Episode 33 – Part 3 – How to ensure you have a successful digital transformation process, with Gavin O’Neill

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

 Matt Nally: For the final part of this episode with Gavin from go report, we’re looking at how to have a successful implementation process. So we’ve covered some really interesting points around when to consider digital and how to choose a supplier. I think the success of the transformation process, as long as you choose the right supplier from the last topic, is how well you implement the chosen sort of solution and monitor its ongoing success and changes you make.

I suppose the first step to success in understanding. How the products will be able to work for you is I suppose the demo process, you need to go through that properly and, understand what you’re trying to get out of it and help the supplier, I suppose that demo in the right way.

But I suppose what are your thoughts around the demo step and how to get the most out of it to support with the implementation a bit later? 

Gavin O’Neill: Yes, I think demo is incredibly important, but I think that it’s position in the journey has probably changed from times gone by where the demo was probably the first real understanding you’ve got technology first and then think about your problems kind of thing.

And back when when, as I said before the seals rep. Was the your main point of contact dropping brochures off on having a meeting? I think really, there’s been quite a change in how buyers purchase software now in a B to B environment in comparison to the days when the salesperson was your only link to the content of what you were buying.

Now, Buyers, including myself, I’m a buyer of software as well as a seller of software for our own business. We’ve access to a vast array of information sources and we’ll have consumed an awful lot of information before you get a chance to speak to a company at all or before you choose to speak to a company at all.

And That those information sources might be from the information you’ve put out into the world, and they might be referrals from other users. They might be misconceptions from other users. They might be misconceptions of who they thought they were using somewhere else at some point in time, which has happened before.

But the most important thing is by the time it gets to the demo they will have consumed. The buyer will have consumed a lot of content, but they won’t have made a decision to invest as yet. And that’s why the demo is incredibly important and why I think it’s important to prepare for a demo. I do a lot of preparation for the demos that I accept as someone trying to sell me software.

I don’t just turn up and say, tell me everything that I need to know. It is a case of, it’s a two way conversation demonstration. And it’s. Important to help you visualize the benefits, but also as a catalyst to, exchange information and think wider about the problems that you have.

It’s a great opportunity to do that. So whether it’s the buyer discussing their problems to the vendor, sharing their experience of other clients that they’ve worked with or that may be further along the journey. Is a great free sources of information. Maybe not by naming names, but certainly regular occurrences can be talked about.

So when I go into the demonstration as a buyer, I’ll have a checklist of the things that I want to make sure are covered, that. That the demos for me as a buyer, right? It’s not for the software company. And I will want to know that my I want to explain my main challenges and convey, an idea of priority and importance to me as the buyer.

I want to make sure I’m showing exactly how the software supports or solves those challenges. I’m not, I’m not, I want my salesperson to be able to go off script to buy. Problems, not not necessarily what they want to show me. And so your, your sales person should be flexible, but you should also respect that they have a story to tell and maybe they have the answer.

So you want to you’ll want that to be a very comfortable exchange and discussion that you’re having. And I’ll also be really open about the concerns I’ll have. I’ll, I will say I’m not sure your product meets my challenge in this area. And I do that.

I’ve always done that. And I would, I, our sales team love that because it really frames what they have to do next. Effectively it frames how they need to respond to that. And that might be that they go, Actually, there are other people in our business that might have a better input on that.

Let me go find, let me go and involve them in this. Let me get the information you need, or let me get that conversation that you need. And I think if we just really distill it down to surveyors, I think selling solutions to surveyors, I think engineers like myself and surveyors have a very similar curious mindset effectively.

And I always approach. My engagement with software vendors or consultants in a much more curious and inquisitive fashion than I was maybe guided to when I was early in my career, because I think that curiosity and asking questions is often reciprocated and becomes, like I said, the greatest source of free learning that you can have on not just what opportunities are there to improve with regard to the software, but also where the industry is, we see our guys see more surveying activity in a month than a lot of our clients do in a couple of years, just simply because, the vast majority, the vast number of clients that we have, and if you can approach a demo with that concept of a little bit of work, being open, being transparent, asking being honest about where you feel you are in the process.

