There they have multiple offices. A lot of times, you know, left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So remember one situation where they have everybody's kind of doing their own thing. Eventually everything got back to corporate so from a finance and an accounting standpoint, whatever they were purchasing, whatever invoices were coming in, they just handle often one of the sections over here. And at some point, whenever that GM or whoever was running that bill and decided they would send the information over to the finance team and then they would go ahead and run everything.
And so every single month, you know, the questions we asked, well, like, what are we paying this month? Like, what do we have any idea, like, where the dollars are? And every location knew where their dollars were, but nobody knew back at corporate until they actually sent their information in. And you can imagine people may be sitting on some of those sometimes depending on reporting or whatever's coming out. And so we had this conversation of, well, it's just so much easier if they, if they just have all of this come in and they just manage it over here. We don't want to manage it at the corporate level. It's just too much work.
And so we really went through this process of trying to find out, okay, well, where is the value? What are you really looking for? If it's important for you to understand exactly what you're going to be paying out, if you want to get accurate data, you need to have management. Not when they send it over to you, you need to have it the second an invoice hits the doc, it comes into the, into the building. And so we just revamped that process, brought it all into corporate first and then distribute out any approvals if they were needed. And I forget how quickly the turnaround went. We sit back down and kind of do a review, you know, our 60 or 90 day review of how things went. And you could just see the look on their face like, oh, this is so much better. We can actually see what's going on. We found a few things. You might need to have some corrective actions with some of these locations because of, you know, how they were handling some of the accounting. So it was very interesting and, you know, turned kind of a cluster into a huge win for that, that cfo, you know, at the company.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Well, I was gonna say and the ability to then manage cash because that's like my big.
We all are trying to predict and manage our cash so we can place the best bets with where to put that cash ticket as a distribution reinvested back in the company where. And you're providing that visibility.
It'd be so fascinating to hear, like how that cash conversion cycle actually, like what was the quantify one? And they probably didn't share that.
But like Bob When I think about the projects that I did a decade ago, the insanity behind people's egos and their jobs and like people protecting their jobs and the change management, to go from the first part of the story to like what the outcome was, how do you guys approach it from a change management perspective? How do you like map out that process and actually design something that actually gets everybody bought into?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: I think one misnomer is we replace jobs. Like that's what we're doing. We're coming in and we're going to replace jobs. And I can say over the 20, 20 years that's maybe happened, you know, one time. In most cases, once you start actually understanding what their need is, they realize we realize very quickly it's not about replacing something. It's just we have too much to do. We are not organized. We can't get the information we need. It's not about replacing, it's about being more efficient with what we have. And let's just reorganize instead of replace.
That journey, as I'm sure you experienced, is not an easy one. Especially if you're not.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: It's a psychology degree, man. It's not computer science.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: I mean, the number of times I wish I would have gone to school for psychology, it's unbelievable, right? It's just trying to get in the minds of people. You know, if you have the right audience, if you have, you know, someone that's, you know, in management, you know, that's, that's where we tend to see the most, most excitement around. Hey, I got this team of people, you know, I'm responsible for certain metrics. I'm reporting things up to, you know, the CFO or to the CEO. And I'm trying to manage this and I just can't. So this person kind of in management level is doing more work than they should. They're the one doing a lot of overtime. They're the one making up for mistakes that are happening with, with their staff. You know, we tend to see a lot of excitement at that level and that tends to then percolate up into, you know, into the C suite.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: How are you, like, what's your actual process for, like mapping it out, getting the stakeholders understanding what everybody's doing so that it's way it's successful. Like what's the process you guys take?
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah, so you know, we have, you know, longer sales cycle, so we probably have a good 6, 4 to 6 week type cycle that we tend to go through. You know, once we make that initial introduction, we try to Figure out where we do or don't want to start, and then we do a process back. We sit down in real time with the key stakeholders. It's important to have end users involved with that because as much as managers and as much as executives think they know what's happening, a lot of times it's not exactly the same. Right? There's little things like, no, we don't do it that way.
And so we ought to get the end users involved. And that's usually where the kind of the deer in the headlight, like, wait a minute, is this replacing my job? Comes up. So as we're going through that mapping in real time, we're really focusing on kind of making sure we're in alignment with their executive team on how this should be positioned, but making sure that we capture what's happening at the same time, you know, setting up for success later when we actually go through implementation. That process goes back and forth a couple of times, especially like that initial story where they don't have a clue what their process is. And I think that's important too. I think without having a foundation or having an understanding of where they are today, it's really hard to show the tangible gains benefits from making a change.
