[00:00:00.000] Hi, Simon. Hey, Charles. The end of the week. It is. Nice time to have a little chat.

[00:00:06.420] What’s better than to talk about digital transformation?

[00:00:08.840] Digital transformation. So anyone who doesn’t know, you are the director of a practice we call the Digital Transformation Practice. Can you tell us what that is?

[00:00:18.600] Yeah, absolutely. So we will typically take on projects that we call Digital Transformation Roadmaps, which is really looking at the current state of a company in terms of the solutions that they have, the The technology solutions that they have within the company and making recommendations on where they should be headed in the future. So we’ll do these projects with our customers and then potentially do software selections with these customers.

[00:00:44.070] And I guess one thing I would want to say to our audience, which, as you know, is wide, deep, large and global in scope, they may ask themselves, why would a supply chain firm, because that’s our focus, supply chain firm, why would it be looking at the software applications that a company has from soup to nuts? Why the entire company? Do you have a good answer? I have a good answer for you.

[00:01:16.710] Go for it. Go for it. Well, if you think about our customers, the supply chain is the critical heart of that business.

[00:01:28.660] We don’t we don’t work banks. We don’t work for websites that publish content or anything like that. Our clients are strictly manufacturers and distributors and retailers who do a lot of distribution. So at the core of everything they do is the supply chain. And so to your point, all the software applications of that business ultimately have to point to and point from the supply supply chain technology. Yeah.

[00:02:01.710] And if you think of what will typically be a part of a company’s software portfolio, as we call it, you’ll have an e-commerce website where orders will come in. And obviously, at one point, these orders will need to transform into pick lists that you’ll pick the inventory for in the warehouse, for example. So all of these different moving parts are typically part of different systems that need to be interconnected with one another.

[00:02:23.360] Yeah. It’s really interesting because to bring up the idea of a website, and the average person doesn’t even think about it. But before you can even have that order confirmed, and we’ve all seen this as consumers ourselves, is it available? Is it in stock? And that’s a real-time inventory check, or at least, hopefully, Otherwise, you’re going to have some disappointed customers. So even that commercial website is going to interact in some way with the supply chain. And those websites, those commercial transaction websites, when you’re dealing with business to business become vastly more complicated than business to consumer because you have all sorts of volume discounts and other assorted complexities that need to be transacted from that website. So it is interesting that the evolution of Lid in its technology, people who do know us know, we started out with shop floor technology. That’s all we were we’re really focused on, warehouse management systems, some systems for manufacturing as well. And then it was by the virtue of you really can’t make those decisions around shop floor technology unless you start going further up into the very heart and soul and all the way to the treasury and financials of a company like that.

[00:03:53.230] Yeah. And if you think of how we started implementing ERPs, like you said, is really because we had to deal with all the messages going from the warehouse management system to the ERP to tell the system, Hey, this is what we have available on hand. This is how we’re fulfilling your orders. So that’s really how we got into the ERP world because we realized how tightly integrated these two were.

[00:04:12.710] Right. So why don’t we spend a few minutes Okay, so why do I need a roadmap?

[00:04:18.420] Well, there’s a couple of reasons why you would need a roadmap. First of all, if you are struggling with your technology, it’s sometimes hard for a company to identify what type of software they need in the future. So when we do a roadmap, that’s one of the things we’ll do. We’ll take your business requirements and we’ll really transform them into software requirements to then be able to guide our customers to say, Hey, this is the type of system you should be looking for. That’s the first thing. The second thing, what we found by doing these roadmaps is that having everyone and key stakeholders involved in the process of deciding what software to go with will typically help the implementation go smoother as well. So, yeah, these are, I think, are two of the main reasons why-I mean, it’s a classic problem that a company faces.

[00:05:04.320] They know there’s something not working about their solution. They just really don’t know what it is. You see these people and you’ll see a company and the executives having this debate, well, we’ve got to replace our WMS, or should we upgrade our WMS, or is it the ERP that’s the problem? Should we upgrade the ERP or should we replace the ERP? And then you get this Eight by eight matrix of options, and everybody’s confused, and everybody has a stake in the answer, but very few people have the expertise to understand the consequences of the decisions they’re going to make. Yeah.