I’m, we love it. I’m not convinced put your best foot forward. Here’s where I think it’s not right for me is a good, it’s a good start point for a sales demonstration and discussion of those challenges, because at least by the end of that are you’ll be in a better place than you were when you started.

Matt Nally: I 100 percent agree with that. If you go into the demo. Without outlining the problem you’re trying to solve. Either because you haven’t worked that out yet, or because you’re trying to be coy about it for some reason probably more likely the first option it’s very hard for someone to give you a demo that’s going to show you what you might want to see.

They can give you a very generic overview. These are the types of things that you can do. But then you’ll end up with the thing of not being convinced. Yeah. And then if you don’t raise why you’re not convinced, then someone can’t say, actually, no, we can’t do that. We’re not the right solution for you.

Or, Oh, actually we can do that. I just didn’t show you it. Cause I wasn’t aware that’s what you wanted or yeah there’s this setting I can show you. So the more open you are, I think the more you can get out of it. Yeah. I think the other thing I’d say. Is definitely bring the right people in.

So it’s easy to potentially, have a board level or director level, have that team members in that know what they want to achieve in terms of high level objectives. But it’s also important to have some people in there from a, an operations perspective, the people that might be using it day to understand what.

The operational challenges are so can they ask the questions that you might not know about that of how it actually needs to be used day to day. And so if that question then gets asked, you can see, yes or no, it does do what we need to do. And potentially say is having to have two, three, four, five, trying to repeat demos to try and find out the information.

So I think that, yeah, I completely agree with you know your problem so that so you can understand how to evaluate the product. 

Gavin O’Neill: Yeah, I think, yeah it’s and, for the avoidance of any doubt, it’s not that you have to come to a demo with everything nailed down, I started and T’s crossed.

It’s your starter point, right? It’s just, it’s your opening hypothesis and absolutely bringing in people, particularly with larger scale larger scale environments. I think the key thing there is that’s where preparation is absolutely crucial because it’s really unfair to bring somebody into an environment where they’ve maybe never bought software before being put in a place where a solution is being considered.

And there’s no frame of reference of where you’re trying to get to as a journey. So I’ve always noticed that in, it’s something that I’ve always. Done in implementation projects. And the other side is to have several meetings beforehand to say, look, this is what we’re trying to get to as a business.

This is where the challenges are that we think we’re going to meet. And here is a short list of or a long list, even of potential ways to go about solving this problem. And we’re going to now start working through those problems. Oftentimes you’ll particularly with larger scale implementations, I’ve, I’ve been in that environment where there’s always somebody senior in the room.

And I hope I’ve never done this. And apologies to anyone I ever have is you can see the arms getting folded in the meeting and it’s impressed me kind of thing and convince me that I should change what I’m doing and I think that is, that misses the entire point about what vendors like ourselves are about, we’re here to meet your challenge.

As you need to. We need to understand what your challenge is, but we also know that we’re dealing with lots of other companies like yours that do the same thing as you. And we know how we’re meeting those challenges for those businesses. So if you approach it in that sort of closed way you’re shutting yourself off from understanding what your competitors might be doing what other people in other regions, areas, service lines, or stuff that you could borrow learnings and accelerate your own journey.

And that’s the key thing here is everybody wants to accelerate their journey. You don’t want to. Spend two years doing something you could do in two months if you just Speak to the right the right people kind of thing. I do think that’s a good, healthy conversation. And also, like I said, coming in and just saying I, if you’ve made the first step to get in touch with us and you, your first opening gambit is I genuinely don’t know if this is for me.

But this is who I am and what I do, can you tell me why I should be considering it again? Great start point. You’ve given us your time, you’ve given us a start point, so we know where we’re moving from and we can work it from there. That, but very few people are willing to do that, obviously, because it exposes them to, maybe feeling that they’re vulnerable, that they don’t know as much as they should.

That’s not their That’s not your problem as a buyer. That’s our challenge as a seller to bring you along that journey. So give us your time. Make that first call. Make that first connection and we can take you from there to wherever you go equally. If you’re coming in and go look done this many times before.

I know what my short list is. I know what I’m looking for specifically. Great. We’ve got a frame of reference. We can work from that point then and not waste time going back over things you already know. 

