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Bridging the Tech Gap: How Businesses Can Integrate Technology for Growth · Business Roundtable

0:31
Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to the Business round Table podcast.
0:34
Speaker 1: I have a brand new guest this week. I love
0:37
Speaker 1: having new guests on the Business round Table podcast. My
0:39
Speaker 1: name is David Carr Steward your business if you're catching
0:42
Speaker 1: this for the very first time, this is where we
0:44
Speaker 1: talk about all things business, business owners, business leaders that
0:48
Speaker 1: you're facing and growing, scaling your company. And I've got
0:54
Speaker 1: Sarah on here, Sarah Conway from talk to me about
0:57
Speaker 1: tech because you know you can get away from it.
1:00
Speaker 1: Technology is required to run a business nowadays.
1:04
Speaker 2: And this isn't anything new, but technology continues to change
1:08
Speaker 2: and evolve, and so in a conversation with Sarah, I
1:12
Speaker 2: thought giving her wealth of experience and background come on
1:16
Speaker 2: the podcast share insights of what it means to help
1:20
Speaker 2: businesses integrate technology and growth in today's world.
1:25
Speaker 1: So I just want to thank you Sarah for joining
1:27
Speaker 1: us on the podcast.
1:29
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me.
1:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you've done a lot of things in tech, uh,
1:35
Speaker 1: and then you started this company. Talk to me about tech.
1:40
Speaker 1: You've done developer relations, technology integration, open source advocacy. There's
1:45
Speaker 1: a whole host of things you've covered in technology. But
1:48
Speaker 1: talk to the audience for those that are the business
1:50
Speaker 1: owners that maybe they're not as familiar with technology they're
1:53
Speaker 1: they're maybe intimidated by it sometimes too, like hey, and
1:57
Speaker 1: like why did you get started with this company and
2:00
Speaker 1: what you're striving to do?
2:03
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so talk to me about tech is primarily a
2:06
Speaker 3: developer relations agency. We provide full services, right, so that's
2:11
Speaker 3: essentially connecting with a technical audience. You're working on building
2:15
Speaker 3: a community and developing good relations with your technical audience.
2:19
Speaker 3: That means making sure you have effective documentation. Your website
2:22
Speaker 3: makes sense, your messaging makes sense. Are there any questions
2:26
Speaker 3: that I have when upon going to your website about
2:28
Speaker 3: the product that aren't being answered? And that also applies
2:32
Speaker 3: to discoverability as well. So you're marketing your sales, are
2:35
Speaker 3: they informed on how to actually approach a technical audience
2:38
Speaker 3: or are they just selling to sell right, which is
2:41
Speaker 3: going to typically throw off any developers anywhere. They're going
2:44
Speaker 3: to hit your website and bounce right off. So that
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Speaker 3: is number one what we do. But we do a
2:50
Speaker 3: secondary priority of helping companies understand how to leverage technology
2:54
Speaker 3: effectively in their own stacks or for their own developers
2:58
Speaker 3: in a manner where they're not experiencing operational roadblocks or
3:02
Speaker 3: maybe using licenses that are costant effective, or where they
3:05
Speaker 3: might experience vendor lock in or similar problems that can
3:09
Speaker 3: you stall the growth of their business.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so, yeah, there's a lot you covered there. What
3:17
Speaker 1: would you say, you know, use it developing these people together,
3:21
Speaker 1: bringing them you know, what would you say is in
3:24
Speaker 1: the developer relations space? What how does how does that
3:28
Speaker 1: role play in an adoption in company culture, the tech
3:32
Speaker 1: adoption and in company culture? Can you expand a bit
3:35
Speaker 1: on that?
3:37
Speaker 3: Sure? If I understand your question correctly, It basically covers everything.