People don't just buy software because it's cool. You know, it's not an app. You just download and you pay your $2.99 a month and away you go. Like we have to justify, put together what that ROI is. And a lot of times those are, those are soft costs, right? They're not doing this. We're not replacing another piece of software. We're helping them quick enough cash flow, we're helping them not have to go out and hire more. We're helping them keep their employees. So it's really part of that discovery process we start kind of going through and trying to understand where their perceived value is.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: So when you're, and this is where I think it's interesting is I, and I learned a lot of this from the managed print or the document management or the managed IT where it's outcome focused. And I would say, honestly, Bob, to this day that mindset has helped me build what I'm doing right now, which is what's the outcome? And I just spent, you know, add another 11 years. And it's like, well, time, cash flow and wealth and the valuation of the company is all tied into that. So I just kept double clicking all the way to the first principal constraints. But what I, what I think is so helpful about understanding that Outcome is when, when we're sitting in rooms with people that don't know what that outcome is, we're, we're guiding and facilitating that conversation. So like when you're going into these meetings and you have all these opinions and all these thoughts, like, so you got customer service, I heard you say talent management, you know, accounts payable and receivable processes. Like, you're like the outcomes that you're going into.
Like explain how like you understanding what the outcome should look like. Even though you, you're probably molding the, the solution to the person, the idiosyncrasies of the company, but you're, you're, you have an idea of what you're striving for, right? I mean, because then you're mapping against the ideals, right?
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think to understand, can understand the question. We're what when we are going in, we have, we have a pretty good understanding after the initial conversation. Okay, we can probably free up 70% of their time. Like, okay, they're in acquisition mode or they just acquired somebody. We can bring all this in house. There's no need to go out. So we can determine that fairly quickly because they're using just file storage for storing documents, or they're using their email to send things off for approval, or they now have a hybrid work environment. That was a big thing with hybrid work environment. So how do we get this information out and wait for people to come back into the office where they could prove anything?
And so now we have the ability to do all that through mobile and whatnot. So we have a pretty good idea. When we first start, we're going to reduce some sort of Overall operating expense 60, 80% somewhere in there. A lot of times errors are another big thing, another kind of oh crap moment. Somebody ships a part to the wrong part of the country by accident and it's an $80,000 oopsie because it's on a flatbed truck. And those don't just turn around. So there's those mistakes that, in these manual processes too, that typically come out especially from that kind of middle management because they're the ones being held responsible if their employees are the ones that aren't performing appropriately that come out. So that's really kind of where our head is when we're going through and mapping it out. It still has to fit though. It still has to make sense for that company. I can't tell you how many times maybe you ran into this too, where companies just aren't ready for any kind of transformation. They, they like, it's a culture shift. It's, it's a mindset.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: It's a mindset.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: And if they're not ready for it, we, I mean, we can show you, we can show you X number of thousand dollars a month savings. We can, we can put all that in front of you, but the company's not ready for it.
That's going to be a negative impact on the company as a whole by trying to, trying to shove something like this in there.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Let's do like a filter of like, okay, like this client.
I mean, I, I wish I would have had that filter. You know, we were always chasing bucks, but like, I was like, oh my God, I wish we wouldn't have taken on clients.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we've all had, all had them. Exactly right.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: But it's, it's generally, it's not, it's not because you can't help them, it's because they're not. I mean, it'd be like a trainer hiring someone and then realizing like, that person doesn't want to follow any of the. They don't really want to change.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
It's not the technology. I mean, the technology is going to be out there. It's going to change. There's going to be the next pick your product that's going to work.
AI is out, so there's going to always be something. But if the culture of the company, if the leadership of the company is not ready to really grasp and really take the lead on that and run with it, then, you know, we've seen it where it's a detriment to, you know, to us as a partner because we're just spinning our wheels trying to help them out and they're just getting frustrated with it. And it's about the exact opposite experience as what anybody wants to have. So.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: And I think about, like, you know, where all of this leads to, I think in my head, Bob, is like, it's just the speed of accurate decision making.
And whether it is on customer service or inventory management or purchase order processes or accounts payable and receivable, whatever it is, it's just, can those managers and executives make decisions as fast as possible with the accurate data? And there's two parts to this that I, and I think this kind of piggybacks off into AI right now. And I'll get to that in a sec. But the, you know, the difference, what I used to remember, and I'm curious on what the evolution has been on the technology is other than looking at like you said, like the SharePoint file folder structure or the data in the accounting system or ERP system. It's where are things at in a process?
And so I, my favorite example is I have a friend that he built out a title management. So we actually used to do a bunch of title work, title management stuff he created. It's simply close or close simply. I don't know if you've ever heard of that tool. He calls it the pizza tracker for title.
But like, it's like, I like that. It's like, you know, because when you order a pizza, you're always wondering where the hell it is. Yeah, exactly. And so it's that on any process where it's more about like, okay, where's this at in the process? I mean, that's where I think about workflows and processes. I mean, do you have thoughts or examples on that?