Matt Nally: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Okay. So let’s say we’ve had successful demo. And we liked it. We want to go ahead with multiple demos, whatever it was, but we want to go ahead.

I suppose the key next step is as really change management and how do you implement the new solution? And for me, I think you have to realize change is going to happen. In terms of once you implement that solution, you’re going to do things slightly differently. And so you do need to invest a bit of time at that point to, tailor and personalize your settings and learn how the product works.

And I think where I often see. Often see mistakes where you can see mistakes is where someone just wants to go live and and not put that time in upfront. Then I find you’ll find it takes a lot longer to realize the benefits from that product because you’re, you haven’t set it up in the most optimal way for you.

It’s like buying a car. You, if you don’t invest time in driving lessons you’re better off walking. Yeah, everybody else is 

Gavin O’Neill: better off walking, better off than you’re walking. Yes. 

Matt Nally: Yeah, absolutely. That car’s not going to go anywhere. So you might as well all get out. So I think, but I think on the flip side, going back to your analysis by paralysis point you can’t spend forever trying to perfect it before going live that you have to find a balance and.

I suppose a planned date, I think on getting live. And then obviously there’ll be things that once, once you have it in the real world you’ll make slight tweaks and changes but not being a fear of having to have the perfect time to, yeah, 

Gavin O’Neill: for sure. I think we’re fortunate in both our solutions and the, our target.

Sort of client is that our solutions are actually really relatively quick, the time to value of our solutions is extraordinarily quick for a digital transformation process. And that’s a fortunate of a fortunate element of being a, a really good niche player that plays well with the other software tools that you might use in your workflow.

From that aspect there shouldn’t be a problem with long elongated change management processes for our solution, but I think some of the key points there that you make are very important to ensure that it is successful. And I think point number one is understanding. The vast majority of people, if you’re not in the software world, don’t understand the difference between writing software and configuration.

When the word bespoke is often misused kind of thing. And that, that is almost like a a learned mythology that’s come from the past where you have to get everything perfect before you give it to these very expensive software developers who then will develop a solution. And if it’s wrong, then, The failure point is huge and we still see that today.

You only have to look at the sort of the horizon post office issues of where I. T. Systems can have just a cataclysmic effect on people’s lives and livelihoods. Of getting it wrong. That’s It’s very different that as a as a mindset, as opposed to what we do is we’re not writing software for our clients.

We’re configuring to meet their challenges effectively. And so that configuration or change to configuration is it’s down at a much more granular level. It’s a case of, okay, tell us what you need right now. No, I to do what you need to do. Let’s do that. And let’s make sure that’s finished. And then you use it.

And then you have a feedback loop that if you want to evolve in six months time, a year’s time, whatever the evolution is straightforward. And that’s a common thing to both our tools effectively. And You shouldn’t have any fear as long as you’ve got your right start point thought about and more importantly, your vendor has got an implementation team that are engaged with you to do that.

Then again, you should be going forward with, very progressively. What I tend to find there’s a, there is whilst we have the advantage of being a kind of a niche play with a fast time value. The flip side of that is our users are. Tend to be fast, overwhelming majority fee earners. They’re very busy people doing the work effectively.

And so your time to value is impacted on their, by their availability and not just their availability to meet you to get to a decision, but their ability to think on the problem or the options that they have. So we always try and advocate and try and get things back on track by going, look, just zero in on the thing.

You must be doing this today, right? So even if you. If you’re getting paid for a particular thing today, let’s use that as the start point and then evolve it. So obviously go report as a survey production, digital data collection and production piece. It’s amazing how many clients when they come to us and we say, okay, give us the last three things that you’ve done.

We’ll use that as the start point. And they immediately want to go off and Converse with other people in their business to come up with the perfect solution because the perfect solution is what they want to start with on my view is you’re just delaying your benefits. Just go with what you have, and then we’ll help you evolve it as time goes on.

And it’s not a problem to do that in our solution. So I think Implementation wise, set yourself a target whole, agree with your software vendor, don’t let it drift because drift is the death, I’ve worked on transformation projects that were outlined just to last for 18 months.

And. Three years in, you can imagine how much personnel change and enthusiasm and energy has weaned by that point. We’re not in that boat in this solution that we’re selling. We should be talking a matter of 6 to 8 weeks as a maximum kind of thing for what we do. And that’s at the very, that’s at the complex end to get you going and get you started and get you getting a return on your investment.

