Client-Centric Consulting - Delivering Knowledge, Not Just Results

Delve into the world of client-centricity and project delivery with our latest podcast! Join us as we explore what it truly means to prioritize the needs of clients and ensure sustainable solutions. From navigating the complexities of ERP systems to fostering long-term relationships with vendors, we uncover the keys to success in the consulting realm. Tune in now for invaluable insights and expert perspectives!

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Transcript

00;00;00;20 - 00;00;28;25
Speaker 1
Welcome to Untangled. Whether you are a local government leader tirelessly searching for trailblazing solutions to operational hurdles in it professional with a zeal for public sector technology or a curious mind intrigued by the symbiosis of technology and governance. Untangled is your platform. Join us on this fascinating journey as we explore how technology can revolutionize local governments. Effective, sustainable, cutting edge solutions are not just for the deep pockets.

00;00;28;25 - 00;00;33;14
Speaker 1
Private sector anymore. Let's get untangled.

00;00;33;16 - 00;00;51;02
Speaker 2
Hello, everyone. Good morning and welcome to the weekly Avero Advisor's live stream. I am Megan Seaton and I'm the director of business development. And joining me today, I have Mr. Robert Kornovich who is the vice president of client success. Good morning, Robert. How are you?

00;00;51;09 - 00;00;52;29
Speaker 1
Good morning. I'm doing well.

00;00;53;02 - 00;01;25;13
Speaker 2
Good, good. And Robert is actually joining us from our Arizona location. So there's a slight time change difference, but we are glad that he's here today. And I'm super excited. I'm always excited, but I'm very excited to talk about our client centric approach to consulting, particularly in the public sector. If you are joining us today, real quick, please comment and let us know where you're joining from and please ask us all the questions that are burning in your mind.

00;01;25;13 - 00;01;54;25
Speaker 2
We want to hear from you and we love for this live to be as interactive as possible. If you're new to our live stream and you don't know who Avero Advisors is, we are an independent, independent third party consulting firm that deals in ERP consulting from selection through to implementation. We also do business process re-engineering as well as I.T. strategic planning for our local government agency.

00;01;54;26 - 00;02;13;01
Speaker 2
So without further ado, let's dive on in. Robert, I want to kick us off by I want to hear your thoughts on what it means to be client centric. What does that mean to you and what does that mean for the delivery team here at Barrow?

00;02;13;04 - 00;02;37;21
Speaker 1
So consulting in general seems to suffer from this. The same sort of concept of consultants are usually brought in to essentially be troubleshooters to fix a specific problem, whether it's in the contracting language or it's in the RFP that that we respond to, to get the work. And it tends to be very focused both at the organization level as well as a consultant level.

00;02;37;21 - 00;02;59;21
Speaker 1
Okay, I'm here to deal with this particular piece and get that solved, which is perfectly fine. But what I leverage all the time and the reason why I'm here to Barrow is when I was in local govt for a long time, I saw a lot of projects that after a couple of years would actually collapse under the weight of this thing that you implemented in the organization.

00;02;59;21 - 00;03;22;28
Speaker 1
But there was never any underlying structure to sustain it long term. And it's not just funding. It's easy to take one time dollars and identify a problem in local govt, but if you don't build the sustainable funding, if you don't make sure that the organization has the resources, it needs to keep that being successful, that there's a mindset change, that there's change management that's been brought in to set that up.

00;03;23;01 - 00;03;40;10
Speaker 1
It's really easy to grab someone on your staff and plug them into a project for six months and then usually when that project is over, that person has to go back to their regular job. A lot of people have their job description and then they get 20 other things that they're also required to do, especially in smaller organizations.

00;03;40;12 - 00;03;56;10
Speaker 1
So what I always focus on with clients and where my success has been is, okay, this is the this is the right product for you, but it also requires this type of care and maintenance long term to be able to manage. You know, there is going to be some recurring funding that you're going to have to look at.

00;03;56;12 - 00;04;18;04
Speaker 1
If it's a technology piece someday, that technology is going to age, it needs to be replaced. You just start thinking about what that's going to look like in three or four or five years. How are you going to justify going back to your board and your counsel and saying, yes, products working great, but it's also aging now we need to hit the next step in the lifecycle and either upgrade it or replace it.

00;04;18;04 - 00;04;48;25
Speaker 1
So it's easy as consultants to walk in, troubleshoot, leverage our knowledge and say this is a solution, this is the way you need to go. You have some great meetings, you get adopted by the council, project starts rolling, reaches completion, and then all the resources, including the consultants you had, go away. And that's where you get into that, that cycle where almost like a boom and bust two years later, you haven't put the care and and resourcing that you need to into your solution and suddenly you're back in the same spot you were three years ago.

00;04;48;25 - 00;05;12;12
Speaker 1
I'm looking for another consultant. I'm looking for another solution. Let's let's try again. And I love preparing clients for that cycle so they understand how to make it sustainable and actually be for a lot of people. It's their legacy. Some of our clients is their last big project before they retire, and they really want this to be their legacy and they really want that to be successful.

00;05;12;12 - 00;05;16;27
Speaker 1
And they turned to us to tell them how how that looks and how that can be set up.

00;05;16;29 - 00;05;43;26
Speaker 2
Yes, And we call this guided results. If you guys have seen any of our branding, that slogan. Got it. Results is there for a reason, because we do ensure that we do more than just consult. We guide, we advise, we deliver, and we hold our clients hand every step of the way. And I really do feel like that is what sets us apart here.