3:44
Speaker 3: It's the dack of all trades is a field, right
3:46
Speaker 3: because it encompasses marketing, sales, product management, and any content
3:53
Speaker 3: written for the business as well. And any professional within
3:57
Speaker 3: the field is going to have to work with all
3:58
Speaker 3: these different teams across your hire company, from engineering to
4:01
Speaker 3: marketing and sales to make sure that everyone's kind of
4:03
Speaker 3: on the same page. All the messaging makes sense, it's accurate,
4:06
Speaker 3: it's complete. Otherwise you end up with very different understandings
4:12
Speaker 3: from customers when they, you know, come on board that
4:14
Speaker 3: first consulting call, they might not understand what it is
4:17
Speaker 3: that you're actually selling to them because your positioning online
4:20
Speaker 3: is way different from what they're actually going to receive,
4:25
Speaker 3: if that makes sense.
4:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, So when you're dealing with all these different groups,
4:31
Speaker 1: let's just you know, like you mentioned, you know, marketing
4:33
Speaker 1: and sales and all these different booths, how do you
4:37
Speaker 1: unify them in the tech space A meaning, maybe people
4:40
Speaker 1: have preferences for certain things that they like using or
4:43
Speaker 1: are dropping and they're like, well that's inconsists. Like you said,
4:46
Speaker 1: maybe they're using one thing, it's inconsistent. But how do
4:48
Speaker 1: you come in, Sarah to kind of bridge that gap
4:52
Speaker 1: or get them talking with each other both internally first
4:54
Speaker 1: and also so out externally that they, you know, get
4:57
Speaker 1: unified in how they're using technology, how they're do what
5:01
Speaker 1: they're what they're like you said, bridging all these together.
5:04
Speaker 1: What can you share your experience and how you come
5:07
Speaker 1: in and help companies that way?
5:09
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So we provide support, consulting, and training. There's those
5:13
Speaker 3: are the three major ways we'd be able to help
5:15
Speaker 3: out a company in this aspect, right. So support would
5:17
Speaker 3: be you reach out to us with questions, you have
5:19
Speaker 3: specific ideas in mind or problems that you need to solve,
5:23
Speaker 3: and you're like you know, hey, my uh, my sales
5:26
Speaker 3: team really needs to be up todate. For example, on
5:28
Speaker 3: post us QL, they don't understand what it is, what
5:31
Speaker 3: the advantages are, and so they're getting on all these
5:33
Speaker 3: sales calls and they're just following, you know, falling through
5:35
Speaker 3: because they can't actually answer these we'd come in and
5:39
Speaker 3: help answer questions and help guide your team right. Or
5:42
Speaker 3: we can provide consulting services where we would actually create
5:45
Speaker 3: some of the sales enablement materials for example, and help
5:49
Speaker 3: block them through how to use them. So presentations, guides,
5:53
Speaker 3: you write papers, website content, whatever else, and make sure
5:58
Speaker 3: that we're effectively communicating what that brand's positioning is, what
6:01
Speaker 3: their values are, any other important aspects of the product,
6:05
Speaker 3: and make sure that comes across in those materials. And
6:08
Speaker 3: then thirdly, with training, we'd actually come up with like
6:11
Speaker 3: a whole course and walk your team through, you know,
6:14
Speaker 3: this is this is how you go about discovering this information,
6:17
Speaker 3: this is how you put together, here's all the basics
6:20
Speaker 3: you need to know, here's all the resources that you
6:22
Speaker 3: need to get started, you know, And that usually pairs
6:24
Speaker 3: very well with the consulting option, where we can come
6:27
Speaker 3: in and kind of assess where are these roadblocks, what
6:30
Speaker 3: problems are they having, what problems you know have you
6:33
Speaker 3: know how the companies actually talk to us directly about
6:35
Speaker 3: what they want to see, right, we create all the
6:37
Speaker 3: content that they need to get that going and then
6:40
Speaker 3: actually train their team on how to keep that rolling
6:42
Speaker 3: without our involvement from that point.
