How to implement procurement technologies successfully

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Transcript

Welcome to the did you know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money and grow, especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.5s Hello, everyone. This is Victor with varisource. Welcome to another episode of the Did you know podcast. Today I'm excited to have Joel Colin Demers, who is the consulting principal of Pure Procurement, on the show with us. Pure Procurement is a procurement technology advisory firm, and in the last couple of years, working with a lot of different enterprise companies and procurement technology and also procurement teams, I have become even more appreciative of what Joel and his profession does. So welcome to the show. 

U1

Thanks for having me, Victor. Sorry for the tongue twister there. With pure procurement. I didn't realize when I founded the company that I would trip up saying it myself sometimes as well. 

U2

Actually, that wasn't the areas I thought I'd get tripped up on pronouncing your name. I tried it a couple of times earlier, as, you know. 3.6s So many exciting questions to cover with you, man, and I think you have such an interesting background, and so if you don't mind, maybe kind of share your founder story and kind of background with the audience. Yeah, 

U1

sure. So I started working in procurement technology, or more business processes, I should say, in my internship for university. So I went to business school school and did a specialization in It management at HEC, Montreal, and. 2s Went on exchange to Australia at that point in time as well, and did like a programming semester at Queensland University of Technology, and while I was there, really wanted to stay longer. So eventually ended up being able to secure an internship with a consulting firm there that was specialized in business process optimization. And so we did lots of process modeling work and pure process Optimization work, right, which is really rare these days, but eventually that kind of gave me the bug on both process optimization and consulting. And so when I came back to Montreal to finish my degree, that's really what I wanted to do. And ended up going into the Associates program at IBM called Consulting by Degrees back then, which was essentially the entry level consulting program. And that was a really good school. So I spent just about seven years at IBM Canada within the SAP practice. SAP is an ERP system that is fairly prevalent within large enterprise and implemented the purchasing module in different businesses, whether it be pulp and paper, manufacturing, entertainment, aerospace, did a number of clients, and SAP bought Ariba in 2012. And so I wanted to learn that technology as well, to understand the SAP portfolio of applications to serve procurement a bit better. And so ended up learning those tools and implementing those tools, whether it be sourcing tools, contract management tools with clients as well. And so at the end of my time at IBM, I was managing the procurement practice within our SAP practice. So whenever a customer or a client had a problem or a question around how to solve a business problem with SAP technology as it relates to procurement, my phone would ring and then we'd have to figure out how we were going to do that with the team that I was managing. So very exciting, very fun as well. Lots of challenging problems to resolve. And then about four years ago, 1.6s I left on my own, founded Pure Procurement. And my goal there was really to get a lot more exposure to other solutions outside the SAP portfolio. So the Koopas, the Jaggers, the Pure place solutions like Teal Book, Syrian Labs, Peranguusta, just to name a few, and just to be able to always chase the best answer to the question. 1.3s As a business, how do I best serve my procurement function with technology? And so that's kind of the short and long of it, to answer your question, Victor. 

U2

Yeah, I love that story, because 1.1s even from school, from college, that was your craft. A lot of people came into procurement profession in different ways and reason, but that was like your craft. You had kind of a passion and interest in it, and then you continue to want to master that craft. So even as you got to a bigger company and become an expert in SAP in that arena, you wanted to look at additional technologies and kind of learn about all of those other 1.2s things. So that's awesome. So the follow up question to that is, obviously working on IBM, I'm sure you're dealing with these large enterprise companies, large, complex problems. So what did work at IBM teach you about procurement, working with these enterprises? 1.5s And how are you applying it, what you learned there, to kind of starting your own business? Yeah, sure. So I think not just that IBM, but any of the big consulting firms. If you go there out of university, to your point right. It's tough. You need to learn very quickly. It's 1.1s kind of a sink or swim type of situation where you're going on these engagements, implementing software that you're learning as well. So you always need to be learning very quickly. And my passion was really for that more than anything else. Right. Being put in situations where I had to learn quickly, had to 1.6s be a couple of steps ahead of the client and generate value at the end of the day. Right. Because that's what you're measured on. So it's a very good school in value, if I can put it that way. Right. And so. 1.7s Learning how customers and how clients define value, what are the different soft skills as well that you need to bring stakeholders together to solve a problem as quickly as possible as well? And the people were really great as well, right? All the people management training aspect of things as well at IBM was great. I had a lovely time there and and yeah, 

