How Your Digital Transformation Creates Your Agility (Part 3 of 3)

Evan Sanchez & Paul Luibel, our Digital Transformation Expert, provide solutions to large IT stacks/systems & the stranglehold of their sunk-cost fallacies. 

Part 3 (9:30) in this 3-part series covers WHY it’s so important to bundle any training and implementation with the information technology deployment of an Enterprise IT stack to get end-user buy-in. AND HOW to put yourself in a position to make informed consent to a vendor that's going to build IT solutions for you

Transcription provided below if you would prefer to read rather than have A/V on.

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DIGITALLY-PROCESSED TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:06)

EVAN SANCHEZ: So, as you can see, that's what Aguilar Systems actually does on a day-to-day basis. And, I can back this up from my own management consulting experience with Kepner Tregoe.

One of the things that we used to say was, you want to make sure that you have your process sound and then choose a system that most aligns with the business process that you've designed that is right.

(00:34)

you don't want to align your business process to the system that you have bought because that process may not be your competitive advantage.

PAUL LUIBEL: That's right.

EVAN SANCHEZ:  Or it could be wrong and then you automate something and you make yourself really fast at doing the wrong thing.

PAUL LUIBEL: That's right. Why I was going to add on to that insight is that you're going to be in a circumstance…

(01:03)

… right now today, where you currently have information systems. They're being, you purchase them or they're being thrust on you by a vendor.

EVAN: Five to seven at least in most companies.

PAUL: And so you're already in the morass of responding to the way certain functions and features work from information systems that you either purchased, inherited, are legacy or are part of.

(01:31)

A vendor's or a partner's system that you need to be onboarded, so that you can cooperate in their business network.

The same two principal rules are still in play.

Step back, understand what you're doing, and understand the information that you need to accomplish your objectives.

Those two simple rules are so misapplied, so frequently, or they're being…

(01:59)

… subverted by a vendor agenda to sell you what they have in their platform. So this is what's created the alliance with Springboard. Springboard quote gets it. They're actually coaching clients before they purchase software, after they purchase software, and they're telling them how or coaching them on how to understand their environments and make these decision models and put the decision models in place.

(02:27)

Then, you do the vendor selection.

EVAN: Yeah, because ultimately it comes down to strategy.

And strategy is really just a system of putting together the priorities based upon your internal and external environments and making the right decisions that are gonna allow you to grow your business and to compete.

Combining that with your type of financial expertise really compounds the value that you bring because

(02:57)

Not only are you the software developer guru who can help automate these business processes and get better efficiencies and those types of things, but you can also show the economic value.

So let me ask you to talk a little bit about how you help people identify what the next best implementation in this honeycomb or in this Frankenstein that you're trying to build into, you know, the next best system for their company.

(03:27)

PAUL: Let's go back to the first question is, what are you trying to do?

What are you trying to accomplish?

What's your outcome?

What you're trying to achieve?

Outcome measurement is financial by its nature. Whether you're at a nonprofit, whether you're a municipal company, whether you're a private company, or perhaps you're a public company.

(03:52)

We all have to deliver outcomes and value to the society.

So for a financial perspective, it's all about value. It's about income over cost.

In the nonprofit space, the value is about the outcome over the cost of donated or procured resources. So, we're talking about value creation.

That's why we go back to the first question. The first question could be rephrased:

(04:21)

What value are you creating for your constituents, for your environment?

That perspective to inform yourself of the value creates and set forth the metrics dictates somewhat of the answer that you're going to need for your information systems. Those information systems then have to be part of your resource equation. So…

(04:50)

… you may have to make decisions that optimize that value equation. You may not be able to spend as much money on information systems, but you still have to do the realignments internally that your coaching would inform you to do.

So, you don't have to spend all your money on information systems.

You need to be able to understand how to answer that first value question and then determine, do I buy more coaching? Do I buy more information systems?

(05:20)

EVAN: Because it comes down to adoption. That's where the coaching piece comes in.

That's where you have to actually think about, okay, well, what is the ROI, right?

When we get asked that question, Springboard as a whole tries to look for a five to one ROI. If we're gonna do a project, we wanna be sure that our customers are gonna get that five to one, at least when we're talking about what we're gonna do.

Now that, at the same time, we have to coach…

(05:48)

… a lot of times, the C-suite or the leaders of the organization on the level of expectation. So, I can release a new module or I can release a new thing, but it takes people time to learn something and it takes people time to learn how to uncross their arms this way and cross their arms this way and make it feel comfortable.

What I know from working at Kepner Tregoe...

(06:13)

… is that it takes at least 45 days for us to actually build that capability even with coaching. Without coaching, without expert facilitation, it takes much longer.

So, when you add in the coaching, not only are you looking at 45 days for somebody to get comfortable, but then you're looking at another 45 days for people to actually build in consistency.

And so that consistency issue, if you do everything right…

(06:43)

… It's 90 days.

PAUL: Right. And it's a very keen observation to bundle the training and implementation with the information technology deployment.

Incredibly important.

And, that's where the part of our value equation exists. You have to marry the two. Absolutely. Decoupling them won't make sense from a financial perspective and it won't make sense from an outcome perspective. And then…

(07:12)

…triply, it will make sense from a design perspective.

So, this is where we start with our original question, what is it that you're trying to do?

Are you as capable of doing what you're trying to do in the first place?

Can you make an assessment of that?

Then we'll look at additional coaching or we'll look at information systems, but you must revert to that first perspective.

Now rarely I see it one out of a hundred times where a company is actually factored in…

(07:42)

…the training burden into the actual design of the information system. It's usually post facto.

It's usually, uh-oh.

EVAN: Oh, crap. I train.

PAUL: Yeah. And that portrays that they didn't ask the first question at all.

You would wanna do the coaching before you design the information system knowing you have to do the deployment and coaching again for the training.

EVAN: Yeah.

(08:11)

PAUL: I think that's a great insight for today's interview.

EVAN: I agree, it's building the capacity to be able to implement and to basically get the economic value that you were planning on in the very beginning because it all comes down to adoption. It all comes down to the culture, the overall people, process, technology. People like to throw around those terms but when it really comes to implementation, it is very strategic, it is very intentional.

(08:40)

And, it takes experts along the way who can examine the economic value and the output that they're looking for.

So Paul, thank you so much for being on Springboard Your Biz TV.

Thank you so much for being a partner in Springboard Your Biz and helping us with the digital transformation, helping you, our clients, being able to identify not only what is gonna give you the best outcome, but is also gonna be the best for you financially and economically.

And again, Paul is another...

(09:09)

… great example of the coaches that are available to you through Springboard Your Biz and Springboard Consulting. So again, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

PAUL: Thanks for having us. Look forward to building a lot of value together.

EVAN: Absolutely.

(END OF PART 3 OF 3-PART SERIES.)