6:44
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, developing all that getting in place with
6:49
Speaker 1: what Okay, here's maybe the business is not even clear
6:51
Speaker 1: on that, like okay, I'm not sure, so probably that
6:53
Speaker 1: consulting size there is like okay, helping them get clearer
6:57
Speaker 1: on what do you need documented? Like what is it
6:59
Speaker 1: you're trying you achieve here?
7:01
Speaker 3: Yes, and we actually have a number of different assessments
7:04
Speaker 3: for that exact purpose, So things like code quality, you know,
7:06
Speaker 3: we might go through the codebase mute and take a
7:09
Speaker 3: look and go, hey, this is way more of a
7:11
Speaker 3: code footbrint thing you actually need or why are you
7:13
Speaker 3: doing things this way? It's terribly inefficient, you know, let's
7:17
Speaker 3: rework this them. Or hey, we well you're testing suite
7:19
Speaker 3: I notice you're not testing for all these major things,
7:22
Speaker 3: and so your website is actually experiencing a lot of
7:24
Speaker 3: problems as a result of that, and when we're just
7:26
Speaker 3: manually clicking through, we're noticing all these issues, so we
7:30
Speaker 3: can come up with like a complete assessment of this
7:32
Speaker 3: is where you stand right for code quality or things
7:35
Speaker 3: like the developer experience, whether internally or externally. So for example, externally,
7:40
Speaker 3: I might go through a software as a service product
7:44
Speaker 3: and go from the website to the documentation to the product.
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Speaker 3: See where, you know, does it actually all match up?
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Speaker 3: Is the documentation accurate? Do I have questions? Still? Are
7:55
Speaker 3: there major bugs when I'm actually using the product, or
7:57
Speaker 3: things that aren't working as I expect them to, or
8:00
Speaker 3: maybe basic functionality that is just not there right, And
8:04
Speaker 3: we would come up with a written document of you know,
8:06
Speaker 3: this is everything we noticed. This is where we could
8:09
Speaker 3: you know, see improvements or some long term projects, some
8:12
Speaker 3: short term things like it could be really quick fixes,
8:16
Speaker 3: and at that point we'd either hand it off to
8:18
Speaker 3: their team for them to address on their own, or
8:21
Speaker 3: we would come in with our own services and fix
8:23
Speaker 3: it for them at that point, either be available for
8:26
Speaker 3: ongoing support afterwards or ongoing consulting, which some companies do
8:31
Speaker 3: choose for things like content creations because we can't help
8:34
Speaker 3: augment that essential aspect of marketing where we can write
8:37
Speaker 3: deeply technical blogs given that we have extensive engineering backgrounds
8:42
Speaker 3: that would enable us to actually be able to talk
8:44
Speaker 3: to audiences in a manner that some companies just don't
8:47
Speaker 3: have the ability to handle. By the way, right, their
8:50
Speaker 3: engineering teams are overloaded, they're busy, they've got a lot
8:53
Speaker 3: going on, and their marketing team doesn't have that technical background,
8:57
Speaker 3: so it's hard to come up with good quality content
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Speaker 3: that's going to bring and those developers.
9:01
Speaker 1: Mm hm, that's important too. Yeah, what would you say?
9:06
Speaker 1: So if you're doing this, I would imagine then your
9:10
Speaker 1: success rate of getting people to adopt new tools or
9:14
Speaker 1: ways of doing things, cause you're kind of coming in
9:16
Speaker 1: as a third party, right, because in my experience, sometimes
9:18
Speaker 1: you get people to kind of dig in their heels like, well,
9:20
Speaker 1: this is the way I do it. This way, I
9:21
Speaker 1: understand it, but it's not really getting them, like you said,
9:23
Speaker 1: the results, but they're like they're very definitive of like,
9:26
Speaker 1: well this is the right way to do it, quote
9:28
Speaker 1: unquote the right way to do it. And so coming
9:30
Speaker 1: in as a third party, you're kind of coming and
9:32
Speaker 1: looking and auditing and evaluating everything. Is what I'm hearing
9:35
Speaker 1: you say so as a as a business owner, particularly
9:38
Speaker 1: in the developing, developing space, and working with these engineers
9:41
Speaker 1: is like having somebody come in and just look at
9:44
Speaker 1: is it, what's working, what's not working? Right? What would
9:48
Speaker 1: you say to the business owner that is maybe hesitant
9:50
Speaker 1: to that because like, oh, it's going to cost me
9:52
Speaker 1: some more money, excuse me? And you know the value
9:57
Speaker 1: of having a third party come in and look at
9:59
Speaker 1: that and saying you know that investment of like you
10:04
Speaker 1: know how to turn things around.