U1

would recommend it to anyone who's coming out of school and looking for something exciting to do with their career. But I wouldn't say it was necessarily like procurement itself was a passion. Right. For me, it was just kind of like, where are the opportunities? Where can I generate skills that are valuable and that I find interesting? And that led me down to the procurement technology path. And I failed to mention as well that one of the things that I wanted to do as well and I started doing was I did a certificate in strategic procurement, because I really wanted to stand at that intersection of both technology and procurement, because I saw people on both sides of that equation that didn't understand the other. Right. And when you marry those two things together well, you get a very potent mix to get some very desirable business outcome up. 1.4s Yeah, I think that was a good vision. Five years ago, they didn't have all these technologies, not as prevalent now, but you had that vision, and it's coming true right there's, more than ever. More and more amazing technology that come out every single day. 1.6s The next couple few questions are 1.3s something that I'm very interested in, because again, 

U2

when you talk about procurement, it's kind of one department that supports so many other departments. HR. Finance it and marketing and sales. They all need procurement. And so whenever you look at implementing a software, it already takes time. If you're trying to buy an HR software, it takes time to implement. If you try to implement a sales software, it takes time. People understand that. But I think what people don't truly appreciate and comprehend is when you're trying to deploy a procurement technology, it impacts the entire company flow and involves so many stakeholders. So that makes it so much harder and complex. And so the question for you is, what are the top three mistakes that companies usually make when they try to buy procurement technology? So. 1s

U1

Yeah. So you hit the nail on the head in the sense that there's an ever increasing number of available technologies on the market, and I typically put them into three categories. So the first category is your ERP systems. You'll have a purchasing module, maybe a procurement module that ties in or is integrated with the other functions. Right. So accounting, sales, 

U2

production, HR, et cetera. Right. The second category is Source to Pay suites. So they are suites that have been developed over the past decade that cover the end to end procurement value chain. So I define that as Spend analysis, sourcing, Contract Management, purchasing or Procure to Pay Accounts, payable supplier, relationship Management, and then your business network or business portal. So typically those companies will offer modules that cover that entire value chain, but that don't necessarily do a very good job from an industry standpoint or specific use case standpoint for a deep vertical. And so that's the third category is pure play systems that 1.7s cater to a specific vertical, a specific need, very specific niche within that procurement value chain. Right. So it may be Assyrian Labs with a given contract lifecycle management system. They don't do anything else. Or it might be even a smaller vertical within contract management where they focus on contract term optimization. Right. So it can get as granular as you want in that category of the pure play systems. And so one of the biggest traps is that you go to market for a specific need, but you don't take the time to craft an overarching strategy, vision, architecture of where you're trying to go with your procurement technology, with your procurement function as an organization, right. What are the business outcomes that are most important to you, and then how do we make sure that you're buying systems in an order that makes sense from an implementation standpoint, but also to help you build that snowball of momentum to get you to where you want to go? 2.1s

U1

So that's the biggest one. I love kind of how you're very process driven. I love how you kind of broke it down into three, kind of like you said, module. So that makes a lot of sense. And especially when you have more and more solutions, there are just a lot of mixed messages, just like anything. I think there's close to 3000 marketing software. How can anybody when you have five car as far as restaurants you can't pick, imagine 2500. How can you make decisions? It makes it that much harder. And that's why I think companies need 

U2

advisors like yourself. So to follow up on the three mistakes that companies make when they try to buy technology, what are some few mistakes you normally see companies make when they try to implement these technology? 