00;05;43;26 - 00;06;13;27
Speaker 2
Lately, we've gotten some feedback from some reps that we've gone after and we're always, you know, bad. We get the red checkmark because of the lack of experience. Right. And Robert, you brought up a good point about we don't just go in and check a box. So how do you feel that? How do you think the approach is with some of these firms that have been around for 50 plus years?

00;06;13;27 - 00;06;24;27
Speaker 2
Do you think that it's easy for them to get to a place where they're just checking a box and then how do we ensure that we do not deliver like that?

00;06;25;00 - 00;06;49;11
Speaker 1
Yeah, I at my I make sure my clients are smarter coming out of this. They understand the decisions they have ideally at the end of the engagement before we move on to helping them out with something else is I want them to be just as smart and savvy as we are about all this, because, again, the organization itself is the one that's going to be able to keep and sustain these things.

00;06;49;13 - 00;07;14;16
Speaker 1
You know, the reason why other consultants can can do that, some of it's a revenue model as well. We're in the business of maintaining relationships with with clients, even post project I, I really want them to be the first person. And often we are they think of when they have compliance changes they need to just tick planning, they have a modernization need they have or change management.

00;07;14;16 - 00;07;38;28
Speaker 1
They have enterprise risk staff logs, data opportunities. It's not just ERP and it's P. We have a broad team with a broad amount of experience to develop the relationship with you and then be able to help you through a lot of these challenges. And for me, that's that's success for me is I have to have a long wait, a very happy customers behind me.

00;07;39;01 - 00;07;56;12
Speaker 1
That's what that's the key metric in my position. That's what keeps me excited about what we do. And that also allows us to show to other clients, Hey, we've had long term success in this. Please, please call our references, have a one on one with them and talk to them and get their viewpoints on how this project went.

00;07;56;15 - 00;08;16;21
Speaker 1
So I have to have happy clients. I have to have great relationship, and that's what makes all of this worthwhile. Some consulting firms, not necessarily. They're their focus. They have other focuses or they have other revenue models that they want to do when it comes to working in local govt because it's near and dear to my heart. It's what I did for a long time before I came here.

00;08;16;24 - 00;08;44;09
Speaker 1
It's about making sure the client has exactly what they need to keep this sustainable and letting them know that, you know, we're we're here for you. Love giving free advice. We like giving free advice on these live sessions. All the time. I'm not here to build an empire around my knowledge. I'm here to share my knowledge and help you get out of the silos that are inevitable, especially in local government, make you smarter and you're able to make great choices moving forward on some of these things.

00;08;44;09 - 00;09;10;29
Speaker 1
And even in some cases, you know, the number of council meetings we've been to and the interaction we've had with mayors and and boards, you know, I would love to give you the answers so that you, as the CIO, you can step in front of the microphone, in front of your governing board and be able to speak exactly their language, enterprise level, risk mitigation language, and sell your cybersecurity solution or your dream of what you want to do for I.T.

00;09;10;29 - 00;09;28;03
Speaker 1
For expanding it or for modernization. You know, we're, we're not just there to look at the specific thing that needs to be fixed and we'll talk in a little bit about a case study where it's a little more typical of our clients, where it started off as one thing and then quickly expands into others. Once we show our value.

00;09;28;06 - 00;09;51;20
Speaker 2
Yes, those are great points. Robert. I think one unique attribute that everyone at a barrow has is that we're very passionate about the local government space. We're very passionate about problem solving, you know, and passion runs very deep in and you never work a day in your life if you're truly passionate about something. So I will say that and we're also visionary.

00;09;51;26 - 00;10;15;17
Speaker 2
We're very forward thinking. And your team specifically, they are very forward thinking and they try to stay a step ahead. So kudos to what you're doing with the project delivery team. Were you aware of our viewers, a little bit of background? Robert's been on before, but I should have said this in the beginning. Robert was a client before he came over to a barrow.

00;10;15;17 - 00;10;23;26
Speaker 2
So can you talk a little bit about that and what your experience was as we're talking about this client centric approach?

00;10;23;29 - 00;10;52;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the story I love to tell is our our CEO, AV answered a proposal we put out when I was working in local governments and strategic planning and we had a shortlist of three finalists that we brought in to to present to us and AV blew away the other two firms. A lot of them came in with sort of a cookie cutter template of, okay, this is the size of your organization.

00;10;52;27 - 00;11;12;07
Speaker 1
Here's the formula that you need to focus on and let's tell you how to apply that formula all the way up and down the line and and meet these initiatives that you want to do. Avy was the only one that came in, sat down, had a presentation, but he spent 90% of the time talking directly to us and validating with us.

00;11;12;07 - 00;11;32;26
Speaker 1
Okay, this is the size of your organization. This is where you are. This is where there's a lot of public input that's that's feeding your need to have this sort of strategic planning. This is what we typically see from other clients in these areas. I bet you're probably also experiencing X or Y going on and the light bulb goes off in our heads like, Yeah, he's right.

00;11;32;26 - 00;11;53;01
Speaker 1
We didn't even think about things like that. It was a conversation and that's what I remember. I don't even remember what the PowerPoint was that he put up, but I remember the conversation that he had with us, and within 10 minutes we were all thinking internally, This is this is it. This is the person they understand, they validate, They actually have solutions.

00;11;53;03 - 00;12;19;10
Speaker 1
And they're talking about internal things that have to be solved for making all this successful. I.t strategic planning can be very cookie cutter. A lot of organizations are facing the exact same issues with their cybersecurity and their disaster recovery and their preparedness for adopting change helpdesk issues, organization issues, governance issues, long technical issues with their infrastructure. A lot of that's common.