So that’s, Being clear about that, agreeing that with your vendor and then really sticking to it from both sides is really important. 

Matt Nally: Yeah, I think that was a really key point is keep is have that date. So you don’t lose the motivation because the excitement comes from saying, yes, we’re going to, we’re going to implement a change.

The reality is the difficult part is the point between that decision and getting live because there is, yeah. And you’ve got to remember there, there is work to do. So going back to the car example, you buy the car, but you still have to put the seat in the right place and.

Choose what temperature it is. So you’re not too hot or too cold or whatever it is or get the tires to the right pressure for how many people are in there, whatever that is, there’s a bit of work to do and then you can enjoy it. The same with the product you have to put the leg work in and realize that the leg, what you’re doing now.

You don’t really tend to repeat again. So for us, it’s putting all your different settings in place around the emails or locations covered stuff like that. That’s the stuff that you’ll tweak over time, but you don’t have to do huge grunt work. 

Gavin O’Neill: Yeah, you’ll manage over time, but you’re not making a change over time for the, some of those basic things.

And I think it comes back to our, when we started the conversation about just, discussing what is transformation, what is digital transformation, and it’s the difference between like I said, it, for me, it’s a catalyst to look at how you do business and it, you can’t do business better if you don’t put any thought or time into it.

So any project needs to come with a consideration. It’s going to involve some of my time. And it’s important to recognize what that time is. Now, again, fortunately for both of our solutions, that time is actually relatively speaking, not a massive amount of time, but it should be focused. Dedicated time in the early instance, one good 60 minute section is worth four or five days of emails bouncing back and forward and making the time to do that and moving forward in a collaborative way is really important.

And we’re we always. Face that challenge because, we’re all guilty of it in our own working lives, pinging that email late at night or whatever you do because you’re in the media to go into something else when actually a conversation would be better. So we’re always trying to make sure we don’t fall into the trap of relying on email when, that good 20 minutes or that good 30 minutes moves the whole project on quicker.

But like I said, from. From your side, you have more process to cover from our side. We’re talking about the deliverable of a service line and therefore like I said, before you come to us, you will have been doing getting paid for something that already exists. So yes, tweak. But don’t tweak at the expense of gaining value from the benefits of using digital for what you already do would always be my advice.

Matt Nally: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think the only other point I’d make to that is if you are. Struggling to do something, or you’re getting frustrated because you want to crack on with getting live and not having to go through the settings, do speak to your vendor don’t just be frustrated internally.

Cause it often we find the actual query that there is. It’s just a small settings, your configuration change takes two seconds a few minutes. But if you don’t voice that, that can’t be. Resolve for you and you don’t get what you want out of it. It’s just a simple thing about how you’re notified about something.

Yeah, 

Gavin O’Neill: There is a nuance there as well, though, isn’t there? That one of the things that comes, I think with it, with experience of being on the side of implementing, not, buying, not just selling is it’s not always what people say that is the problem. And, somebody saying, Oh, how do I change this setting is knowing enough about your product in your context.

And more importantly, the challenge that particular client is having that they’re trying to solve, it might invoke you saying actually that setting is probably not what you’re what your issue is. We need to think about it. This or that, or are you struggling with this as well as that? In which case, can we help you do that?

I think that’s the important thing is to understand where any frustrations come from. Answer questions quickly. Yes, but it all starts with, like I said, treating your vendor as a collaborative partner. We are a supplier in legal terms, But software is a collaborative experience to get the best answer is a, to give it the best result is a collaborative experience.

And it’s what, we, we invest certainly a goal report. We invest heavily on our customer care team on our operations team, very high caliber individuals who are doing a tremendous amount of work with. Surveyors every day. The product itself, the some of the questions about the baseline of the product.

Yes, the information could be there. We make it online. We make it available and and you could find it yourself. But if you’ve needed to ask us the question we’ll answer the question, but we’ll, we see it as a touch point and we want to make sure that the question is wrapped up in. Not another problem that you haven’t been able to articulate basically.