U1

Yeah, and you didn't keep me quite honest there. I give you one right, which is for the buying piece, which is they don't think of the overarching strategy. The other two I'd give you is. It's just, you know, they think it's just a system, right? It's it's, we're just going to buy it, we're going to start using it, it'll be fine, and underestimating the complexity of putting it in place and really pulling the value out. And then the other one would be that if they're buying multiple modules over that procurement value chain that I mentioned, you don't ask for specific pricing from a module standpoint. So it's very hard to compare apples to apples if you're doing any sort of RFP exercise. So I wanted to make sure I was giving you those three answers for the buying portion. But from an implementation standpoint, 1.9s it's really not matching 1s their organization's capacity to adopt change to the deployment plan, right? So the biggest factor that's going to determine whether or not you get the value that you think you were going to get or that you want to get out of your system, is whether or not there's adoption of the new processes within those new systems. And what determines if there's adoption or not is your change management strategy, of course, but the biggest limiting factor is your organization's capacity to adopt change. And what I mean by that is, do people already have four or five different projects from a business standpoint, and then you're asking them to learn a new system on top of that, or to design one? How many people are you hitting at the same time? Right? You want to start as small as possible, build momentum. So if you're not matching your capacity to adopt change, then you're going to have poor adoption and low benefits. The second one, I'd say, is underestimating the integration complexity. So I mentioned those three categories of systems. The more systems you have, the more complexity there is to integration. And then each system has its own terminology. One might call a plant a department, the other one might call it a business unit. And so if users are having to navigate across different systems with different terminology, there's process integration that needs to happen, that people need to understand the nuances between those different terms. And then there's system integration that needs to happen where we need to exchange data between those systems to make sure that the end to end procurement process works, right? And so I always say, as a guiding principle, you want your architecture to be as simple as possible, but no simpler. So you're going to need a few different systems if you're a large enterprise, but you don't want to start having a proliferation of systems in your architecture either. And then, thirdly, 1.2s it's focusing on the tech too early in the process, right? So you mentioned the triad earlier on around process people and technology, and sometimes we add data to that as well as a subset of technology, but really focusing on those four components and making sure that. 1.3s You're thinking about what your new processes are going to be, how it's going to impact your structure with that new system is something that's key in terms of making sure that you're going to be successful in your implementation. 

U2

So kind of an add on to that. Joel, 1.1s obviously, you talk about there are so many different solutions, point solutions and pure play solution. So does that make do you feel like that's why a solution like coupa or others do well, because they have so many things in one. So customers can feel like they just buy one coupa and then they can eventually add those additional modules. Is that one of their winning formulas? And is that what you would normally recommend? Or if a customer has three or four best debris, but that may be too many systems, then to also have to learn and implement. Right. So what's the trade off? Anything up and down? So what's the trade off between kind of that scenario? Yeah, it's a great question, and I go back to that framework I was kind of building with you earlier, around the three categories. Right. I don't think 1.4s you don't want to get caught up in that paradox of choice where, as you said, there's hundreds of solutions. I'm going to have to look at them all and pick the right one for me and oh, my God, you get overwhelmed. Right. And I don't think you need to do that. What you need to do is make sure that you have a solid solution in each of those different categories 1.4s across the procurement value chain. Right. So you need to think about, okay, well, what's our needs for spend analysis, for sourcing, for contract management, for purchasing, for accounts payable, for SRM, for the business network. And if you're looking at each of those. 2.2s Categories of processes or sub processes within procurement, then you can ask yourself, okay, where is our 2s value? Where do we produce value as a procurement organization for our business, given our context, given our industry, 

U1

given the roles and responsibilities that we have within our business? 1.3s And of course, if we go back to that guiding principle around keeping things as simple as possible, if I can do everything with my ERP, then that's where I should start, right? I should do everything in my ERP, and if I can live without any other systems, then great, right? I should do only that. But what happens is that in ERPs, you typically don't have sourcing or spend analysis capabilities or contracting capabilities. And that's why the Source to Pay suites came out right at the time, and they're still innovating. And so if you're able to put a Source to Pay suite on top of that to fill your gaps, then yeah, of course 1s it brings you at least one system that you can do most of your procurement with, right? And then you can build on top of that with other modules where you feel that either the Source to Pay suite functionality is too 