00;12;19;10 - 00;12;41;07
Speaker 1
So it could be very tempting to just put together a basic cookie cutter plan that just basically says improve your cybersecurity, put some governance in place. You can keep track on what the needs of the organization are in terms of technology, but you have to understand how each organization is structured. And that's what we did with us, understanding that we had limited staff.

00;12;41;08 - 00;13;04;21
Speaker 1
We're not going to be able to grow our staff. So a solution has to be sustainable with our existing staff. And the what I always like to talk about what makes local government unique in itself. So every local government organization has a series of things that they're doing because that's what's mandated by the town manager. City manager that's required by their council, that's required by public opinion.

00;13;04;23 - 00;13;25;11
Speaker 1
And so they wind up doing a lot of things that they have to do to be able to satisfy that that might not follow it. Best practices review. But again, it's there's just no cookie cutter approach to a lot of this in in local govt the metrics are different you know council's interested in a return on investment, but it's a lot more than just than just money.

00;13;25;12 - 00;13;45;03
Speaker 1
What did we get out of the dollars we spent? For some mayors, it's I want this palpable feeling to be in our residents when they interact with the city. I want them to be able to use technology in dealing with us the same way they do with with Amazon and with their banking. And that's not necessarily tied to a dollar amount or an earn ROI in traditional sense.

00;13;45;03 - 00;14;05;07
Speaker 1
It's the mayor saying, I don't care what needs to be done. I want the citizens to be able to transact business with with the city from the comfort of their home or on their smart device. And in some cases, I want a solution that also makes it for those who are economically disadvantaged to still have the opportunities to interact with us the same way someone else does.

00;14;05;07 - 00;14;28;03
Speaker 1
Some people are homebound. They can't come into City hall to file a permit. So these are the type of things that the dynamic at high level is, is is common and it's the same. But you know, the details and how that's actually played out is very, very different. Your finance staff might be small. So if you're deploying point of sale, is that going to put a burden on your finance staff?

00;14;28;10 - 00;14;52;24
Speaker 1
How does that affect your official policies, your financial policies for your local gov, your administrative policies, all these little areas, that's where that's where the real work is. That's where the real details are. Amy was able to present that to us and consequently we turned to him for a lot of solutions when I was still in local govt to help us out in a lot of other areas that were not directly related to the strategic planning.

00;14;52;24 - 00;15;16;19
Speaker 1
They were open to organizational development. Some initiatives we were doing public. That's what got me excited about this, about this line of work is actually being able to bring real solutions to the client that are sustainable, develop that relationship and real quickly. Like I always say when I was in local govt, I was looking for that consultants that I could go to and rely upon whenever something popped up in the organization.

00;15;16;21 - 00;15;42;21
Speaker 1
It's not easy going out and finding another consultant for another project or replacing a consultant, and I saw a lot of consultants that just failed to show long term value with us. And now I get the chance to actually be that consultant that that does provide that solution, that does develop the long term relationship that is your partner on a lot of this that you can call any time, even if we don't have an active contract with you, give me a call and say, Hey, this just popped up.

00;15;42;21 - 00;15;48;03
Speaker 1
What are you seeing with other clients? What's a good way for me to respond to this? What does this mean long term?

00;15;48;05 - 00;16;11;26
Speaker 2
Yes. And we are so glad that you are you are a part of our team. Now, Robert, you have a very unique story and a very unique approach. So and and to you make a great point. Anybody can go out and sell you an IT strategic plan. Anyone can go out and sell you project management for a ERP implementation.

00;16;11;26 - 00;16;35;14
Speaker 2
But who are those people that are really going to hold your hand and talk you off a cliff when all things hit the fan? Who are those people that are really going to care about you as individuals and people who have day jobs and who truly understand? So thank you, Robert, for answering that question. I want to move into relationship building.

00;16;35;21 - 00;16;49;16
Speaker 2
We talk about this all the time and Lexie had a question that I think is is a very good one. How does the Aveiro project delivery team go beyond cookie cutter In all of our project deliverable?

00;16;49;19 - 00;17;25;27
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it's it's what I talked about earlier with really understanding what makes you, you and I'll use the ERP as an example. We're often brought in to help lay out the requirements and help with the selection of a new ERP system. And then we do implementation and post life support as well. There's a lot of organizations now that some vendors that we're out of reach before that they focus mainly in the private sector, or they were designed for a very large county or a very large city, have found ways to scale their solutions down to something that's affordable for for local gov.

00;17;26;00 - 00;17;46;17
Speaker 1
And that's great. That gives a lot of opportunity. But you have to very carefully weigh the fact that is this the right solution for you? So there's two approaches that you have to be mindful of both. One, if you've been on the same ERP system for the past 20 years, in a lot of ways anything you choose is going to be better than what you have.

00;17;46;19 - 00;18;06;04
Speaker 1
And that's great. That could be a cookie cutter solution. It's very easy for us to say that very statement your product is currently so behind is out of date, is not supported anymore or hasn't been groomed, policies haven't been worked on. There's no relationship with the vendor. No one's even had a staff meeting to talk about. Where are the training gaps?

00;18;06;04 - 00;18;29;09
Speaker 1
I'm using this existing product. It's one way to possibly re leverage a useful ERP system, but if it's already that far out of date, it's a lost cause. It's easy as a consultant to say, Well, you're going to be really happy with this solution, so why don't you just direct, select these folks? The vendor is going to come in and software vendors are going to come in with us and we'll figure out how to shoehorn you into this new system.