[00:32:18] Speaker B: No. Well, that's exactly right. That's that single pane of glass. Like I want to be able to just, just click a, click a button and I want to see exactly where my order is through the process. Where is it in? Many, like manufacturers have this already. They like, if you want to know where something is on the floor, they spend lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy and systems. They know exactly where that product is going through production. And he'll think about the back office. It's very similar to what you said. I want to know where that invoice is, where's that customer order coming in, when's my shipment, where my payments going. I want to see that all with numbers next to it. And I don't want to have to go find it. And it should be real time. I mean, there isn't any reason that they shouldn't have real time access if as soon as it comes into the organization, it goes into a system where I have access to all that data. As you were describing. The most critical part, I need access data and I can't do that if it's sitting in my email. I can't do that if it's just sitting out on a network share someplace. Can't do that if it's in a filing cabinet. You got to get it into something that can grab and use that data then to give those executives that, that ability to see that in real time.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Well, I just think, I mean, it is so fascinating to me, Bob, because like I'm such a.
I spend 99% of my brain in the future and one of my biggest weaknesses is how fast I think that Future is going to come.
I think I'm going to be more accurate as AI accelerates the rate of change. But I remember sitting around a bonfire with my best friend from college and he's the most pessimistic.
I don't know. Him and I are the polar opposites. I'm like, all paper is going to be gone and this is 2009. He's like, shut up.
And here we are and it's still that big of a problem. So I mean it sound like as we're talking about AI solving nuclear energy or whatever it might be like, I think about these companies, dude, that they had. There was this one, they were, it was an architecture firm and manufactured architect and manufacturer, kind of this weird combination. But like they had this folder, freaking folder where it was like emails coming in and then like different things happening. And they handed this manila folder around to a bunch of people and they would print off.
Yeah. And no one knew where it was and like where's everything at? And it was a total shit show. So I just think it's so fascinating how like it's still a thing.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Well, that's what I find fascinating about the whole AI conversation is what is AI going to do for that company that has paper in a filing folder that's being walked around the organization?
There's steps that need to happen before you can take advantage of everything that's happening in the world of AI?
You have to get it in some sort of digital format. It can't be sitting in paper, otherwise you can have the world's most expensive best to have. It's out there. And unless it's actually physically reading documents because they're in paper format, it's not going to be very helpful.
That's something that we try to talk a lot about. By no means are expert in AI. I don't know if anybody's an expert in AI.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: But I think you're right though.
And that's why I think it's a unique time for you and what, what service you provide. Because there are two things and, and I think this is so relevant for everybody is there are two things that I think people could think about as it relates to AI. This is because I'm like a power user. The moment I wake up to, the moment I go to bed, I'm using AI. Unless I'm on a call and it's are do we have the outcome, the clearly identified goals, like in very nuanced detail, here's exactly what we're trying to accomplish. So we can give it all the context that we can about. Here's exactly what we're trying to accomplish. And then the second most important thing, feed it the accurate data.
And what I'm looking at in the. Those are the two weakest points, Bob, where like most people don't know what they're actually trying to solve for or why which everything ends up landing on free cash flow. Like a company's existence is to generate free cash flow for capitalism while providing the good or service to the client. That's it. So we need to make the connection of all of the operations and services to the financials.
And that's the outcome that we're, you know, whatever the outcome of the process is, it has to relate to delivering the good or service and making money. And then so they, most people don't know how to articulate it correctly. But then the second part is that clean data, Bob, even if someone has that clearly articulated goal, they don't have good data.
And the data cleanliness is such a problem in organizations because half of it's offline, like you're saying, or the other half of it's, you know, I mean, people's GL structures are a complete effing mess, let alone like how was your naming convention of your pos, your customer list. And so maybe talk about like data integrity and how when you're going through this process like you, you. There's probably gotta be a part of the step of the process like okay, in order for this to all flow around with fields in the database. Yep, we have to clean, clean up the data.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. And it really doesn't matter what process it is.
We talked a lot about customer service and finance, but it doesn't matter. If you want to leverage, if you want to leverage the tools that you have available today, you have got to have clean data. I think that there are a number of misconceptions that the Internet is a mess. And so why do we need to have clean data? If ChatGPT can search the Internet, which is a disaster, unclean data, why do we need that for my business?
And so my kind of response to that is, I don't know about you, maybe you're a very good prompter, but it takes me twice, maybe three times to get the outcome that I'm really looking for that's clean. That's okay. That's exactly what I meant. I think when you're making a business decision or if you're looking at data, you don't want to have to do it three times. You don't want to have to do it multiple times. I like, like the data should be clean and accurate. So it just gives you the right answer the first time because you want to make the.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: As long as your questions to your prompt.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: You can't do that without having that clean data, like you said. So that, I mean, that is probably the biggest advancement that I've seen the last 10 years doing this. And not necessarily from a technology standpoint, although that's a big part of it. But it's now accessible. It's now available for companies, you know, smaller companies, mid sized companies. You don't have to be, you know, you know, Fortune 500, Fortune 100 to get access to this technology. It's coming down to the point where I can utilize it now as, you know, a 5 million. As a startup, as a $20 million company.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Well, I think it's, it's so relevant because when I think about. And maybe you can give some examples and different processes of how you end up standardizing data fields. Because, like, the way I like to.