[00:05:46.080] Yeah. And more often than not, unfortunately, we see these consequences by having to do re-implementations of systems that were poorly chosen by the company.

[00:05:54.300] Poorly chosen. Yeah, absolutely. So Walk me through. So what am I going to do? I hire Simon and your team to do a digital roadmap for me. What should I expect?

[00:06:09.770] Yeah, for sure. So the first thing is always to go on site, boots on the ground, and have discussions with all the key stakeholder groups to understand what their processes are within the business.

[00:06:20.360] We’re going to map those processes?

[00:06:21.920] We’re typically going to map these processes and establish a list of business functions that they will require in the system. So we’ll compile that from all the different group of stakeholders and then make a recommendation on really what they should be going.

[00:06:36.710] So you have this map, end-end processes of the business. It’s basically like an information flow diagram of how that business works. And it’s software agnostic at that point, right? You’re just saying, okay, this is everything you’re going to do. Now, once you’ve completed that, you’re going to trigger a lot of interesting conversations if Along the road, pardon me with a pun, but along the road of building this process map, you’ll find that there are certain glaring inefficiencies or things that should be improved. That’s just the nature of any one of these exercises whenever you audit an operation of any kind, there’s always some bad habits that are in there.

[00:07:26.160] Yeah, and there are typically gaps between what they’re doing and best practices. More often than not, just by having these interviews, they will tell us.

[00:07:34.340] They’re aware of it. And just like, I’m aware that I should eat only a donut a week instead of a donut and a Timbit a week. But they don’t until they pay someone to come in and tell them to stop it. Then that’s the way that works.

[00:07:53.400] Sometimes just adding structure around these discussions will-Clarify and get other parties to recognize that this is a problem, we should fix it.

[00:08:05.980] But let’s just say that’s normal course. So I now have this technology agnostic map of information flows across the business. And then there’s a question. The question is, all right, if you were a startup with nothing, but a lot of money to do whatever you wanted, then Then instantly you’re going to have a universe of options in front of you. But an entity that is already in operation with a legacy of software solving to some degree these problems, that’s where it becomes challenging. And that’s where the choices are not… Even if the choices are obvious, the solutions are not. It’s not clear what you should be doing.

[00:08:58.220] The solutions are not clear, and That’s why we call it a roadmap. Is once we have created that map of requirements, that map of different types of solutions, so we’re not going to go to specific solutions, but types of solutions, then we also need to define, well, what’s the first step? Where do we start? What do we start with. So that’s what the roadmap portion of things is, is really finding the order in which multiple systems potentially need to be deployed and how these systems will integrate with one another.

[00:09:25.240] So then one of the classic debates would be, I have this map I have the entire information flow of the business right there, solution agnostic, and I know this is what I would say right out of the gate, I’m lazy. Can I solve all of it with a single solution, with a vendor show up with everything I need, interoperable, fully integrated, all that? And the answer is-Sometimes, maybe.

[00:09:57.940] Right.

[00:09:58.380] We know the SAP for certain businesses of certain size, if they’re willing to bite that off or SAP as it’s just there are competitors, I’m not trying to… It’s just they can do everything. So why would I not? So if I’m you… So I say, Hey, Simon, thank you for your map. Thank you for your… You’re telling me… Let’s pretend, right? So you’re telling me, Mr. Dubuk, if that’s really your name, you’re telling me I should not implement a single solution. I can get an ERP with everything I need, a nice warehouse module, a nice planning module. And you’re telling me I should stitch together two or three solutions. Why?

[00:10:52.310] Well, first of all, the key considerations there with SAP, especially, is budget and timeline. So anyone could implement a big system, and it would do everything that they needed to do. But is this an overkill? Are you going to pay too much money? Is the implementation timeline going to be too long?

[00:11:09.810] And that’s not just initially, but it’s also over the life of that solution.

[00:11:15.510] So that’s the first thing. And second thing-Cost. It. And the second thing is there is a big difference between what we call a best of breed versus what we call a all-in-one software. Let’s call it that way. So the best of breed software It will be specialized in what it’s supposed to be doing. So the example of a best of breed will be a WMS, warehouse management system. If you think of ERPs, most of them will have distribution modules where you can execute warehouse management.

[00:11:43.770] And some are good. Some are very good.

