Transcript 0:00 We need to acknowledge that there is a worker shortage across nearly every vertical segment today. We can't say it's not happening, it's only happening to one segment or one vertical market. 0:13 It's happening in every one, and it's affecting the supply chain as a result. 0:19 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:35 [upbeat music] Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. Here on The Peggy Smedley Show, I preach people, process, and technology. 0:49 With all three of these working together in tandem, a digital transformation project likely won't make it out of a proof of concept stage. So today, I would like to narrow in specifically on one of these three areas. 1:04 So stick around for the entire first segment to hear my thoughts. Later on in the show, as always, I have some amazing guests. I'll be talking to Glenn Almandinger, President of Harbor Research. 1:16 I haven't had him on the show, but I've known him for years. And then I'm gonna wrap up the show with a dear friend, Dan Miklavcic, founder of Lean Manufacturing Research. So stick around. 1:26 I'm gonna be holding these analysts' feet to the fire. But no, they're gonna be a great show. It's gonna be fun to talk today. So let's get started. 1:33 People, process, and technology, all three of these are essential to launching a successful digital transformation project. 1:42 I know you've heard me talk about this a lot, but for more than three years, I've been espousing the uptick of workers changing jobs and moving into other industries. Some call it what? The Great Resignation. 1:56 Others dub it the Great Reshuffle. I like to think of it as a great job hop, the opportunity to expand your skill set, to get more out of your career in a time that needs, really, what are we talking about? Great talent. 2:12 Amid a pandemic and economic uncertainty, we have seen a great upheaval with workers, and many industries are determining how to solve the job-life balance and sort through the worker shortage that seems to be infiltrating nearly every single industry. 2:35 We need the people. We need the worker talent. We also need the process. When we launched a new Internet of Things project, 2:51 we need it to align with the way our business operates. We need it to fit into our existing processes. Makes sense. We need it to align with our mission and our corporate objectives. 3:07 If it doesn't, there is a very good chance the project could die before it even begins. So we know we need the people and the process, but we also need, what's the most important thing we talk about all the time? 3:22 The technology. And that is what I would like to dig into a little bit deeper today on this first segment. Naturally, it goes without saying that we need the technology in order to proceed with digital transformation. 3:39 How many times have you heard me talk about digital transformation? But it goes much deeper than this, so we need to kind of dig into that a little bit more. We need it to be, now here's the big word, interoperable, 3:54 and we need it to be easy to use. If it's not interoperable and it's not e- easy to use, what's gonna happen? It's gonna be on a shelf, and nobody's gonna use it. 4:05 If there are bottlenecks, we are probably going to all falter. We're not gonna succeed with it, and we've seen it happen already. We know digitization can provide valuable data insights. 4:19 We know it can optimize processes. But it can also be challenged by data complexity that creates substantial workloads for IT teams. 4:31 I did an interview with Junaid Ali, a consultant at Haystacks Analytics, back in August of last year. Many of you might recall. And he talked about how software engineers are simply getting burned out. 4:46 Honestly, it isn't just software engineers if you think about it. This seems to be a growing problem across all industries. Just talk to anybody you know, and they'll tell you this problem is running rampant. But why? 5:02 A 2021 Indeed survey suggests more than half of workers are feeling burned out, and more than two-thirds believe the feeling has worsened during the course of the pandemic. 5:16 The solution naturally comes in the form of technology. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me. It just seems common sense. 5:26 Of course, these software engineers are tasked with overseeing it, but what if there was another way? Now, this is what I want you to think about. That's why I was intrigued when I picked up a new report. 5:42 Let me break it down for you like this. Mulesoft found that the number of project assigns to information technology departments has increased by at least 30% each year since 2017. Yikes! 5:58 Just think about thatLike many industries of business, IT budgets are not rising in line with the growing business demands. Also, with the lack of developers, the delivery gap is simply just widening. 6:15 What's more, the report finds information technology teams at only 30% of organizations completed all of their assigned projects last year. 6:26 This report suggests one way to kind of speed up progress is to find a quicker way to complete tasks. And what, what do we know? What have we been talking about? Low code platforms. 6:39 Now, Forrester suggests software development can be conducted 10 times faster when using low code plat- platforms as opposed to traditional processes. Now consider this. 6:52 Typical analytical platforms can demand extensive coding languages which require highly trained and experienced developers. To solve this, companies can save time by switching to a low code platform. 7:07 Now, that makes sense. This often have visual interfaces with intuitive logic and drag and drop features. 7:16 These are easier to use and often, as we often talk about, don't require experienced coders or even software developers. Ding, ding, ding. Makes a lot of sense. Why haven't we thought about this sooner? 7:30 This means theoretically existing staff from other areas of an industrial business can use what? The platform. Hello, people. Come on, just makes sense. 