Because I got into this habit, I'm very disciplined on how I organize my files. I have like everything in this thing called Obsidian, which is kind of like Evernote, which is like, I hate not being able to find shit like it. It's my most frustrating thing. So standardization. It came back from my document management experience of like, how are the folders structured? So if it's clients, then how are we labeling the clients? The type of service, you know, how are we doing the POS or how are we managing the inventory and the, the labels of the inventory or whatever it is, so that way we can easily find it and make decisions. And I think what's so fascinating and pat. Hobby and I have been talking and working on this standardized financial model because, like, this is a use case of just me where like, I have spent a lot of years understanding how financials work.
But like, even you, if you owned a company and you said to me, all right, Ryan, here are my financials, and you sent them over to me. You know what I say to people? It's like someone giving me me access to their Google Drive folder and going, good luck, here's my brain on drugs. It's like, I don't know how and why you organize all this stuff. And we should organize our data in a way that someone else, without having the context, would be able to know what the hell's in there.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Otherwise.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: So how do you, like, how are you going from like, you Know, because what I've, how I've overcome that on the financial side is like, here's a standard template where you have to think through what are your revenue lines, what are your cost of goods lines, what's your overhead lines, and you have to map your, you know, your different random junk bullshit into these standard ones. Then, then AI and then me or anybody can analyze them in a thoughtful way. But how are you going through in that, like, process of mapping, cleaning up and standardizing data? How do you help people with that?
[00:40:53] Speaker B: It's same process you, you just described. And the first thing is not folder structures. Folder structures, my opinion, they're waste of time.
What type of document do you have? Oh, I have an invoice. Okay, what are the key components of an invoice that I need for my business? Invoice, number, date, line, items, you know, whatever. You go, there you go. That's our model. We do a lot of modeling. And then you take that model, you give it to an AI engine and let the AI agent ingest all of your documents as they're coming through. And it takes that applied model and says, okay, where, where do I get this off this document? And then it becomes a piece of data for you to use down the road. And then you have your full text search as a backup where you can read anything off the document, which is like a bigger data pool for you to, for you to pull from every single document. Purchase orders, sales orders, whatever it is. Yep.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: I, and I, I thought it was, I can't remember. There was this archway. I don't even know if they're still around. It's been forever. It was like 3,000 different types of invoices because you're like, where's the, where's the dollar amount?
What was that?
[00:41:56] Speaker B: What year Was this?
This?
[00:41:58] Speaker A: 2010.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay. So some of the old school OCR, like pulling templates off and that sort of thing.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So like, and maybe you can speak to this because, like, maybe I'll explain my old thinking of like, what the process is. Because there's the data capture, which you're pulling the data off of the document. Then you're digitizing it into data fields that are standardized. Then you can workflow around those. Like if it's over $5,000, you need to send it out to the manager for an approval. But if it's under, then it goes right to the payables department. And if there's a discount and it's our supplier, but like, you're lifting all that data and like there's unstructured data. So what that those OCR engines are doing, right, they're like looking for, where does it say invoice? There's a number next to it. But I used to use any Doc and Kofax. Oh yeah, so, so like there's the capture part, data standardization and then the workflow part. Can you kind of speak to that? Is that still how it works or is there other ways to think about it?
[00:42:56] Speaker B: It's very similar. It's just, it's just a lot quicker and a lot cheaper to do now. It doesn't take a lot of effort to go in and do it all.
I think companies 20 years ago got invoices from their vendors and had to figure out do I pay these or not? And companies today are still getting invoices from their vendors and they're having to figure out do I have to pay these or not. So like the actual process itself isn't really that different. It's just the technology.
If you actually go through it and have an actual okay, what are we willing to put a variance around, what are we willing to not put eyes on? You know, because there's value. If I don't have a person sitting there doing that, let's let them out, let them go and talk to customers, let them answer the phone, like that sort of thing. But the process isn't much different. It's just faster and it's cheaper than it was, you know, 15, 20 years ago.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: How, where in your guys's implementation do you help people understand those variances? Because I can imagine most people haven't thought about those rules prior to engaging with you guys. Maybe they have them in their head or one person's got them. But how do you extract that, those variances?
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we do try to do that during the mapping process because it's really hard to have like a five page standard operating procedure document that you're reading through to really get an understanding of what is, what is going on. So visually getting a nice map, a nice diagram of what's happening and we can zoom in on the parts that are, you know, quality control or manual intervention or whatever. And then we can have a discussion around why and experience and providing insight to how other companies have operated what they've decided to do is always helpful because sometimes, as you said, they haven't thought about it, they don't know what they don't know. So, you know, trying to give them some ideas. But then we really interrogate those manual, you know, manual steps and do you really need to have them or not?