00;18;29;09 - 00;19;06;02
Speaker 1
And that's the problem right there. Because again, I can give you a solution that does some really incredible, impressive things. But if it now triples the staff time that you're finance department needs to have to make that ERP system useful, it's not going to be sustainable. So really easy to cookie cutter you into an ERP system and say it's better than what you've got, but really it's not going to be successful unless I find the right ERP system that is going to work for you long term that focuses on what you need today in terms of your reporting needs and isn't just something that's nice and flashy and looks good, but you'll never have the

00;19;06;02 - 00;19;46;10
Speaker 1
staff time to support it or even develop a lot of these modules because it's simply outside of your resourcing scope. That's where knowing the client and understanding what that relationship is and making the balance between, you know, you guys really should add a position here so that they can deal specifically with this part of, of payroll or public interaction or a portal that you use with your with your vendor being able to identify what's a real solution with them in areas where they do need to expand and grow in terms of their resourcing, but at the same time realizing that resources are finite and a lot of technology projects are purchased with one time dollars.

00;19;46;10 - 00;20;02;06
Speaker 1
So I don't want to lock you into a solution that's not going to work for you. But I also don't want to inhibit you by having you just get us another solution that has about the same functional city as your prior one. And I've missed opportunities to allow you to grow and expand in areas where it made sense for for you too.

00;20;02;06 - 00;20;29;18
Speaker 1
That's the delicate balance and the delicate dance between you as your organization. Understanding what is going to work well for you and me, leveraging my experience and my team and being able to provide you with better solutions so that that only comes out with a relationship that doesn't come out with a questionnaire, that doesn't come out in an email, that really comes from developing a relationship with the clients and really understanding what they need and what's going to work for them and what I should recommend for them to do.

00;20;29;21 - 00;20;40;00
Speaker 2
So taking that question a step further, what are the key areas that local government typically needs the most guidance?

00;20;40;03 - 00;21;04;07
Speaker 1
So finance, because that tends to be the focus of a lot of ERP systems. I really think this is this is the trick in working with local finance. I am not going to come in and I'm going to review all of your financial policies and your controls and and do a best practices review against some standard and then tell you you're doing this wrong.

00;21;04;11 - 00;21;24;23
Speaker 1
You're doing this incorrectly. CFOs understand how their organization needs to function financially, financially, and they understand the nuances, like I talked about earlier, that, yeah, it would be real nice to do this process exactly this way, but I don't have the staff or I've got a city council that wants to see something different. I spend a lot of time hand building.

00;21;24;23 - 00;21;52;16
Speaker 1
This One report that the mayor wants on a weekly basis is a dashboard, and a lot of systems don't necessarily do it this way because it doesn't follow gap or GASB or any sort of compliance or any other sort of standards necessarily. So again, you have to focus on those things that help you understand what the organization needs and what's going to be a solution for them and not just come in and go, okay, this is the standard way the financial should run in this area.

00;21;52;16 - 00;22;17;28
Speaker 1
You need to go out and hire for more people to be able to fulfill this process and do this correctly. It simply does not work in local govt. They don't have the resources, they don't have the time and local govt likes being unique in a lot of ways. And so each council and governing body is going to have a different approach as to how they want to message what their city does, what they consider priorities, and also show that they're listening to their citizens as well.

00;22;17;28 - 00;22;40;28
Speaker 1
So there is just not going to be, you know, fix it and forget it. Solution like a lot of people are actually looking for. That's the other part of the the relationship process is getting organizations to understand that there's no just set it and forget it. Solutions on a lot of these things. Too much evolves. Your compliance evolves, your public evolves, your financing evolves, you evolve.

00;22;40;28 - 00;22;59;05
Speaker 1
As a CFO, so does your staff. It's now it's not. It's just promotions. It's your job role changes over the years. And then the most important one, I get a new mayor or I get a new council on a regular basis. What am I going to do now? Because this mayor has different things that he or she would like to see done.

00;22;59;07 - 00;23;08;29
Speaker 1
And it's imperative that I respond to that. You know, are you going to give me a system that allows me to be flexible to leadership changes within the organization?

00;23;09;02 - 00;23;33;16
Speaker 2
Since we're talking about relationship building, I think it's important to discuss the importance of the relationships with other vendors who may be working with our clients at the same time, because I think that's important too. Sometimes we have to protect our clients from those vendors and we do have to work alongside them to really deliver what we say we're going to deliver.

00;23;33;16 - 00;23;44;15
Speaker 2
So can you touch on that just a smidge. Robert Relationship building with other vendors who are also working for the same outcome?

00;23;44;17 - 00;24;06;20
Speaker 1
Yes, client advocacy is what is what I call it, and it's what I was missing the most when I was in local govt, procuring software and vendors and project management services. Software companies used to have a model where they would and I'm going back at least a decade on this in particular, you had a customer care representative that was actually your advocate.

00;24;06;23 - 00;24;25;27
Speaker 1
They were an employee of the software company, but they were the ones you called when, Hey, this training plan is not going to work for us or this training session didn't go well today or we tested the system upgrade and it seems to have broken this critical process for us. What can we do about it? And your customer care representative would go, okay, let me take a look.

00;24;25;27 - 00;24;50;16
Speaker 1
Let me talk to developments and see. Maybe we'll have you skip this particular upgrade and we'll have it ready for the next one. And they would run down a lot of things internally in their organization, their software company, to your satisfaction, those are long gone. Those days are long gone. There really is no client advocate and you're you're dealing with an a complete imbalance of expertise.