So being very open being responsive and then trying to work the time into your diary, like I said if you’re back to your point about why why, when you’re really successful, people often don’t do transmissions, too busy delivering work, you can’t make the time, why turn down that, that piece of work to think about how to do my business better.

We know it’s difficult. There’s no easy answer to that. Other than. If you believe there is an opportunity to do it better, that’s going to pay off many times more than just that one occasion where you didn’t give it the time. That’s the constant challenge, but definitely your vendor.

We’ve we know we’ve had a long running customer care program. We do a lot of proactive reach out. We know. 90 percent of our reach outs will go unanswered, Hey you’re 60 days in your 90 days in, we know that’s, and we’re not going to get offended at that, but we are tracking it because we know the longer it goes before you talk to us, the less likely you are to contact us when you’ve got a problem.

So we’ll keep banging on the door and know that it’s. We’ll always be there to answer if you if as soon as you have a, have an 

Matt Nally: issue. Yeah, it’s an interesting one, possibly something we’ll touch on again in a couple of minutes when we look at ongoing success with the product.

Cause I, I agree with that point. Often those touch points that don’t necessarily always get a response. I think one of the other important things, and it comes back to that motivation once you’re live is. When you’ve made a decision to go with something, it’s like going to the gym. You have to get into a routine.

The first time you go, the second time you go, okay. But then you start to quite easily go, I can’t be bothered. And speak for yourself, man.

I definitely have, but I think it’s very easy with the gym. It’s very easy to slip out of that and not get into the routine of. Of going and continuing with that process. And it’s similar with software, not software, but just change generally. And you have to embed that, that new process and that change and stick to it.

And it’s important, particularly with team members, if you have implemented a new process, That you support team members with that change, but also you do have to be clear that’s, this is the route forward. This is what we’re doing. We do need to adopt it, not just, or just default to all processes.

Cause it’s simpler right now, because then you’ll never have the success and you’ll just be back where you were having wasted a bit of time, but losing all the benefits in the meantime. Yeah. Yeah. 

Gavin O’Neill: I think the Yeah, it’s you, then it comes down to management and management style as well.

In terms of, I think what you do is you get the, for me anyway, with the successful projects that I’ve been involved in, it’s about having all of the main key milestone points nailed on. So what why were you doing it in the first instance? What was the challenge we were solving? That feedback loop?

Did we solve that challenge with The choices that we made. And then the touch point back is that our new, now our new baseline for the business, because any subsequent change should build on what you’ve done before. It shouldn’t have to go back over all ground because something wasn’t managed or seen through.

So that’s when you start getting into reporting, people management, that kind of thing, if you’ve got conscientious objectors, again it’s why and evaluating is the decision not to follow how the business wants you to run something that’s detrimental to the business, or do they have a valid point that we need to tweak kind of thing?

And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t make any more statement other than that, because unless you know what the context is, you don’t know what your action point’s going to be, but fundamentally. From a leadership point of view, if we have invested in making the business better, we believe in what it is.

And the evidence there is that we’re doing it, then yes, everybody should be buying in to that as a business, because that’s now our new normal. And because we’ve got a regular standing agenda item of how to do better. And again, how to do better for. Our clients for ourselves clients front and center.

How do we do better then? That new normal has to be our starting off point for the more advanced things we do. I’ve talked about presented at a number of RCS events over the last 12, 18 months I’ve presented that kind of pyramid of adoption effectively where, your baseline keeps moving up and there aren’t as many people at the top of the pyramid.

Yeah. That are real competitors to you. If you keep moving up with your digital adoption and doing things the right way, you start to find that you’re offering a standout in comparison to others. And if you don’t have that feedback loop of whether your adoption was success, you stay down at the base of the pyramid.

And that’s a terrible shame because you’ve done all the work. So why not reap the rewards? 

Matt Nally: Definitely. I think I suppose then to round this topic off. And I suppose the episode as a whole. I think the final point really is then, is we’re part on this anyways, the ongoing success of implementing a change or a product.

For me, I think one of the potential ways to do that is, is to keep engaged with the product you’re using. And by that, and I get this is difficult because, we’re busy and we’ve got emails coming in and we see a newsletter and we go, I can’t wait, it’s not that important. We’ll ignore it.