U2

basic. So I 

U1

gave the example earlier of Syrian labs with contract management. Contract lifecycle management, that's one of the pure plays for that specific vertical within the procurement value chain. So if you say, okay, well, for us in our industry, I don't know, construction, we really need to differentiate ourselves through contract Lifecycle management. And these capabilities in Source to Pay are not going to cut it. Maybe we implement a coupa and Ariba and I value IGP for everything else, but for CLM, we're going to go with a pure play tool because the added benefit to our differentiation is going to outweigh the cost of the integrations and of implementing another tool. So that's sort of how I think about it. And then there might be much smaller pure play tools that you're able to go get 1.6s for very specific things that you're wanting to do integrated with your ERP directly or with another pure play tool, right? So everything in there kind of needs to be in a 21st century It architecture tied together with middleware. So that's something we don't talk about too much or too often. But if you have because it's not specific to per procurement per se, right? It's more of an It tool and should be used across all the business functions to integrate software together. But if you have a solid middleware, a solid middleware team, then you're able to integrate a lot easier 1.5s the different solutions that you'll need in your roadmap over time. 1.5s

U2

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. First of all, you are one of the best follows on LinkedIn. Always love your content, they're very insightful. One of the posts that you had a lot of interest on, obviously, Chat GPT, OpenAI or AI in general, has been so hot the last three, four months. I mean, the pace of innovation, just things that we didn't think was possible for another 510 years. It's happening every week. Right. So it's exciting for people that are in the technology field, like us. But you had a post on Chat GPT versus implementation experts and what did you learn? What was the comparison on and what did you learn and how did it go? 

U1

Well, just before answering your question, I'll thank you for that implement. You threw me around being one of the best followers on LinkedIn. I think that 

U2

really 10,000 more followers now because of this. I hope so. But at the same time, I think it really depends on whether or not what we're talking about now resonates with you. But I appreciate that, Victor, that's nice of you. And to answer your question more directly, so the post I did was essentially. 1.8s I had come up with a list of what I feel are the top ten critical success factors for a source to pay implementation. So implementing the systems that we're discussing and what I did is I asked Chad GPT the same question, right? So I said, what are the top ten, in your opinion, critical success factors to implementing a source to pay solution? And then what I did is I compared my answers to Chat GPT's answers and wanted to figure out, okay, well, how close was Chad GPT to me? Or how far behind was I? Lagging chad GPT. So keep in mind, I was on version 3.5, so I know there's version four. Now, if not more than this by the time people listen to this podcast. But essentially what I found is that it got me 60% to 80% of the way there in terms of it might be able to identify the right success factors. It missed a couple and some of them were out of context. Right. Some of them were, oh, well, you need to have continuous improvement. Well, that's something that's post implementation. Right. So I kind of discounted that as being false, but I found it was I wanted to do the exercise more, to just learn 1.8s how to interact with Chat GPT a bit better in those types of large language model technologies. And, 

U1

yeah, I was very impressed. Right. It gives you, like, a checklist, I find, of things to look at after you've written your ideas down, to make sure you're not missing anything. It might augment your thinking, accelerate your thinking, validate your thinking. But I don't think it's a substitute for your thinking. 1.4s

U2

Yeah. No, I think the AI, at least this version of AI, is supposed to be your assistant, right? Your copilot, as they call it. And so it's supposed to upskill everybody, I guess, compliment everyone, 1.3s obviously. Just talking to you often. I learn a lot about what successful procurement looks like. It involves technology. People process data, and you put all that together, magic happens. The challenge is, how do you get everyone in the company to buy in, in order for all those components to come together to have success in procurement technology, or even just procurement in general. So how have you been able to do that or help companies do that? 