00;24;50;16 - 00;25;19;03
Speaker 1
You have local governments who the last time they replaced ERP was 15 years ago. And those who were the decision makers in that of your system are long gone. They didn't leave a lot of documentation and they just don't. Your existing staff just doesn't know what is out there right now today that would help your organization. On the other side, you have software vendors that are very skilled at implementing their software that know all the technical requirements of it as well.

00;25;19;05 - 00;25;40;25
Speaker 1
They know exactly what go live should look like in terms of their term, but they also have a revenue model which basically says my best profits is if I sign you and I get you live in six months. So there's a gap in between where we've worked with a whole variety of vendors. We've worked with a variety of local gov and quasi gov and nonprofits.

00;25;40;27 - 00;25;56;10
Speaker 1
And so we fill that gap of client. Tell me what you need, which is early in our relationship. We figure that out and then let me be the bulldog with the software vendor to make sure that, you know, simple things like software vendors are going to want to get as much of their money upfront as they possibly can.

00;25;56;10 - 00;26;17;15
Speaker 1
They're trying to recoup the cost of their infrastructure. Well, until you actually put something in front of that client that they can actually use, you probably shouldn't pay right out of the gate for your entire software package. Let it be a milestone when the client sees the results that they they're happy with. That's the time when you pay for that milestone and then move on to the next one.

00;26;17;18 - 00;26;34;19
Speaker 1
And local gov's not going to necessarily understand how to do that because they don't do an ERP replacement every day In software. Companies are like, What's what's the deal? We're the expert on our software. All you need to do is go into this environment and start playing around inside of it. And then we can take you live in like three months.

00;26;34;19 - 00;26;56;19
Speaker 1
Neither of those strategies work. That's why you need someone in the middle who understands what this looks like, who's worked with all of these vendors, who understands the intricacies of some of these vendors that they're also having resourcing issues that they are not able to necessarily keep project management staff up to the levels they need. So you might be assigned a project manager who's working on eight other projects.

00;26;56;22 - 00;27;16;11
Speaker 1
You're not going to get the attention and care that you need from a project manager at a software company that's doing a of their implementations. At the same time, that's the gap that we feel, making sure that we apply our all of our best practices, lessons learned, what we've seen to make sure that your successful the software vendor does what they need to do and that you're prepared and ready for that.

00;27;16;11 - 00;27;27;29
Speaker 1
Go live on your terms. What that means to you as an organization. When are we ready for go Live? That's defined by the client and we help them define that, and that's the benchmark for the project being successful.

00;27;28;02 - 00;27;48;05
Speaker 2
So building trust is a key or is key when building relationships, especially with clients. But what about those clients who, you know, have had a negative experience, either with consultants in the past or other vendors? How would you go about building relationships with those clients?

00;27;48;08 - 00;28;12;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, the key from and we see this a lot, there's there's actually some where they have true psychological trauma over their last implementation. I mean things were were dire some cases folks were terminated over over a bad ERP implementation years back. And even though that might be in the past, that feeling carries forward and it actually contain to the existing system as well.

00;28;12;09 - 00;28;35;20
Speaker 1
Everyone has a negative view of the system because they remember when their supervisor lost their job over this failure implementation. So the best approach for that really is it's trust. Everything I'm going to tell you is verifiable and I can back up and I can show you the logic behind that, as well as being respectful of their time as well.

00;28;35;20 - 00;28;52;19
Speaker 1
I think that's the most important thing, which is I'm going to find that balance between your the CFO, which you only have half an hour a week to meet with me to talk about how this ERP project is going. Okay, I'm going to make that the most efficient 30 minutes of the entire week, and I'm going to make that a great meeting.

00;28;52;22 - 00;29;12;28
Speaker 1
And if we only have one thing to talk about that week, I'm not going to fill the air for 30 minutes. We're going to have a quick meeting, then allow you to get back on your way. And we do the same thing with staff time as well. When staff comes into the room, they usually at the very beginning, their first question in their mind is what does this crappy implementation mean for me?

00;29;13;01 - 00;29;32;20
Speaker 1
Is this going to affect my job? We all have insecurities that can be brought out by sudden change in an organization, especially a software system. You know, I know I'm not great at this. Part of my job is a crappy system going to make me look like I don't have any idea what I'm doing at all and am I not going to be able to adapt and change?

00;29;32;22 - 00;29;50;12
Speaker 1
There's overall questions. Is this ERP system going to replace my job, which I've never seen? But these are very common for end users to come in. And then the fourth one is can I actually trust these people? I'm sitting in front of a consultant. Are they going actually going to be able to give me the answers that I need?

00;29;50;12 - 00;30;15;26
Speaker 1
Are they going to just go with something that standard cookie cutter response to end user concerns? We validate the end user concerns because they have to be on board and bought into this project for it to be successful as well. And a lot of the fears that they have, I don't want to say unfounded, but if you give them some perspective on things they understand, this is going to make my job easier, these other seven things that are actually required of me.

00;30;15;26 - 00;30;31;14
Speaker 1
But I never get a chance to do them because I spend all week in spreadsheets just trying to solve two or three reports or compliance things that I need to do. I'm suddenly now going to have the time to be able to do those things in my job. In a lot of cases, you can get back to what you liked about your job.

