Heather King
Hello, hello, hello, I’m back. I’m going to give everybody a couple of seconds to come on back down to our chairs. And I appreciate everyone who sat closer to the front. It seems nobody likes to sit close to the front. But it always warms the cockles of my heart when people sit in one of the first three rows, so I do appreciate it. All right, everybody. We are going to get started with our full day of sessions, presentations, panel discussions all about wonderful good stuff that we like to do at radiance on the road. If you were not here for the first session, I am Heather King, I am the VP and head of events and community programs for high radius. I welcome you to radiance on the road, Chicago, we are so thrilled to have you here today. So we are going to jump right into it. But before we get to our session, there’s a few housekeeping notes I want everybody to be made aware of who downloaded our Huva app. Oh my gosh, you round of applause everybody. That is amazing. Okay, I will taught you, that’s fine. You don’t have to applaud yourselves. Awesome work. Our Huva app is the place to be if you are interested in anything that we’re oops, slide slides not working. I only have three slides. Oh, yeah, there’s it’s okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. We don’t need it. But Huva app is the place to be if you are interested in seeing the agenda very easily. Or if you want to see who is here for you to potentially meet. There are already so many conversations happening, icebreaker questions, which are super interesting, all sorts of stuff that you can see on there. But what we do have on there that I want to make sure everybody’s aware of is polls. I ever since COVID Oh, there we go. Ever since COVID, polls have become ubiquitous. It’s how we get any sort of information at all. If you go into the agenda icon. Within the agenda icon you will see right there a little button that says polls. And you will be able to answer any of the polls that we have up and we will have polls in all of our sessions. So we’re going to do a little bit of test right now if everybody could take out their phones so we can make sure everyone knows how to use the polls. And that is does your organization have shared services or GPS Global Business Services I’m super interested to see the results of this poll and I realized I have to take out my phone to see the results of this poll. So I’m going to do that right now. So I’m going to give everybody 30 seconds to do that while I give myself that time to check on the poll responses. So here we go although it’s not coming up for me, which is no Bueno Am I the only one that it’s not the poll isn’t showing up on my Huva app. Oh no. What? It’s there all right. Well, apparently I’m not seeing it on mine so that’s good. What Oh, announce it what’s it how’s it gone? 35 boats You guys are so awesome. Well what’s the results? Yes or no? I like mix tops Come on hit me 4412 44 Okay, sure services 20 to 40 Oh mAJority love it you guys are a beautiful audience. Thank you so much. And I will make sure I can do this on my phone for the all the rest of the polls we have going forward. Fantastic. Y’all know how to use Whoa hooba Wonderful. This session is going to be in an 1812 format every session will be which is 18 minutes of conversation or presentation or discussion followed by the opportunity for 12 minutes of q&a You all were great with gonna deep so make sure you have those questions ready. We will be running around to make sure you have a microphone for that. Alright, so and at the end of the session, please go into that Huva app you’ll know how to use so well and rate the session so we know what you’d like to hear about and what you would like to hear less about for future radians on the roads of radiance on the road events. Alright, so without further ado, we are going to jump into our session Digital finance the essential step to unlocking next level of value within GBS which apparently 13 of you have evolved to Gbs. 25 of you have shared services maybe more now, an hour. I am going to be hosting this fireside chat with my good friend AJ Vijay Singa. He is the vice president of shared services at universe solutions. He’s a global leader in speciality chemical and ingredient a global leader in specialty chemical and ingredients distribution. He has more than two decades of experience in shared services digital operations, automation, enterprise transformation and GBs and you can sit down while everyone gives you a round of applause Alright, oh, I’m very short. And this is very tall. Okay. Oh, all righty. Okay, so I don’t like doing big introductions. So I’m going to let AJ introduce himself. dolphin tell everybody a little bit about you besides that the two lines that I just said that I just said,
AJ
yeah, so first part of my career I was on the provider side and then I say I went to the good side. Being in a captive side for half of my more than half my career now, the multifunctional shared services GBS lots and we’ve pivoted to going from captive offshore, more into digitization process optimization. So, that’s about me. I’ve been with universe solutions for about two years. Chicago based actually western suburbs.