U1

Yes. And it goes back to our capacity to adopt change. Right. I think in those four pillars, the one that's most important and will determine your success is people, right? You can have the best processes in the world. They can be configured in your system to a T. But if people don't know how to use them, don't understand where you're going, why all those fundamental questions, then you're not going to be successful. Successful, right. So I always recommend, with these types of transformations, and it's a multi year, five to ten year thing, right, if you do it correctly. And you're always improving. 1.3s So with these types of transformations, digital transformations of procurement, so going from purely manual processes, you might be somewhere along that journey already. 2.6s You want to start as small as possible, right? So I always use the image of a snowball. So you want to start with the least amount of users possible, like implementing a spend analysis tool, a spend cube or a sourcing module, where you're able to have a user population that's very small, very controlled. So maybe it's just your strategic sourcing category managers for a couple of given categories and you iterate from error, right? So you're able to iterate with real use cases, after testing, after go live, after you've implemented the tool, you start using it and inevitably it'll face reality and need to be tweaked and modified. And you do that, and then as things are stable and people gain confidence and skills in using these new processes, these new tools, then you grow the scope, you grow the scope of commodities, you grow the scope of users, and then of modules, right? So along that procurement value chain that we've been discussing. So you want to start with the modules where you have the most control, less number of users, and you build that maturity within the business to eventually get to somewhere where a bigger module is a lot easier to implement. Because you have this network of super users or power users that already know the different solutions or know where you're heading, your architecture, your strategy. You've brought people along the way with. 2.2s

U2

Yeah, it's easier said than done. But I think, honestly, I've seen companies over and over really buy these solutions that are hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. But because it is so complex or they knew it was complex, but I think they underestimate the amount of, like you said, user adoption complexity and just people. And it sits there for a year, two years. But then they have to renew it. It's just they're spending so much, these money and investment into these tools, but it doesn't get implemented for even several years. And so I think they really that's why I fully believe your advisory type of service for this space is so needed. Obviously there's consultants for a lot of fields and industries, but for something like this, I can definitely see that it's worth the investment. Right, because you're buying millions of dollars of a tool and you can't even implement it, 2s that makes it not a great investment. Right. 

U1

One of the big reasons just to jump on that point, right, one of the big reasons is because when you build the initial business case, there's time to realization of those benefits that forces you to build a deployment plan that's not necessarily aligned to the best change management strategy, right. So 2.3s you might have to put it on a longer timescale to make it work, right, and to derisk the whole thing and make sure that you're getting those benefits. But that's always the challenge, right, is you might have a CFO or a business case process within your where they say like maximum three year investment or five year investment horizon before we see we want to see a payoff or a return to zero in terms of the cost. So those are the types of constraints you also need to keep in mind when you're doing that. But if you don't have those, the ideal is definitely to start small, right? It's always a question of solving for constraints in the sense that you might have legacy systems that are in the picture. You need to consider you might have multiple geographical business units, a bunch of different layers of complexity that come and change the answer to the question you asked me. So I gave you the kind of the best case scenario no constraints answer. But 1.4s I always solve for the given context of the customer. 1.9s Yeah, 

U2

kind of got to customize every company is different, right. 2.9s One thing that I think you have a tremendous insight and that you provide a lot of value on is best practices for negotiating contracts based on the technology you're buying. Can you kind of give a little bit more context around it? Like we talked about earlier, and this is not just for procurement technology, but this is in general for any 1.3s technology or service that you may be buying. And it's not just getting the best terms for your contract, but can you kind of talk further into that? 

U1

Yeah, sure. So to me, it really goes back to saying bringing everybody for the journey, bringing everybody into the conversation to know how we're addressing the end to end value chain of procurement. And it goes back like this is a very tactical example, right. So if I have category managers that are responsible for establishing category strategies and negotiating contracts for those category strategies to work, sometimes they'll want to get really creative with the terms and conditions that they'll negotiate. Right. They'll want to negotiate to 