00;30;31;16 - 00;30;52;11
Speaker 1
You liked interacting as a supervisor, you liked interacting with the employees underneath you who were serving the public. But you can't really do that anymore because you're getting tied up on trying to get a dashboard perfected or the process that you use to submit something up the chain takes five or six days to complete or weeks, or you never hear back on things like that.

00;30;52;14 - 00;31;17;18
Speaker 1
You can start automating a lot of that so that you can actually go back to doing your job of being a supervisor, being a leader and doing what you love to do in the organization and probably why you were hired in the first place. So finding the right solution and understanding what your needs are is what's going to free you and allowed this ERP product or its strategic plan or any of the other things that we do to actually be successful in the long run as well.

00;31;17;20 - 00;31;42;24
Speaker 2
Our fearless leader has flooded our comments here with a great question, might I add. Hello, Avi. Thank you for joining us today. We love your support on these lives. How do you handle adjustments to scope mid project? Their original reviews don't always match what the client really wants and I don't think there has ever been any truer statement to that right there.

00;31;42;24 - 00;31;46;06
Speaker 2
So, Robert, you go first. What are your thoughts?

00;31;46;08 - 00;32;11;14
Speaker 1
Yeah, so even in the length of a project, things are going to evolve within the time frame of that project. Six months to a year is a long time in terms of an organization. There's going to be turnover in some cases, especially with the current job market. There's going to be refinement, there's going to be leadership changes, what clients are really getting with us is not just the standard project plan and the timeline.

00;32;11;15 - 00;32;49;25
Speaker 1
I mean, that's great. A lot of people can prepare that. In an ideal world, if the project follows everything, it's in that timeline and that budget. You don't need a lot of consulting. Well, the reality is there's always a project variable, especially the larger the organization. But even in smaller organization as the controller leaving the organization is a big, big change to your ERP project because I now I'm going to have another controller coming in in the middle of selection and I need to stop and get on board with with what they see and what their vision is and find out are they here to leverage their experience in the organization they just came from

00;32;49;25 - 00;33;09;13
Speaker 1
to help with the ERP? Or are we in a situation where we have a tight deadline and we need to move this forward? You have to bring the new people along for the ride on that. And a lot of that is just listening to their concerns and getting information from them and their viewpoint and understanding their experience and not just saying, Hey, congratulations, you're the new controller with the city here.

00;33;09;13 - 00;33;32;20
Speaker 1
Read this document. We're rolling forward that that doesn't work. You have to stop and take the time to understand that person because they're going to be key for championing your project. So there are always project variables that pop up that have to be navigated. We know how to navigate those some extreme cases. Funding changes will occur and we have to re timeline the project because we don't want the project to stop.

00;33;32;20 - 00;33;57;21
Speaker 1
But I get it. You had to divert a lot of funds to take care of this emergency issue with the city. There's a solution for us to this might delay the timeline a little bit, but we need to keep moving that forward. We cannot let that project stop because if you stop the momentum on a lot of these projects, like I said, staff internally goes back to what they were doing before and it's very, very difficult to restart the project.

00;33;57;21 - 00;34;16;14
Speaker 1
So we we take clients all the way to the end, navigate them through all the variables that pop up again, especially with leadership changes, key staff changes. You navigate that and you move forward and keep the project going forward. And if the information you're now getting is valid for refining the project, great, let's do that. Let's do that.

00;34;16;14 - 00;34;25;16
Speaker 1
As well. The project plans are flexible enough. Our experience is flexible enough that we can take that and incorporate that into the project and keep it moving forward.

00;34;25;18 - 00;34;45;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, and just to add to that, you know, maybe not mid project scope changes, but in the beginning, like if we respond to an RFP and we are in the kickoff meeting, I think your team does a really good job rubber and making sure that there is true transparency and clarity in the scope that they ask for in the RFP.

00;34;45;26 - 00;35;11;16
Speaker 2
And if there's something that doesn't make sense right, then they ask questions. And sometimes we do alter that scope a little bit. But, you know, going back to other firms who don't take the client centric approach, they're there to check a box. It doesn't matter. The scope is the scope. We're not going to talk about it. But I do think that we do a really good job in the free kick off and kick off to make sure that that scope is very clearly defined.

00;35;11;16 - 00;35;22;00
Speaker 2
But you're exactly right. Things come up. I don't think there's been a project where things haven't come up and we had to shift. Do you have thoughts on my comments?

00;35;22;02 - 00;35;46;06
Speaker 1
Yes. You are not going to hear from us when you bring something that is just slightly outside of the timeline or the project plan or the risk register, you're not going to hear us constantly say out of scope, sorry or change order needed. In some cases, yeah, but it's mostly because of the procurement process you need to follow and the funding you would need to secure for this particular change.

00;35;46;09 - 00;36;02;01
Speaker 1
We're going to work with you through absolutely everything and we're not going to stop and say sorry, that's outside the scope of this project. We're not going to devote in the hours to that. No, that's that's it doesn't work that way. I mean, it doesn't do anybody any good. We're going to work with you to find the solution to that.

00;36;02;01 - 00;36;24;24
Speaker 1
And if there's a financial impact or if there's a legal requirement that we need to make sure is documented correctly for your work, your procurement policy, great. No problem doing that all day long. But I just saw the question that also popped up about the ERP project, focusing in and finding that balance between I need to get this new system in place.

00;36;24;26 - 00;36;51;29
Speaker 1
We have a client that we just got where their permitting system is being managed by one person, the one person who built this product eight years ago is now in his eighties and wants to retire. But the city keeps throwing money at him because we we don't have a replacement for this permit process yet. There are dire needs to get projects moving forward and in place, especially if there's a funding consideration is tied to grant funding.