Heather King
That’s how I got him. All right. So everybody here obviously is interested in some form of digitization one way or another. So, AJ, for you within a GBS organization, what does digitization mean,
Speaker2
in our organization, so we early on, we took a very much like I said, lift and shift type of approach. In our journey, we have shifted to more optimized processes, digitize, and then we have a component of lift and shift and some of the offshore components that’s in there. So in our case, we put a Process Excellence team, which we’ll talk about later. Digitization means lots of different things. One part of the organization was focusing on E commerce, they call it digital. We also call it digital. Someone said is the back office digitalization, you know one of my colleagues had one stat one time in GBS leaders. This no back office front door is just one office, right? So we in our case, we’re looking at order to cash process and what are the elements that’s in there? We’re very careful on not bringing good technology to a bad process and blame technology that happens often. Yeah. So we are starting and looking at where our biggest pain points are. And then just look to automate, digitize the process from order capture notification back to the customer, what the customer experiences, and then working all the way back into collections. Okay.
Heather King
So what do you think so, you know, obviously, digitization has the capability to change small things, large things, and kind of enterprise wide right. So what do you think are the possibilities when you’re looking super big picture? What are the possibilities that you think digitization has, whether it’s within GBS or just within any organization, whether they have shared services or GBS organization or not,
AJ
the key thing is just making sure your digital strategy aligns with the operations and go and corporate strategy. That’s number one. And, and look for, look for some opportunities that are low hanging that you can go for and high impacting, and then you can get the buy and the belief from others. You know, for example, RPS had lot of bus. But sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But what we focus on is on the so we have challenges in the pandemic, on collections. So we focus on digitizing backend of it, to make sure that our dilators go on time. And we have dispute management modules that’s in there that we can be able to effectively manage that. So pick an opportunity that you feel high impacting and high visibility and executive leadership buys into Yeah, and then deliver the actual ROI on that, then go to the next thing. Right. So that’s where we start.
Heather King
So you mentioned obviously, you mentioned, there’s no back office, there’s no front office, there’s one office, right. So but we talk so much about back office here, when we do shared services conversations that so much of where it lies. So can you give examples of how it you know, you digitization is one office as opposed to very back office functions,
AJ
right. So take the core to cash process. A customer service is as front as a salesperson is right. So from the front of his order capture, and how we take the old intake from EDI to web base capture or email comes in how we take the PO and abstract it out and then load that’s at that’s the very front and then working through an order acknowledgement shipment notification customer be able to kind of Amazon like experience. Then work your way down in the middle. How do you manage the order? So we are SAP shop around rather than bringing bolt on technologies we look to optimize what’s within SAP configured properly? Is it user friendly? Or can we be able to streamline then you go in the back end of it now we need to go collect what we sold. That’s where we bring in technologies to help us there. And so sometimes the billing the biggest one of the biggest challenges for us is customer dictates how we should bill which we call it a portal or the customer vendor portal that we had to go and upload to. In those instances, we use RPA to go to all the different arriba, and all the different portals go by and stuff to just to get it in there. So it’s end to end. Yeah. From front to back.
Heather King
Yeah. Okay. So I know that you have a specific roadmap to unlock. Next level value, I use quotes, because I know that’s a very buzzy phrase these days, right, next level value. So tough talk to us about about that roadmap.
AJ
Yeah. So how my shirt says organization is set up is we have functions from order to cash procure to pay, and HR operations is also a part of my organization, and some margin and cost operations, and they are set up as an extension of the business. Right, that’s, that’s the most effective way to go. So then, Process Excellence center of expertise that we’ve set up goes horizontally to unlock the value. So it has four pillars. The first one is optimized, which is to optimize the process, we have technologies, we do process mining, to identify where the blockages are, you know, it’s like, blockages in your arteries type of things that we find to just start to smooth it out. And then once you find those opportunities, then we go into the digitization tower automation tower, we optimize and then automate. The key thing is, once you put the technology and put a solution in place, make sure it’s adopted. So we have adoption, power tools, like there are tools that we use for make it you user friendly, make it easier for the user to have the steps at their fingertips rather than looking for a standard operating procedure. And then the fourth tower is Operational Insights, which means that we put all these things in place, we need to measure our KPIs. Is it delivering the value that we look for? So those are the four towers that we have? And we use that methodology to go and extract value across the entire value chain?