U2

get the best deal for 

U1

the business, which is understandable. Right. However, what they don't realize is that they may have negotiated something that's very hard to implement later on in operational processes. Right. So we can think about 1.2s something where you'd have a really complex formula based on your production volumes, based on different indexes that you might put into there, and you're saying, oh, we're going to get the best possible price for this commodity that we're buying. However, when you start looking at your purchasing systems and you're trying to cut a PO to the vendor, or you're trying to pay his invoices or calculate what that price is going to be automatically at scale, you run into all types of issues. Right. So it's really a tangible example of if my category managers understand the end to end strategy and our constraints in terms of our system architecture, we can give them some guardrails in terms of how they should be thinking. About negotiating pricing for the different commodities that we buy, because overall, the total cost of ownership and of buying those commodities is going to be lower. Even if we have a simpler, more expensive pricing structure on the contract, but that when we look at our purchasing operations and our accounts payable teams, we're doing away with four FTEs that are necessary to implement and operationalize that contract. Right. So it's really tying. 1.4s I usually make the separation between, like upstream and downstream. So upstream being spend analysis, sourcing, category management, contract management, so everything that your strategic procurement team would do, and then downstream, which is more purchasing procure to pay accounts, payables receiving vendor invoice management, all of those more tactical activities. And if they don't talk to each other, if they don't understand their respective realities, then you start running into trouble in terms of the data that you put into the system or the business processes that feed those systems. And then the rebates, for example, that you're able to go get at the end of the period. 1.5s

U2

Yeah. And also kind of to add to that, we have finish up with a couple of last questions here. 1.3s Obviously, with your background, you have kind of a point of view from different areas. So why do you think procurement from a function perspective, from a department perspective, they all talk about having a seat at the table. And I think procurement has become more and more important, especially in this economy, where companies are more conscious of optimization and spend and cost savings and risk and all these things. But why do you think traditionally or even now, procurement doesn't always have a seat at the table, as they call it? Why do you see that as you work with all of these companies? 1.1s

U1

Yeah. And I think it depends on where your company sits on the I'll call it the procurement maturity continuum. So if you've got a very mature procurement policy, procurement culture within your organization as well, then folks will have that reflex, or 1s department heads managers will have the reflex to say, hey, we need to buy something. We need to involve procurement if it's not something that is already on contract, tractor, on catalog, and it's above a certain amount. So there are organizations where that procurement culture is very well established. However, I have seen folks on the other end of that continuum where you talk to people about procurement within the business and they go, procurement with that 3.2s you mean buying? Okay. 3s It's a whole culture. And I see different places within the world as well. Like, if we look at the UK with, with the establishment of Sips, and in Europe in general, I think there's a higher maturity for the procurement culture in general. In the states and in Canada, North America a bit less, and then other countries I'm less familiar with. And then you also have the big difference between public sector and private sector, right. Where public sector, the maturity will tend to be higher, or at least that default of bringing procurement into the conversation early. So I think it really depends on where your organization is at, where the procurement culture is within that organization, and if it's low, it's not getting frustrated. Right. But I always say, if you're in procurement, you're in sales, in the sense that it's up to you to demonstrate the value that procurement brings to the table. Right. Because if you just say, oh, we buy things for the organization, they go out, we can do that. No, that's not it. Right. It's really the category management piece, establishing strategies, leveraging our purchasing power to generate value for the business, whether it be on the price aspect of things or ensuring delivery times, customer service, after sale, insurance 1.3s terms that are advantageous for the business in terms of payment or delivery, or inco terms delivery. There's a whole gamut of things that procurement can provide value on. And so especially when you start looking at it from an overall portfolio of spend, 1.3s I think that's what I'd have to say on that topic. Right. The seat at the table will naturally come about. If you're generating value for your stakeholders and getting in front of them without expecting that you're going to get contacted upfront and that folks are going to have the reflex to think about you. Right. 1.5s Yeah. No, 

U2

I love that. I love these kind of feedback and analogies. So the last question for you is I need you to look into the future for us. Tell us the future. Okay. Not the lottery numbers, but tell us again. AI. Right, where can AI, specifically you see, help procurement, you think, in the next twelve year, two years, where do you think AI is going to happen or benefit procurement the most 1.2s in the next couple 

U1

of years? Predicting the future is a dangerous business, 1.5s and one that I'm not typically in, but I'll humor us here. So, AI, I've seen a couple of interesting use cases. Obviously, I'm still wrapping my head around it as well in terms of how we can best leverage it, but I really see the training aspect of things ramping people up as being the best 1.1s use case for AI and procurement. That and guided buying. Right. So if you're able to use a large language model type technology such as Chat GPT, but in a private 