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Speaker 3: Generally in those contact companies are looking for measurements, right,
10:12
Speaker 3: They're looking for analytics, real results. You know, what have
10:15
Speaker 3: you done in the past, how did it impact the company?
10:18
Speaker 3: And what can I expect to see as a return myself? Right?
10:22
Speaker 3: And there's there's two parts to that. A lot of
10:25
Speaker 3: companies already have an understanding of like okay, like we're
10:28
Speaker 3: not producing enough content on a regular basis. We want
10:30
Speaker 3: to see regular blogs, regular social media posts, maybe a
10:34
Speaker 3: refactor of the website. You know, a lot of them
10:37
Speaker 3: are the companies I helped tend to be in an
10:39
Speaker 3: early enough stage or in a go to market phase
10:42
Speaker 3: that they're still having trouble either establishing it or getting
10:45
Speaker 3: it quite right. So generally there's not as much resistance there.
10:50
Speaker 3: The resistance really comes from the folks at these technical
10:54
Speaker 3: companies that insist that they're just targeting executives, and so
10:58
Speaker 3: they want to make sure that all their content and
11:01
Speaker 3: website messaging is just oriented towards you know, high level executives,
11:05
Speaker 3: you know CTO CEOs, CISOs, and I have to come
11:12
Speaker 3: in and explain, yes, those are the people you're talking
11:15
Speaker 3: to on these sales calls there who are the people
11:18
Speaker 3: who are actually going to be signing your checks. But
11:21
Speaker 3: the people who are discovering your product are not them.
11:23
Speaker 3: In ninety percent cases, they're having developers go out and
11:26
Speaker 3: find a solution. Right team leaders say hey, we have
11:29
Speaker 3: a problem. This is what we need to do, This
11:31
Speaker 3: is what we need to solve. Go out and find something.
11:34
Speaker 3: And so these developers will go to conferences and events,
11:37
Speaker 3: they'll do research online, they'll talk to other people and
11:40
Speaker 3: find out what works for them, and eventually come across
11:43
Speaker 3: the product that they go, Okay, you know, this could
11:45
Speaker 3: be an option. But if they're not convinced, if they
11:48
Speaker 3: don't have a reason to be convinced, you know, because
11:50
Speaker 3: there's unnecessary roadblocks, like you can't try it out, you
11:53
Speaker 3: can't see what it looks like, you don't have good
11:56
Speaker 3: understanding of the features or the technical capabilities of it,
11:59
Speaker 3: because it's not the material isn't made for a developer.
12:02
Speaker 3: They're going to bounce right off the site and go
12:03
Speaker 3: to somewhere else and suggest that on their next team meeting.
12:07
Speaker 1: Mm hmm interesting. Interesting. So you know, I think is
12:16
Speaker 1: there as you see, Yeah, there's the the the the
12:22
Speaker 1: companies that are smaller, I think that they're, like I said,
12:24
Speaker 1: a little bit more open to these things that there
12:27
Speaker 1: might the other companies that may be more established and like, hey,
12:29
Speaker 1: we're resistant, but getting that voice to come in there
12:33
Speaker 1: and like yourself, help break it down and say, okay,
12:36
Speaker 1: here's where if we make these changes, we'll actually get
12:39
Speaker 1: the desired results we really want. We'll actually reach those people.