Heather King
Yeah. So before we go on, I don’t actually have an official poll on this. But I’m curious. I like polling the audience and snap polls when I can. How many of you have something similar? Do you have a COE? Oh, a lone wolf. Okay. And nobody else? Do you have kind of pillars like this where it’s very set on going through? Automate, optimize? Alright, cool. Let’s talk more about that, then. Alrighty, so um, so it was I believe you said it’s optimized, digitize adopt Insights is the is the for? So how easy was that to set up? What kind of process did that go through
AJ
the fortune in chat services or any transformation strategy. Having I said active sponsorship of your executive leadership is important. What I mean by active is that passive would be that in the board, they will say, I support you, you go outside of the board, you’re on your own. In my case, unfortunately, I’ve been on both sides of the equation, in this case, currently, CEO and our executive board is super supportive, or while you’re driving. So funding and what’s required to just drive the vision and the strategy and ROI we put forward. Worked out. Yeah, right. So and we also have IT organization, who are really in a business partnership model, and they’re a true partner to enable the technologies you need to bring in to make your vision, you know, work, right. So that worked out for us. Now. It’s, I’ve done it a couple of times before, so it was helpful for me to go with it. But I’ve taken a very much a hybrid approach, which means that we have the vision, the strategy, we brought in partners in certain aspects of it, to do the implementation. So it’s not, so I’m a big believer in BI versus make it home. Because it’s 2022. Right. And, and then we brought in some insight, we I have, I have a team that develops solutions, and we augment through partners to help us to be able to scale. So that’s effectively what we done, we believe in their model, because it gives us more use cases that the partners have that we don’t see more often and and to just essentially go and extract additional value.
Heather King
Yeah. Now you’ve been at the company for two years. Was this in place? When you got there? Is this something that was built across two years, which to me sounds like a short amount of time if that’s the case,
AJ
right? So when I started they had a shiatsu as a strategy that was advised to and they’d was in the process of centralizing so our shared services is 100% onshore, and we have a very small team offshore, we are building a capability but it’s very offshore driven strategy that we have. What they didn’t tell me was that there’s going to be a pandemic that I had the pandemic surprise. So generally, you go with a people process technology in that exact quarter building shared services, I had to pivot to more focusing on process technology and the people kind of approach so it was in 2020. We went out out the gate to build the solutions that we needed, right. So some workflow was missing, we put the workflow in place with a vision of where we want to get the roadmap. So this didn’t exist, we put it in place, middle of last year, and then we made tremendous progress since then.
Heather King
So what okay, I don’t want to skip ahead, I want to I want to make sure we get to all four pillar pillars. So adoption, so change management, right is a is a big is a big deal. And I know from from talking to so many people, how tough it is to really make sure your change management is where it needs to be. I did a poll at one point where I asked, you know, hundreds of people, do you think that your company has a satisfactory Change Management Systems strategy? And 82% said, No. So that was eye opening to me. So tell me how you’re making it work?
AJ
Yeah. So I believe that the most overlooked on the invested capability in any transformation is change management. I’m a big believer in change management, if you don’t have change management, people would not understand what the value it’s going to drive. What’s in it for me question is not answered. And that option. So under the digital adoption tower, we have changed management team, that is they’re connected to our they have a change management Corp at the corporate level. So we we use Pro sidecar methodology. And we use that to in every initiative, we drive with the change management plan to communication adoption standpoint, to put in place so it it has to be in the front and center. That’s where it tremendously fail. Making sure that you extract the value.
Heather King
Yeah. So you mentioned capturing insights, right? What have you captured so far? What are some of these, this and these great metrics, you might be able to share some on your ROI?