Some companies aren't ready for a fully automated that they want to have eyes on. It's critical for them to. So great, no problem.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: You can pick and choose end parts of the process.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: And you kind of pick and choose and we kind of flip the switch on what parts and usually what happens, I don't know if you remember this used to, you have the paper documents, they'd scan them in and they were, we cannot get rid of this paper. We got to stick it in the filing cabinet for six months because we might need it. And you'd follow up six, eight months later. And they just got sick of putting the paper in there, so they started throwing it away. So it does take time. This is not a, A, you know, a one, a one stop, one time project. It's an ongoing, you know, investment in kind of that operational efficiency. It doesn't just happen day one. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta walk the road, you know, to get to the point to, okay, now everything is automated. What's next?
[00:45:39] Speaker A: It's just so fascinating because like a lot of the concepts that I subscribe to now as far as like, how do companies create sustainable cash flow? It's like, it's the people part, the operations, the finance, sales and marketing and all these, you know, they're all analog. At some point then we're digitizing them all and, and like it. What I find so fascinating about what the opportunity is, Bob, is making faster decisions.
Like that's the goal is I want to increase my customer service experience, I want to increase my lead time, I want to increase my cash conversion cycle. But the, it's, I, I just find it so fascinating how, how many people, like, what's the opportunity out there? Like how many clients and companies have actually started like pushing towards this compared to like people that are just kind of like. I mean, I think the AI thing is the same thing. It's like, it's like how many people are just resisting this or haven't done it and therefore they're not gonna be able to capture good decision making or AI because of their resistance here.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: I think every company has an opportunity to, I mean anybody that says that they have it all figured out, I would not believe that they have it all figured out. There's always opportunity. I think the challenge is just not knowing. I think that's the great part about technology changing so quickly is there's always new things and new opportunities and ways we can approach a company and different ways to educate it also Makes it really convoluted and very confusing. So a lot of times there's just, there's just no action like I'm not going to do anything right now because I just don't understand it. So, you know, I think there's an opportunity, especially in any, any, any back office. There's, there's some opportunity there. It's just finding, you know, you know, someone, a partner, someone that you work with to maybe give you some new ideas or just take a look at it. You know, take, take the 30, 35 minutes and just, let's just walk through real quick and see what else is there. Because what may have been, you know, what, we're good right now, you know, six months ago might change. And so, you know, I, I think the opportunity is, is still endless like we talked about in 20, 20, 2020 or 2015, 2005. I think there's still plenty of opportunity out there in this industry.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: So when I think about people's biggest resistance, it's the time, old time and money.
So how do you.
Like what. Oh, I mean, we can talk about the money part. I mean, I know that's come down because like any doc was like 200 grand and then you're talking, I mean it was ridiculous. What you could do for 200 grand.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: Back then you can do for 20 grand now. I mean, I think that's what people don't maybe realize. If you've had your business for a long enough time and you've looked at this before, the implementation costs are cheaper because you don't need to have a team of engineers to go through and do it.
They have AI tools incorporated into the workflow design part of it. So now, now the, the engineering is more of the design work and the understanding the why asking the questions, going through the build part of it. It's not interesting, it's not the dragging of the thing. You know, all of that is so much quicker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the technology itself is just, is just. Once again, it's just cheaper. It just, it's available now to these.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Smaller businesses, which I think you then hit then when, if, because I do believe that costs are probably, probably not the biggest barrier here.
It's people's mindset. And how do I, if I'm a even call it a hybrid where 50% of my shit's manual.
How do I eat the elephant one bite at a time? And how do I pick the lowest hanging fruit? How much time does it take from my employees, from me? You know, if I, who's going to be making these decisions on variances. Like so like what is the scope or scope created on time commitment from people.
[00:49:36] Speaker B: So the first part, like where, where do you start? Where it's kind of the lowest hanging fruit. It goes back to clean data. So if you don't, if you still have a manual workflow, if you still have the steps in your process you're doing today, but we've ingested your content at the very beginning and now have usable data, we can now layer on top of that for the next project and the next project and slowly deal with the automation side. You may still do it manually. That happens quite a bit actually. We, I would recommend you don't, you don't want to try to eat the elephant. You know, you want to take your one bite at a time. And just getting usable data is always, always step.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: So you start at the capture side.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: Pretty much capture side, get usable data and then keep the same manual process. If that's where you want to start, that's fine. Very little change. You'll have to, you have to read, you know, to reteach anybody what the new process is. You're not upsetting anyone's world. You're just capturing data up front so it's usable. And then slowly you start to, you know, get some buy in with well, geez, now that we have this, wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to touch these ones? You know, it's a great idea. And then we start going down that path and then slowly but surely it just becomes an ongoing part of the company culture which is to continually improve those processes is once you have your, your strong foundation set, you know what.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Would be an interesting metric for you guys to play around with and I don't know if, if your clients would share the information with you guys or not, but you're hurt. Like one of the metrics that people have liked over the years is like revenue per employee.