00;36;52;02 - 00;37;14;04
Speaker 1
We can accelerate those timelines without cutting corners. So rather than spending a really long discovery process and mapping out everything that we would do on some of these larger that the client wants, let's condense that down. Let's capture the key processes that are going to make a difference in your selection. Let's put together the requirements traceability matrix. That's going to make sense for your timeline in procurement.

00;37;14;06 - 00;37;35;11
Speaker 1
Let's get the thing out on the street. Let's get these products evaluated, doing the vendor demos, contracting, and let's get you going on this as soon as as soon as possible. There are lots of ways to do things like that without having to take shortcuts. And again, that comes from the relationship with the clients and understanding what they're looking for, but also what's the dynamic that's going on in kickoff calls.

00;37;35;11 - 00;37;59;25
Speaker 1
We also like to ask the question of, you know, what's the political dynamic that's going on in the background? What are some other things that are going on that are not listed in the RFP that are serious concerns for you that we can help you message and mitigate correctly? And it all comes back to having the relationship with the clients and working with them and them seeing that we know how to navigate all these changes and we will make them successful.

00;37;59;27 - 00;38;35;08
Speaker 2
Right? It's about going that extra mile, right? I keep going back to we can always check a box, but it's important to build these relationships and take things just a step further to to try and help the client. Robert, Before we wrap up today, I do want to talk about I want you to share a case study where the client centric approach really, really showed through and maybe helped us gain some follow on work and really deliver on time and within budget.

00;38;35;10 - 00;39;00;18
Speaker 1
Yeah, a little more typical of our clients is were brought in for either some i.t strategic planning help or were there to in this one particular case, I think we need a consultant to come in, take a look at our existing ERP system and tell us do we keep it or do we move on to something else, which is a great that's where we can be the most effective in saving you time and money.

00;39;00;18 - 00;39;23;08
Speaker 1
And your ERP replacement is bring us in as soon as the question starts popping in your mind, Do we have the right ERP system? Have we outgrown it? What have we done in our organization to hinder the the long term sustainability of this existing solution? Because the answer is not always go out and buy new system. There are lots of opportunities to re leverage what you have.

00;39;23;11 - 00;39;39;04
Speaker 1
And what I like to talk about is even if we get in there and we take a look at your ERP system and validate your concerns, that yes, you need to move on to another another ERP system, you're going to be stuck with your existing product for at least a year before you go live on a new system.

00;39;39;04 - 00;40;01;07
Speaker 1
And you cannot under resource or starve that existing ERP products and no longer maintain it because hey, when you get rid of it, who cares if? We maintain it. Who cares if we still do? Testing your staff and your service delivery is going to suffer significantly for that one year while you're getting the new system ready and setting up the transition and things like that.

00;40;01;07 - 00;40;22;04
Speaker 1
So situation, we were brought in early to just take a look and see where they're at in terms of the way they should go and the relationship and trust that we built with them started leading to questions of, well, do you guys do it? Strategic work? Yeah, we do that as well. Do you guys do data work? Sure, we do that as well.

00;40;22;07 - 00;40;47;25
Speaker 1
Do you guys run helpdesk for for I.T. tickets or technology tickets? Sure. So this project very rapidly grew to managing their their their portals that they used to interface with their vendors and gather data, especially during COVID, when you couldn't have people come into your into your lobby in person and transact business, they now had to go to this portal.

00;40;47;27 - 00;41;11;28
Speaker 1
We had the opportunity to help them fix that portal, refine it and actually lead the initiative to remarket that to people so that vendors and citizens knew, I don't have to go down to the housing authority or to the city to do this. I can actually do this online. So great blend of here's the technology tools. This is what you need for serving your citizens and vendors.

00;41;12;00 - 00;41;32;15
Speaker 1
And along the way, you need to market this correctly as well. You need to get the word out that this is now available. So you get people to to use that. Just managing system upgrades on the existing system didn't have staff time to be able to devote to looking at release notes, managing the test environment, having a policy group that came together that would go through and verify.

00;41;32;17 - 00;41;56;08
Speaker 1
Yes, this release still does what it needs to, but also has this new functionality and this is how we're going to roll it out to the organization. This is how we're going to train people. Maybe we need to go back and revise our policies and procedures so that it's reflected that way because they were also using those policies and procedures as their training templates when they brought in new folks to serve in these positions.

00;41;56;10 - 00;42;28;03
Speaker 1
You need to make sure they're trained on the product that you're actually using. It's not useful to use a training plan that's two years old, and the minute you kick them over into the new system, they're like, That's not what the documentation looked like. So even just managing things like that, best practice reviews and areas where it's appropriate in terms of both what the software vendor has as well as cybersecurity policies, making sure that you're where you need to be on cybersecurity, filling that gap, helping your project plan with your I.T department so they can roll out technology.

00;42;28;03 - 00;42;48;11
Speaker 1
We also have resources where we can help you roll out the technology and then the help desk. One was a real interesting one. We were able to embed one of our associate consultants into the help Desk process so that they could see what was coming in from end users and determine is this an issue? My monitors not working, my computer's not working.

00;42;48;14 - 00;43;09;14
Speaker 1
They would triage that, send it off to it, and then follow up on the user's behalf and make sure that fulfilled. Is this a software vendor issue? In other words, is this need to go to our customer care representative versus our support representative at the software company? And get this resolved in the next release or have someone in their development team jump on a call today and fix this for the end user?