AJ
So the first pillar gets us processing sites, the last pillar gets us Operational Insights. Right? So the so processing sites get us tremendous amount of opportunities, where we have lots of clogging that’s happening and slowing down in the process. The backend of it, we identify where our weaknesses are, when it comes to process performance. On the processing sites, we track our productivity, we have a balanced scorecard that we measure ourselves against. So it gives us a baseline to how we improve. So the key is that where did we start? After we put these enhancements and automation and digitalization? How is it improving? And is it getting us where we need so we see a gradual progress. And, you know, it’s slow to get to where we need to be some had to do with actually, nobody told us there’s going to be a great resignation thing going on. So we had to, because she had, so this is a people’s business. So we also tried to keep the knowledge at a certain level. So that’s been a challenge for us.
Heather King
Yeah. So aside from obviously pandemic happening, the great resignation happening, all these things that we’ve seen for so long, what were some other inhibitors to the six, maybe currently, or that you’ve overcome already, to building out this COE and getting to where you, you still need to be from what you’re saying?
AJ
Yeah. So in our case, it’s a very traditional business when it comes to chemical industry. You know, not everybody can even spell probably digital, right. But they all understand what digital is. But it’s a very essential business. So ensuring these career executives and leaders that who’s been in that business, what digital means was our biggest hurdle that we needed to overcome. And, and he was super important that we brought them along the journey. And we use a term we say, we bring in solutions for the people. And they don’t feel like we are doing to them. Yeah. So so nobody’s choking in that case, right. So they’re, they’re absorbing and adopting. That was that was number one. Number two is obviously negotiating the contracts and then getting the resources we need and aligning it to your vision. I slowed us down a bit, but he was worth the worth the time that we took, because it created a solid foundation for us to get where we we, we ended up being. The third thing is the definition of what you’re trying to do on digital, versus what the rest of the organization’s digital strategy sometimes could overlap, or essentially go head to head. So carving your space and putting your boundaries and defining that space is super important. That was also a challenge and it continues to be a challenge at certain places. Yeah, people get confused. Which one is it? Yeah.
Heather King
Well, I’m in the weird situation where I have to be mindful of my own time being up here and so I have to check my watch, which is why I’m doing that. So I want to make sure cuz we have about 10 minutes left that I gave everybody opportunity. I have more questions, of course, but I’d rather have questions from our audience. So if anybody has any questions, please, I can’t run down to run the mic this time. So anybody has any questions? For Matt, for me, I’m not gonna be able to answer your questions. But AJ? Well, yes, sir.
Audience
Talk a little bit about the optimization part. At the very beginning, you have a core capability or process design going in and helping you identify when you’re leveraging or
AJ
not so good question. I grew up in Lean Six Sigma. And I have moved to where we use Lean principles with data. So sillones is a process mining software, we use those processing size that gets us I have process analysts that goes and look at the configuration that’s there we go under the hood, as you know, and slowness and where the opportunities are then working hand in hand with it, to unclog those or streamline them as an example. I have my order process, I had to go save the order to come back and add attachment to it. Right? So it’s going all the way to the end to come back to the beginning. So how do we improve that those and then we go and also look at, we use a term called touches, how many times a CSR touch the order, and the number of activities, which is the actual productivity, efficiency leakage. That’s the approach we’ve taken. And that’s coupled with workforce management, so that we can be better understand what’s average handle time, but my capacity does require what values or volumes that are there. So to just to bring an extract value.
Good, great question. Any other questions? Oh, you just want to hear my question. Oh, even better, great. KPIs that you’re using to measure progress or success around digital transformation, right.
AJ
So we cost a survey is one of them. Right? And speed. First pass yield is a metric that we look at all call it straight through processing. Those are some of them that we are we are using an accuracy obviously. Right. Any other questions? We build all that into a balanced scorecard. So it’s all encompassing, and it fits by the function. Right. So that’s a starting point. For now, we have a different we have the competitive high radius at the moment. But we are not happy. So I’m in the box. All right. That was the first thing I said to Heather are using irate is
Heather King
that they want to next question. That’s right. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, yeah.
AJ
It’s funny enough, I first. You’d been with high radius few weeks now. I’ve been here for seven weeks, right. So and I said, Do you have our two R’s? He’s a no. And three weeks later than now. They have our daughter. That’s great. So
Heather King
any other questions? All right. Well, I have another question. So you mentioned the the partnership with your CIO and the IT team. So I know, I’m sure also in this room, that sometimes that relationship can be a little combative and not as partnership centric. So can you talk to us a little bit about how you developed and, you know, build out that relationship so that it works for you?