U2

version where you're feeding it a database 1.8s of, for example, everything that's in your intranet, all your end user documentation, either on processes or on systems. And they're able to interact with that system as a chat bot, but a much more intelligent version of a chat bot to help them get their work done or even facilitate parts of that process. If you're able to plug that large language model onto your systems, where you say, okay, well, create a PO for me. Oh, well, what type of PO do you want to buy? Well, 1.1s I want to buy Starch for a production run. Okay, well, we already have MRP indicators for that, and it says that our inventory is at the right level. Is that true, or do we need to correct the inventory levels? Oh, no, it's true. Yeah. Finally, I don't need to buy it, right? Or oh no, the inventory levels need to be adjusted, and then they get adjusted through a chat GPT, and you're able to 1.1s run MRP, for example, and generate your requisitions that way. Right. So I see it more as a collaborative relationship where the AI assistant has access to the documentation, to the actions in the system, and you're kind of piloting from. 2.2s From a central standpoint, right. You're able to make things happen in a much quicker way without necessarily needing to know what the policies are, what the processes are, right. 

U1

You'll get to know them as Chad GPT, enforces those business rules and those constraints while you're interacting with it. So that's kind of where I would see it going. But then again, you need to have the correct guardrails around that to make sure you're not 1s allowing folks to do the wrong things, right? So there are some user permission issues, that sort of thing. So I think it's a brave new world, but that's where I would see it going, right? Accelerating your ability to learn what your organization systems and processes can and can't do. But for that, you need to be able to feed it that information, right? So coming back to the bases, you need to make sure you're documenting your processes, make sure you're configuring your systems and the rationale behind why they're configured that way, tying that with your procurement policy. So all that hard work, I believe, still needs to happen for AI to be in its Chat GPT format, right? Because there's many different types of AI. But for it to give you that future that I'm painting. 1.9s

U2

Yeah, I think with the pace of innovation, what you're talking about might come in two months. 1.5s Things are crazy, right? If you see what Microsoft is doing just like a month later, it's like, wait, what? Never had that before, but now suddenly our entire Word office suite experience could change just in a week. And it's exciting. I mean, also it drives competition, right? They finally have something they can compete with Google in a way, and they are going 100 miles an hour on it and then everybody's trying to catch up. So it's kind of like an AI battle war happening in real time. It's quite fascinating. Yeah. 

U1

But again, I think what's going to impede 

U2

the usage of those technology within a business is that business's ability to know its processes, to know its tools, to know its architecture, and to be able to feed that 

U1

to the tool. So we will be the bottleneck in that piece, right? Yeah, 1.6s that makes a lot of sense. So the last question we always ask our guest is, you've seen a lot, you've done a lot, but if you have to give one personal and or business advice that you're passionate about, whatever it is, what do you think that would be? 3.3s The one that comes to mind is to start slower than you think you should in terms of implementing these types of solutions. Right? So making sure that 3.9s if you underestimate your organization's capacity to adopt change, you're probably in the right area, and and that's something to ponder over, right? Like, 1.3s what is your team's digital literacy? If you put a new tool in front of them, how fast can they learn it? Whether it be Excel or a new Power Bi, you can do a test with Power Bi, put your folks in Power Bi and see how fast they can learn it. They can build dashboards, and it's fairly low risk, and that'll give you a good indicator of how fast do they adopt new technologies. And then the wider 2.7s the wider the user base, the lower that capacity to adopt change quickly becomes. Right. So that would be my parting words. 1.2s

U2

Yeah. Thanks a lot, man. This has been a great conversation. Like I said, we're excited to partner with you. We know a lot of companies who are looking to implement these procurement technologies. They definitely need an expert like yourself 1.2s to go on that journey with, for sure. So, no, thanks for being on the show. It's 

U1

my pleasure. And people can find me on LinkedIn. I'm usually kicking around, so if they have questions or follow ups, they can feel free to reach out. For sure. All. 

U2

Thanks, Joel. Talk to you 

U1

soon. Yeah. Thanks, Victor. Thanks for having me. Bye.