00;43;09;16 - 00;43;43;11
Speaker 1
Or is this something that's more of a policy that the reason why this questions being asked and the Help desk is because this person doesn't understand what the policy manual says they need to do for entering this particular type of information. Well, that goes to policy and training as well. They can reach out to the user through you to facilitate, to make sure that those solutions are are answered and went off into other areas as well, helping to overall overhaul a lot of their internal processes, how to do process mapping correctly so that you can give a useful document that also can be living and breathing and it can be easily adjusted when when process

00;43;43;11 - 00;44;03;07
Speaker 1
changes occur, helping to evaluate it overall help restructure the IT department as well, doing comparisons to other agencies your size, either in your region or across the country. Get some ideas as to where you can be doing things differently. Something for an executive director to take back to their board and say, Hey, this organization on the other side of the country is doing this program.

00;44;03;07 - 00;44;24;25
Speaker 1
It's working well. I want to take a look at that for us internally, even just gathering staff perspective on the systems that they're using, not necessarily ERP, but the systems in general and being able to recommend solutions that are now affordable and easily attainable to solve these things, whereas two or three years before it was simply overpriced and it was only available to the private sector.

00;44;24;25 - 00;44;46;18
Speaker 1
So helping them dream as well as deal with customization and third party interfaces, get a handle on your programing, your specialized programing that you're having to use with your existing ERP solution and making sure that you're just not defaulting to, earpieces doesn't do this. I'm going to hire someone to come in and do some custom programing appropriate, but it has to be balanced.

00;44;46;18 - 00;45;11;23
Speaker 1
So there's a lot of other areas that are reached into as well. But those all from questions from the from the client of do you guys also do this? Can you also handle that? It's yes, we have the staff and the breadth of experience to take on anything that you need to do, even enterprise level things looking at enterprise level risks, not just necessarily I.T but just the overall liability that the organizations carrying.

00;45;11;28 - 00;45;18;13
Speaker 1
And how can modernization or your approach to modernization help mitigate that and get you better control over something like that?

00;45;18;15 - 00;45;43;08
Speaker 2
Right, right. And none of those things would have happened if that delivery team did not do their job in communicating effectively, showing transparency, transparency and showing that they care. Right. Our team is very passionate about the work they do, and I'm very excited to see what the future may hold. Robert, I really enjoyed this discussion today. We might could do I always say this, we might, could do a part two.

00;45;43;08 - 00;46;03;08
Speaker 2
We need to come back and revisit because I think there are some things we didn't necessarily get to dive into today, but this was great. This is a great conversation. We may need to get this trademarked, but we always say these types of projects that we engage in every day in the local government space are not technology projects.

00;46;03;08 - 00;46;31;05
Speaker 2
They're not anybody can sell you a piece of software or a new ERP system. These are people projects. These are people who are those vendors? Who are those consultants that are really going to get in there and uncover where the bodies are buried and be transparent and do some of these communication and relationship building type things that that you really need to do to uncover what's really going on.

00;46;31;08 - 00;46;56;11
Speaker 2
So with that being said, Robert, my key takeaway today is make sure that you truly understand, from a local government perspective, how you want to do business and what your overall goals are for your project and who's going to be the best vendor to truly take care you and get you to that next level? Did you have any last words or key takeaways that you wanted to share with our audience today?

00;46;56;11 - 00;47;16;07
Speaker 1
Robert It's just like you said, it's the relationship it's under. That part of understanding the client correctly is having the relationship with them so that you can because people don't come to a discovery meeting with every single thing on their minds in the past two years. They tend not to get to everything in that list. So it's the follow up conversations.

00;47;16;07 - 00;47;40;00
Speaker 1
It's the ability to know that when they call, they're going to get someone answering on our end. That's so they can say, You know what, I completely forgot about this. But this is also an important factor we need to look at as well. Great. Let's get that incorporated. And it only comes from having a relationship with with the client where we trust each other, we acknowledge each other, we listen to each other, and that's that's what it boils down to.

00;47;40;00 - 00;47;47;12
Speaker 1
Clients are in a lot of ways they're buying a relationship, not just a solution. They're buying a relationship knowing that we're going to be there for them.

00;47;47;14 - 00;48;10;01
Speaker 2
They are. And back to our slogan, Guided results. There's a reason it doesn't just say results. And no, we are not we we're not a gym and we're not personal trainer. Somebody asked me that at a conference one time. We do not do that. So I need to ask you to lay that out in the beginning. But guided, what does that mean?

00;48;10;01 - 00;48;40;03
Speaker 2
It means that we are truly going to guide you however we see fit and however you want us to through your end result. So thank you today for joining us. We go live every Wednesday. I haven't been live in a while. Typically, it's our founder and CEO, AV. But if you guys would like to hear us chat about something that's on your mind or something that we haven't discussed before, we are available on every social media platform and we are very easy to get a hold of.

00;48;40;03 - 00;48;47;09
Speaker 2
So with that being said, I hope everyone has a fantastic week and we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye bye.

00;48;47;12 - 00;49;11;11
Speaker 1
That's wrap on today's episode of Untangled. For more exciting insights, remember you can find Vero on YouTube at Vero Advisors and other social media platforms. And don't miss out on our weekly newsletter on LinkedIn, where we delve even deeper into digital transformation. Interested in a career to very simply visit our career center on our Web site to see how you can join our team.

00;49;11;13 - 00;49;19;12
Speaker 1
Thank you for joining us on Untangled your reliable Source for understanding the intricate crossroads of technology and global governance. Until next time.