AJ
Yeah, so it’s a very good question. Because most organizers believe any technology you bring in should belong to it. Well, you could argue yes. And I’ve been in both sides of I’ve been in the previous talk about the one organization I was in, where it was very combative, because we could not draw the line who owns what, right. But automation is a core digitizing core for what you do if you don’t have that. It’s tough. Our organization, my current organization, we have a CIO organization where they build what you call as a business solutions team, right? It’s like a business partnership like HR Finance. And those folks come from their practitioners that gone to it, so they understand the business. So we work with the CIO and and and the leadership. In every practice, there is actual the Business Solutions director For every function, so that relationship works. So we want to bring something in, we involve them and then analyze and look at and assess what the actual tools that are there. So it’s a, it’s a true partnership. Then once we bring it in the implemented, we want we call it business lead automation IT support it. Right. Whereas generally it is it led, you know, business supported. We’ve done the other way around. Yeah. And that has given us some autonomy within the controls that IT organization has.
Heather King
So you’ve overcome that inhibitor of dealing with your CIO. And absolutely, absolutely. So I do we do have another poll, I’d love to see if I Oh, that’s not it. That’s not it. Oh, no, that’s it. Nope, back it up. There we go. What is your biggest inhibitor to digital transformation? So I’m super curious to hear what all of you in the audience think about this. If you could take out your Huva app, and get into that agenda? And answer what is your biggest inhibitor to digital transformation buying an investment company culture that shies away from new technologies, processes that haven’t been optimized effective change management communication? So I’ll give like 20 seconds for everybody to answer that. And then I might need somebody to read me out the answers, because it’s not coming up. For some reason. I’ll try it again. I will try it one more time. All righty. So so far with all of our answers, thank you all so much for answering, we have out of the about 50 responses, executive buying and investment is about 15 of you Sorry, I can try to do the percentages in my head. But that would just be embarrassing. Only three people said company culture that shies away from new technologies. And then the vast mAJority 3154 said processes that haven’t yet been optimized. And then four out of 55 said effective change management communication. So I’m very proud of everyone for their getting their change management where it needs to be. So does this surprise you at all? Because it does surprise me, I will say that change management’s not hire.
AJ
Oh, no, I mean, if if you didn’t have a process that haven’t yet been optimized, then you probably find Change management is number one, I’m not surprised that is the most common inhibitor you will find, and in some ways, is a good response. Because you are there, that is the case. And you don’t want to rush the technology without optimizing the process. But optimization of the process could go on different levels, you can take 12 months to optimize it. Or you can find different ways to get there while you’re bringing the technology and going phases. So my if if it’s my way that I would do, I would do it, get the Optimize to the minimum that you need. We call it as you heard the term MVP, not most valuable player, since we’re here at Soldier Field, but it is a minimum viable product, so that you can bring it in, and then you can layer as you go through it with additional capabilities and optimize and at the layer. That will be the opportunity.
Heather King
Right? So we only have about two minutes left. I’d if anybody has any final questions, I would love to give you the opportunity to ask AJ, if you have any other any other questions for him? If not, I’ll ask my last question. And I’ll give you 10 More seconds. All right. So AJ, you know, what’s the next step? Do you have your four pillars you have your COE in place, I know you still need to get to where you want to get, you know, with your insights. But beyond that, what’s the long term.
AJ
So we build a CEO, he has enterprise capability, we would like to see that as an enabler for us to be able to provide that as a service for the rest of the organization. Because I have only a small portion of the overall organization when it comes to processes. That is one objective we have. And then second is to identify additional areas and accelerate our digital transformation. Those are the top two, because there are certain technologies, we need to have a harder look and then figure out whether assess and see whether it’s a best fit right now. And it is going to serve, you know, for the purpose that we need to achieve.
Heather King
Okay, all right. Well, everybody if there’s no other questions, please give AJ a big round of applause.
Thanks