7:42 The hope would be industrial business could accelerate their digital transformation by opting for a low code platform. So all right, let's get to it. So here's my opinion for today. 7:56 We do in fact need technology to be easier to use. We've made it too complicated, and it doesn't have to be. 8:05 We need the bandwidth to be able to capture the data we need in a way that works for businesses, all kinds of businesses, every business, every industry. 8:19 If we want to reach widespread adoption, we need to recognize the challenges that are faced in various vertical markets, various sectors, various communities, the way we do business today. 8:34 We need to acknowledge that there is a worker shortage across nearly every vertical segment, segment today. We can't say it's not happening, it's only happening to one segment or one vertical market. 8:47 It's happening in every one, and it's affecting the supply chain as a result. We talk about the supply chain, but we don't understand the collaboration part of it that's critically causing one... 8:58 It, it's ch- it's a trickling effect. We need to create, create processes that work for operations, and we need the technology, again, to be simplified, to be easy, easy to use, and one that people want to use. 9:15 Not just easy to use, but they want to use, that they want to embrace. This is perhaps a call to the technology industry to develop these types of solutions. The industry needs to think about this. 9:29 Don't make it complicated. Make it so that people want to embrace it, they want to use it. It is also a call to technology decision-makers to seek out and demand these types of solution, demand that they're easier. 9:45 If you don't ask for them to be easier, why would they want to make them easier? You have to step up and make your voice heard. Everybody has to be involved. That's why it's called a collaborative process. 9:58 That's why we say we need collaboration. If you don't make your voice heard, they're gonna continue to make solutions the same way they've always done it. We have to talk. 10:08 We need our voices to be heard and say, "This is why we're not using these solutions. This is the problems that we're having." All right. 10:17 So now let's get to my tip for today, 'cause I always have a tip, I always have my advice, I always have my opinion, but all of these come from me interviewing all of you and you sharing your knowledge with me as I can share it back with all of you. 10:30 So let's ask the tough questions in the technology decision-making process. We need to think about this. In the platform, is it easy to use? 10:42 Is that platform going to be used, and is, is it easy to use so that others can use it, others can leverage it and take advantage of it and develop new innovative solutions off of it? That's what we wanna do. 10:54 So someone says we can use this and do more things and grow our businesses. At the end of the day, it's all about ROI. How does our businesses help the next business, our customer's customer, customer? 11:07 That's again, that's the collaboration. That's the effort from this. Will it require a lot of coding from a development team? If teams are smaller and they don't have teams, it's not gonna be used. 11:19 Who will do that coding? Again, they don't have teams. Who's gonna be involved in it? We have to think about this. We've gotta think about the long game and the short game in this. 11:30 We've gotta think about everybody involved. Is there the right team of people in place? 11:35 Remember, teams might be small, one or two, five or six, whatever it might be, but we've gotta think about who's gonna be involved and who can do what to make this all happen. 11:45 Or are you going to use a centralized low code platform? Low code kinda makes a lot of sense here, especially in an environment that we have today with the shortage of workers. How easy is it really going to be to use? 12:00 Are you making it easier for everyone to use? Can a number of people in the organization leverage it? Will they take advantage of it? Will they simply use it?How much training is involved? 12:12 If the training isn't complicated, will more people take advantage of it? Will they have the time to be trained on it? 12:18 You know, if, if work is, if people feel burned out, they're not gonna wanna spend the time to train 'cause they're already exhausted. You've gotta think about all these things. 12:27 So is this the, just the tip of the iceberg? These are the things we have to look at. We need to be asking the really tough questions if we want digital transformation to be successful in our businesses. 12:41 If we do, and we align the people, the process, and technology, the outcome will be significant. Those are the things we've talked about for so many years now, but that's what makes the difference. 12:55 We can revolutionize industrial processes like we've been talking about, and we can accelerate digital transformation across companies and industries. 13:06 We can save thousands of hours and billions of dollars if we get this right. We don't have to keep saying it's the same hurdles, the same mistakes. 13:16 We can learn from the lessons of the past and make things right for the future. Isn't that something that sounds right? Isn't that the best way to go forward? Will you take that step? Will you learn? 13:30 Will you help the next evolution in digital transformation? All right, well, guess what? We are out of time. 13:36 As always, if you have thoughts on what I've talked about today, please send me a tweet to continue this discussion on social media at Connected World. All right, listeners, I'm out of time. 13:47 As always, I want you to go get that quick cup of coffee 'cause we're gonna take a quick break, but please check out our website while we do that at connectedworld.com, our show website at thepeggyסmedleyshow.com, and be sure to share and subscribe to our episodes each week. 14:04 Uh, as I said, we're gonna take that quick break, and this is The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back. 14:14 [upbeat music]