But in those newsletters can be really important information about, What new features have come out what changes are coming and they’re all things that can help you to, yeah, again, if we’re looking at the sort of what’s the new challenge we’ve got, because there will always be, it’s a process of continual improvement, isn’t it?

Ultimately that they’re things that if you engage with them will help you continue to get more and more value and more and more value. More and more success out of your solution and your business. So I think one of the key things that we, and we do see these can be ignored quite easily are the pieces about what’s coming.

How can you engage better? 

Gavin O’Neill: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is important to remember that our, our client’s only job is to make sure we work hard. For our money. Basically that’s their job, right? So it’s not their job to tell us how to do our business or how to do it do it better or, it’s not even really their job to, to articulate the solution to the problem that they’ve they’ve got.

It is about them articulating their ongoing challenges. But what is the responsibility of the client? You should know how the software’s being used in your business. You should know how all of your software is being used, because every year when you’re paying that bill or whatever frequency that you’re paying, you should be making sure that you’re still getting value for money.

But that’s just, that’s the standard and it should be. We obviously a lot of our clients will, we’ll have regular catch ups with them. We can see what they’re using in the system and what they’re not. If they’re not, if they’re not using it a lot, we’ll be, why not?

What’s the issue? Try and solve it. But you have to, for us to do anything at that point, there has to be an engagement, even if it’s an honest engagement, even as an engagement I’m struggling here, guys. It’s not working for me. There’s no shame in that, right?

Because it gives us the opportunity to try and put it effectively, and to come at the problem in a different way. We have, we’re at the size and scale and shape of a business that we can do that. We can, we’ll put a lot of effort into not losing you, regardless of whether you’re a small, a sole trader or a large corporate.

We put a lot of effort in, but we also spend. And I know from our chats you do as well. We spend an awful lot of time thinking about how we can help our clients understand the value of our software more and better. And that is all part of our evolution in terms of the tools we give to our clients.

Obviously if you’re a sole trader you know exactly how you’re using the software, but you may have. You may start. In fact, we like it. They take for granted the value. Basically, that’s okay. If they’re continuing to keep using the software they’re using at a level and they stay a client, they’re taking it for granted.

It’s fine by us. For others, they need to keep that understanding of value because they may be missing an opportunity where they could do better for their clients. And that’s where a lot of innovation work and groups that I sit on is that our clients client is one step removed from us, but we can help our clients sell their vision better on.

They need to be open to that. And certainly the, our clients that I’ve worked with on that have reaped massive dividends in terms of their relationships with their with their end clients by utilizing support from their vendors, not just me, but from other vendors as well to say, look, we do this day in day out, and this is the art of the possible how does that fit in with What business challenges you have today?

Matt Nally: Yeah, I think that’s a nice final point to end on that. So yeah, overall, I think you’re quite. in depth episode actually about the digital transformation process and how to go from start to, starting the process to success. If anyone wants to get in touch with myself about digital transformation and the CRM aspects, drop me a message on LinkedIn or, visit our website and get in touch with us there.

Gavin, if anyone wants to speak to you about your sort of report writing and digital transformation how do they get in touch and have you got any other sort of final thoughts on that? 

Gavin O’Neill: Yeah, hopefully the fact that we’ve We talk about these things an awful lot.

We’ve, we’re making the time to commit it to to to recording really. Hopefully people understand, we, the passion we have for this for helping our clients do better. And, it’s what we spend our working lives doing. And so if anyone wants to To connect with me on LinkedIn to have a conversation about digital transformation.

Be delighted where we’re, I use free learning as much as I’m encouraging other people to use free learning. I always see that as a two way street. And I think, the, I suppose the final point back to the paralysis by analysis and the waiting for the right time to do things.

Time passes by very quickly in business, even whenever you’re you feel like you’re with what you’re doing. And if you’re not paying attention to how to do it better in the future, you can be sure that at least some of your competitors will be doing the right time for them. And your problem is you’re only going to hear about it long after it’s too late effectively.

Really encourage people to keep business improvement at the top of their agenda. Good. 

Matt Nally: Good. Very good. Last point. So thank you for coming on today, Gavin. It was a pleasure chatting with you and I’m looking forward to doing it again soon. Great stuff. Thanks Matt. Take care.