And I don't give a about revenue.
And so what I like and what how I think that there's a way to tie tie or there's a way to tie the effectiveness of what you're talking about into the business is gross profit per employee or gross profit per division.
Because what in, in theory or like probably most likely in practice, the entire point of doing what we're talking about here is to get clean data and to increase our throughput. I mean there's a book called the Goal. You've heard the, the Goal book, Bob. It's, it's about the theory of constraints. Oh, my God, the book is so hilarious.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: This.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: It was written in the 80s and I didn't. I didn't listen to it when it. Cause I. Back on my shelf, I literally have process mapping chart or books from like 2009. But the throughput. The book, the goal is like, okay, we're always looking at the biggest bottleneck and increasing the throughput. That's all we're doing is just constantly whack a mole on that throughput and the biggest bottleneck. And that's where I see the application of document management, workflows, and data management. And in theory, we should be able to increase our throughput of gross profit.
So then therefore, if we look at a division, whether it's account or, you know, finance or sales or whatever, and say, okay, what's my gross profit per employee of this division?
We should be able to increase the throughput because if you're freeing up 70% of people's time, your payroll line on your income statement should not have to grow as much because then you have more people doing more things. And as the wage inflation goes up, up, we have. And tribal knowledge is important, especially if you got a lot of manual stuff. So I'm just. I'm playing around with this, this KPI of gross profit per employee. And then what I actually want to do is gross profit per hour of the owner.
So we take the whole company.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. You know, customers, they're not. They don't give us that information. That's a little bit too in the weeds for, as, you know, you know, with everyone's company, it'd be a great metric because at the end of the day, like, what's important to you? Like, why are you. Why are you deciding to do something with automation? And it's exactly what you just described. And oh, by the way, maybe we can. Maybe we can put out a better product. Maybe we can be, you know, have more quality. We can be faster at things. You know, there's all the things besides just financial that can come out of it, which should lead then to, you know, better customer retention.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: And that's where that gross profit becomes. Like, if. If the gross profit and the gross margins are in line growing or staying steady as people grow, there's more throughput of cash.
And it'd be interesting if you went back to some of your clients, say, hey, you don't have to tell us this, but, like, what's your gross profit per employee right now? Or per division, or, you know, come up with their Metric and say we would like to know. Because instead of them telling you the exact dollar amounts, Bob, I bet you they could see the increase if they were actually to track it. And first of all, they can't track it.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: 10, 12. Yeah, whatever number.
Yeah, that's a good takeaway. Yeah.
[00:54:09] Speaker A: What are you.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: Very interesting.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: What are some of the biggest opportunities you see coming down the pipeline? Like what's.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: Where.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: Where are things headed? And like where, like what are the. What's the tool makeup? What are the things that people, that you're excited with? What are some of the things that you think are hurdles for people?
[00:54:26] Speaker B: I'm excited about all the integration, all of the open integrations that are available now. You know, there's, there's platforms or tools that allow you to essentially complement and put together these solutions that aren't just one product, one product base. There's not that one product is just going to do everything for you, but the tool sets now allow us to incorporate all these different features. Take the best of all these three, four different worlds. And it's. And it can look like one product to the end user because the integrations are so open. So your Zapiers, all your iPads, you know, availability, it's fantastic. It makes it easy.
It's more cost effective. Now to do integration, you don't need a development team to write something custom to integrate with your erp. I can go out and pick a tool set and just do it because it's available. That part's really exciting to me. And then the capture side too. The capture side just being accessible now, being able to pull clean data and more accurate data. You know, things like handwriting, you know, dirty documents, crumpled documents and really leveraging all.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: Does it just get way better?
[00:55:29] Speaker B: It's so much more accurate than it used to be. We would never talk about handwriting.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Remember Planet Press with the digital pen?
[00:55:36] Speaker B: Oh yeah, we talked about that before, didn't we? Pen.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: They were so expensive. What I just said, just to comment a couple things. I mean this is only 10, 15 years ago, but Planet Press, you're like a hundred grand of that effing digital pen that barely worked. Then any doc for the capture would kind of work and it's a couple hundred grand. And then you'd have to hire the developer for an API between your ERP system and that. I mean it was such a cluster and now all of those friction points have been. I mean, the iPad with the pencil now and then like all this stuff is just crazy.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: And it was all on premise. You had to have an infrastructure to support it all as well.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: So you got to server cost, freaking.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: Overhead just even doing that too. And now, and now we can just spin something up in you know, 24 hours and you have everything kind of set and it's just a matter of configuration. It's a little more complicated than that. But that's the basic premise of it now. It's so much more accessible.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: I don't know how people like honest to God, Bob, I don't know how people are going to compete if they don't do this stuff because with AI right now, how fast companies are going to be able to increase their throughput with automation.