[00:11:46.020] Some are good. If your warehouse is 20,000 square feet and your operation is fairly simple, it’ll work for you. But if your operation is slightly more complex in terms of distribution, that’s when you should be looking at something like a best in breed, which is a WMS that will allow you to be a lot more flexible in how you deploy these operations.

[00:12:05.060] So can I say that a little more abstractly? Absolutely. Right. So I have this map of all the information flows of a business. And those information flows are You know what? It’s almost like if you think of the North America and you look at all the rivers and the river basins. So you’ve got all this flow of information. But actually, as you start to organize it, a lot of the information flows in a very distinct area of your business. The flows of HR and payroll are going to be very different than purchasing, planning, forecasting, procurement. One is the Mississippi Delta River Basin, and the other is the McKensey River Bay. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so now you say, okay, I could solve everything, all the information flows with a single solution. But I’m looking at this one area, and it’s super complicated, and it’s super critical to me. And that’s when I start saying to myself, I actually the module that responds to this area in this ERP solution just doesn’t work or isn’t as good, doesn’t meet my needs. It may fit the requirements, but it doesn’t perform at a level that this critical piece of my business needs to perform.

[00:13:28.670] Fair? Very fair. And if you think of that example with the WMS and the ERP, you do need your WMS to signal back to your ERP whatever you’re doing. So that’s when the integrations between the system, the systems also need to be taken into consideration when making that decision. How well can I integrate these two solutions together to make sure that they are playing nice with one another?

[00:13:50.090] Right. So that’s a third consideration. So we say, first there’s the cost, then there’s the criticality of certain areas of my And you’re seeing WMS, I’m seeing WMS because, well, for us, that’s the number one place where you say, can you get away with the ERP WMS module or actually, do you need something more? And then the third one now is what is the integration hurdle? Everyone is telling… All the software salesmen on Earth are telling me the integration is super easy. That’s not the case?

[00:14:25.170] It’s not always the case. I mean, any type of software-It’s never the case. I mean, modern systems.

[00:14:31.790] Yes, much better.

[00:14:34.080] You’ll be able to integrate it, but has it already been integrated? Has it already been tested? Are you starting from scratch? Yeah. Not everyone wants to be a guinea pig in their implementation. So that’s a key consideration for sure.

[00:14:46.110] Yes. Okay. So the solution that you’re going to come up with, it isn’t just a technology solution. It’s a financial… It’s It’s a classic consulting mandate where you’re going to take in a bunch of other considerations. What about the vendors, the mixing of vendors, the quality of supplier base? Is that something that you guys think about?

[00:15:16.560] The quality of supplier base?

[00:15:18.070] Well, what I mean by that is, sure, I want a best of breed, because I’m thinking there are other fields where a best of breed may be the right solution, but it might make you very nervous because what you identify as the best of breed in some niche part of your business actually has a, I’ll say, a A physically questionable supplier. This happens not a lot anymore, but in the old days when I was your age, 40 years ago, there were so many thousands of solutions out there. And you’d go out, and suddenly what you find out is you’ve hired a three-man team with no assurance that they’ll be here in two years.

[00:16:11.960] Yeah, for sure. Risk is always a key consideration. If you find a very specific vertical that you need to address, the more specific that vertical is, the less popular it will be on the market. Therefore, you’re not going to get a company that is a thousand-person enterprise, right? Yeah.

[00:16:29.130] And then consolidation is the flip side of that, where you’ve bought your best-of-breed solution. Then six months later, you run into this announcement that they have been acquired, and you know that once they get required by a larger software company, the clock is ticking on that best of breed solution. It is going to get sunset, and that company is going to come to you and say, Hey, we want you to re-implement our mainline product. I will I’ll tell you earlier, well, not earlier this year, it was in 2024, but I was sitting at a table and the CFO of the company asked me, what are your intentions about selling your business? We want to evaluate the partnership we’re about to build and have some confidence that it’s a decades long partnership. It’s an important consideration.

[00:17:25.610] A hundred %, yeah. And that’s why we always look for references. We look to understand a little bit more about the company structure, but also the technology stack behind the solution.

[00:17:35.900] What does technology stack mean?

[00:17:38.340] Yeah, that’s a good question. So if you think of a software portfolio, it’s a group of solutions that you have within your company that run your business. So you have your ERP, your website, you’ve got your WMS.