And it's really automating.
It's automation but it's decision making. That's literally where everything comes down to. And they can't decide fast enough because they don't know the impact on cash. And so like you have, they can't utilize AI well if someone has clean data, standard workflow processes and AI, their ability to out compete and charge less or scale faster is like they're going to leave people in the dust.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a price to be paid for indecision and companies that are focusing on their, their customer service interactions, the human interaction, the relationship. If you can put all your time and all your resources because you're not dealing with data entry, you're not dealing with slow data, you're not dealing with manual processes and I can build a better relationship with a customer, with a vendor.
Exactly right. Those are the companies that are going to thrive. Yeah. In this.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: What, what's the market like of other implementers like you guys. So where, when again long time ago. But like you know, you'd have these customers don't know how to vet out a service provider. We're like you have been doing this for 20 years where like lots of other is it copier businesses. Are there actually standalone tech companies that are doing this that don't have a copier business? And what would be someone what should like walk through and obviously it's going to probably be self serving but that's the reason I had you on this call of like you guys know what the hell you're doing. But like my favorite is to hear if someone was shopping around what were the questions that if you were the buyer and you were going to be asking some questions to make sure that you avoid the gotcha of oh, this is a company that pretends to do this but they don't actually do this. So like what questions would you Be asking someone.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you're shopping around and you're in or someone's cold calling on you and you take a meeting, whoever you're working with needs to do all the work. They need to be the company that actually does the implementation. They do the actual ongoing work. They need to treat you as a partner.
If you got a salesperson that's selling you a product, that's not what I would, what I would recommend, you can go out and Google and find your products online and run it yourself.
So that's the first thing. I think people who have multiple products because there's not just a one solution that works.
So if you're talking to someone in healthcare, you're talking to someone illegal, you're talking to somebody in K12.
Finding something that is specific to their needs I think is important. So you need to find a company that's got multiple avenues to go down to give you the best option, not just the only one that they just happen to sell.
And I think if there's not regular reviews, if there's not a strategy for how they're going to continue to work with you and be that partner. As we kind of talked about, this is not just a one project and done. This is a, this is a transformation, this is the road, this is an ongoing thing. They need to be in line with that. And so tell me how that's going to work. I think those are.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: How about the people, how about the people in the process of actually implementation? Because I bet you someone could have all those things but they're just going to stick it up and put it live and not do. Is it process automation or like, like mapping out the process, like how they're.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: Actually going to discovery, mapping process pre sales. I mean if someone comes in and can give you a price day one, then they're just trying to sell you on something. So you need to actually be able to go through the process. There is a commitment on, you know, on the business's part, like you have to be involved in it. If you're not involved in it, how do you know you're going to get what you want? Like you need to have some say in what, what this is. And so if they're not going through that and they're going too quickly just trying to get you to, to buy something.
That'd be a red flag for me.
[01:00:31] Speaker A: Well, how about like people on the team, like what, what kind of characteristics or skill sets should the people on the team have?
[01:00:36] Speaker B: Business knowledge, obviously process knowledge. They should Be creative people. In my mind, you know, this is not just a black and white way to handle these things. You need to be able to think outside the box and oh geez, I've never heard of that before. Especially when you're going across different industries.
Technical expertise is I think very critical because saying you can do it and actually being able to do it are two totally different things. And so the execution side of it is just as important as well as the training. As we kind of talked about as much as we can put the right solution in, it could be the greatest technology.
If there's not a nice handoff to your users of the system, if there's not training, if there's not continuing follow up, it won't be successful and then it'll be viewed as a dud.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: Then how do you map out scopes.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: Like scope Cree, how much time do we have?
[01:01:30] Speaker A: I just like if my old, my old college buddy, who actually, his name is Stashy, God bless his soul, I love him to death. All the dumpster fires we put him on like he, he should be a politician in a different like scope, scope creep like making. Because again if it's like well I want this cert, like this process and then this department and this and oh by the way, I want to add a field here and whatever. Like how do you scope out the original and then how do you deal with change orders and ongoing scope?
[01:01:59] Speaker B: Boy, I, you know, I think there's a lot of books written about that exact topic that'll probably explain exactly how you do that. For me, it's a balancing act. I am, I've always been interested in those long term relationships.
I like really getting to know companies. You know, the team that we, we work with just like to continually do stuff with these companies and we genuinely like, like solving problems. And so it's critical when you're going through that first iteration to not stop that excitement and that, that want to be a partner. And if it's this well detailed, you know, 49 page document, it's got every single thing listed on it.
Sure your engineers might feel really warm and fuzzy about it, but the experience with the customer is a whole different story. So I probably come from the camp of let's find what's going to work for all parties involved. This is a relationship I'm hoping obviously that this is going to be while it's a partner throughout this whole transition and here's what we can do and put that together. So I definitely fall on the end of the less is more when it comes to scopes. And if we get to the point where we need to have a conversation, we do. But I think that's the critical part with having talented engineers doing the execution of these projects. Is what might be a big deal for some other service providers is really not that big of a deal for us.
Second change, no big deal. We'll just take care of it.
[01:03:34] Speaker A: Because at the end of the day, I think this would be an interesting insight for people is because how I used to manage the financials of our document management division, which was an evolution for sure because I went from selling products with.
And that was a mindset shift for the entire copy industry. You sell a product, you got gross profit and.
But with a copier or with the document management, you'd sell either the upfront implementation, the ongoing.
Do you and your engineers like apply time to a project so then you can see gross profit for you on your end? Because like that's where it's that balancing act. So you guys all tracking time against projects to make sure that you're hitting right?
[01:04:15] Speaker B: Yep, yep. Correct. Yep. We have our metrics that, you know, I'm beholden to. And so yeah, we track, we track all that information, but from a customer standpoint, when we're, when we're working with somebody, it's, it's usually a number like this is what we're committing to and, and then we track it to see how well we did essentially on the back end. You know, in some cases, you know, we need to add more hours next time we do a project like this.
[01:04:37] Speaker A: In other cases, yeah, you're learning instead of, instead of applying the learning to the person that you learned on, it's going forward. But I think the reason I brought that up, Bob, because like the world is just full of incentives. And I think it's just important to note like when you're doing that scope or figuring out where are we going to start, you and your team are going through that process so you can align expectations because you guys need to make your money. You guys need to make sure you don't over commit or under commit. You also are trying to balance the customer experience while also making money. I mean, it's just, everybody's just trying to, to balance that, that, that line. And I just think personally, man, like all the stuff that we just talked about, it like literally comes down to clear expectations and good communication.
[01:05:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: And that is really hard to find with service providers and partners these days. And I think it's just so important because Everybody's just trying to make their own situation work while meeting in the middle.
[01:05:30] Speaker B: That's why I think working with a service provider is still better than just finding someone who sells a product. Because you're going to get the answer, they're going to give you the answer that they want to sell the product. You got to find someone that is actively engaged, is interested in once again that partnership so you can have that clear, open communication. Everyone. I mean we're all, we're not doing this for free. Right. I mean businesses, as you said, it's all about, you know, eventually making money. So just finding a balance that fits for everybody involved. And there are win wins. They really do exist. Where we can put in software product, yes, it costs money, but in the end you'll end up making more money than you were. And you know, ROIs can be, can be a month, they can be a year. We go through that with our customers. If someone's not doing that, definitely ask those questions.
So yeah, communication, yeah, good communication.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: This has been so fun, man. Blast from the past.
So yeah, it's, it's, well, it's just, it's an important topic and we get down in the weeds. But like, what I enjoy doing is connecting all the dots of like, if someone is sitting in the boardroom, they want to know how their company's doing and then they can keep asking why, why, why, why? And they need to have the data readily available and someone needs to be able to describe that. And this is part of the process, process. And you're at the front end upstream. It's capture the data, put it into the system. And I, I just think it's, I mean we have to go all the way from the boardroom all the way down to the trenches and say like, who's got that piece of paper that's got a scribble on it that someone owes us some money?
Where can people find you, man? What's the best way to get in touch LinkedIn.
[01:07:04] Speaker B: Trying to be on LinkedIn as much as possible. Image1away.com. Yeah, happy to answer any questions. We love the education part of it.
We do a lot of, we do a lot of subcontract work, you know, for other, other resellers and it's really just about education. So happy to, to be involved. Yeah. With, with anything. Even if we don't sell you something, it's fun stuff. We get really excited about it. So feel free to reach out.
[01:07:25] Speaker A: That's awesome. And I have to give a shout out to Rob Dubay and Joel because. Oh, yeah, they're, you know, Rob's been on the podcast a couple times, and he's, he is kind of the archetype, Bob, of like, what a lot of people listening in or my clients are trying to do is, like, how do I decouple myself from the operations, keep the company and keep a great culture? And he's so it's really cool, like, you're one of his service offerings and you're part of the team, and yet he's not involved all day long. And Pat's working on the financials. It's just, it's so fun to watch you guys, and I just, I'm just such a huge cheerleader of Image one and everything that you guys are doing.
[01:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really, really proud to be here. It's fantastic.
[01:08:03] Speaker A: Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it, man.
[01:08:04] Speaker B: Appreciate it, bro. Take care.