[00:17:48.720] Your punch in, punch out system. There you go. Your security, building security system.

[00:17:54.300] Let’s leave it at that for complexity. But these solutions are what we your software portfolio. If you look at every single one of these solutions, this is where you start talking about technology stack. The way that these solutions are built is going to be different based off of the requirement from that solution. So if you think of a best of breed for WMS, what is expected of a WMS? It needs to be super responsive. You don’t want your people on the floor picking orders to have to wait for the system to respond to be able to keep going.

[00:18:24.930] Absolutely not.

[00:18:25.770] That’s one key consideration. And if you think of an ERP, it’s And the goal is typically to analyze large subsets of data to then produce accurate reporting. So these are very different ways that a system needs to operate in terms of technology. So they will be built typically differently.

[00:18:43.080] So WMS, when I say I’m going to go out and build a WMS. It’s similar to saying, I’m going to go out and build a sports car. I need a whole lot of power, as light as possible, so that I can go from zero to 100 as quickly as possible. Whereas an ERP, you’re saying, I’m building a school bus because I need to get everybody on the bus and go from point A to point B altogether. And so when you think about that, Yes, they’re both motor vehicles, but they’re in completely differently designed. Fair enough?

[00:19:20.060] Fair enough, yeah.

[00:19:20.750] All right. But then what are the elements? There’s a data… I don’t know. There’s a database.

[00:19:25.490] There’s a database, there’s a programming language, there’s a framework that you use to develop the application.

[00:19:30.980] The framework. Oh, yes.

[00:19:32.680] So, yeah, these are typically considerations that you will take as a product owner or as a software vendor or developer.

[00:19:39.200] I don’t think we should try any further than that. I just read it. I, 30 minutes ago, read an article and someone used the term technology stack. And because I had asked you this the other day and you gave me this, I read that article and said, Oh, that person does not know. That person’s like me, uses technology stack to mean… I think of it as the solution architecture, which actually, that’s the last word if you can define. Solution architecture means…

[00:20:14.310] I mean, the solution architecture is also the technology stack. If you’re talking about one specific solution, it is the same thing.

[00:20:22.260] See, I’m getting all confused. I thought, okay, what would you call the roadmap? So I have a roadmap. A roadmap means how do I get from point A to point B? Then I had my process map of all the information flows of my business. And you and your team are ultimately going to layer over that process map an architecture of solutions. No?

[00:20:49.500] Yeah.

[00:20:49.770] Why can’t I call that a solutions architecture?

[00:20:51.790] We call it a software portfolio. That’s what we use in terms of technology. But what you’re talking about is the suite of solutions That’s the way that you’re using and the way that they integrate with one another.

[00:21:02.650] That’s what I meant. But that is not solutions architecture.

[00:21:05.450] We can call it a solutions architecture.

[00:21:07.260] These words, if you say data lake, I think I’ll go crazy because I don’t mean. Let’s talk about data lakes. I get so exhausted from all of these words. Anyway, I’m going to go. I don’t care what you just said. I’m now going to go and ask Gemini what he says or it says. It says. Yeah, it’s validated. I’m going to go validate it with my new best friend Gemini, who I asked Gemini at lunch today to give me a road trip for four nights in Newfoundland.

[00:21:39.810] Did it?

[00:21:40.370] Yeah. It gave me a great one.

[00:21:42.500] Are you going to do it?

[00:21:43.710] I think so. It’s just something in the back of my head.

[00:21:46.450] Does it make sense, though?

[00:21:47.980] The four day trip? I think it looked pretty good. St. John’s to Twillingate, which is basically the iceberg highway of the world. Because I would go exactly at iceberg time.

[00:22:00.580] Are you going to document that on Instagram?

[00:22:03.910] Of course. My whole life is on Instagram. Looking forward to it. Well, not this weekend, though. This weekend, I’m going to probably hide in the snow. There’s supposed to be a lot of snow this weekend.

[00:22:16.620] Same. Probably skiing.

[00:22:17.920] Oh, very nice. I meant not leaving my apartment. All right. Well, have a great weekend. And thank you very much for this.

[00:22:26.280] You too, Charles.

[00:22:26.800] All right. Bye. Bye.