12:43
Speaker 1: And so I think it's so important to have an
12:46
Speaker 1: advocate like that. I think sometimes business owners that you like, well,
12:48
Speaker 1: we've got all the answers to have somebody like you
12:50
Speaker 1: come on, Sarah. And this is why we do the
12:51
Speaker 1: Business Brain Table podcast every week is we want business
12:54
Speaker 1: owners and leaders to hear from different voices and where
12:58
Speaker 1: they're at and saying, Okay, well, this is somebody that
13:02
Speaker 1: could come in and evaluate the way we're doing things
13:06
Speaker 1: and and maybe it's it's maybe it could be improved
13:09
Speaker 1: and and and and and hopefully you know better for everybody.
13:14
Speaker 1: I think you know what is you know, what are
13:17
Speaker 1: some of the other kind of common frustrations or challenges
13:22
Speaker 1: you've seen and as you're coming in and the developer
13:25
Speaker 1: relations that if left unchecked by the tea and the
13:30
Speaker 1: business owner, you know, could cause some Maybe it's not immediately,
13:35
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's not going to crush the
13:37
Speaker 1: business right now, but if left un checked, what what
13:40
Speaker 1: are some things that you're seeing they're like just like
13:43
Speaker 1: your sweet spot, like, hey, this is a problem, but
13:45
Speaker 1: you guys are ignoring it. That needs to be addressed.
13:49
Speaker 3: Two things operations and documentation. So operational wise, companies tend
13:56
Speaker 3: to try technology very quickly, especially in the beginning right there,
14:01
Speaker 3: trying all these different products and services, trying to figure
14:04
Speaker 3: out what works for them, what's going to work best
14:06
Speaker 3: with their team and their experience that they currently have
14:10
Speaker 3: available to them. And so you might end up with situations,
14:13
Speaker 3: for example, where a team might have a whole bunch
14:17
Speaker 3: of Microsoft licenses right for using Microsoft Suite. But then
14:21
Speaker 3: half the team is still on Google Docs. The other
14:24
Speaker 3: half are just sharing private files or you know, manual
14:27
Speaker 3: open open office or lebro office files, sometimes even just
14:31
Speaker 3: text documents, and the the other half of documenting things
14:33
Speaker 3: on GitHub. And so you have this information sprawl across
14:37
Speaker 3: all these different platforms and in the meantime, you've got
14:40
Speaker 3: expensive licenses for no reason. Right, there's no sense of
14:43
Speaker 3: standardization across the team, and it's really difficult to overcome
14:47
Speaker 3: that for a lot of teams because everyone has their
14:48
Speaker 3: own preference and you know, there's not really a lot
14:52
Speaker 3: of insistence placed on you know, no like let's keep
14:55
Speaker 3: everything in one place. And oftentimes those expensive licenses are
15:00
Speaker 3: even needed in the first place, because there's always alternatives, right.
15:04
Speaker 3: You can use an option like slabs for example, for
15:06
Speaker 3: information management, or you know a more open source alternative
15:12
Speaker 3: like next cloud for example versus Google or Microsoft Services.
15:16
Speaker 3: So it's just about actually researching what will you fit
15:19
Speaker 3: your needs and actually picking it and sticking to it
15:22
Speaker 3: and making sure that you're not just paying for something
15:24
Speaker 3: for no reason and letting that go unchecked. Right, That
15:28
Speaker 3: can cause a lot of cost over time. The other
15:30
Speaker 3: part with documentation is that can also get out of
15:34
Speaker 3: hand when companies send to deploy a little bit too
15:36
Speaker 3: quickly without making sure to actually go through validate that
15:40
Speaker 3: everything is current and accurate and correct. And I've seen
15:43
Speaker 3: this a lot of times where you know, they'll put
15:45
Speaker 3: that focus on deploying the product, but they won't put
15:47
Speaker 3: in necessary tex to make sure that that documentation is
15:51
Speaker 3: being updated accordingly and reviewed on a regular basis. So
15:55
Speaker 3: you get a lot of customers contacting the company and saying, hey,
15:58
Speaker 3: what's this? You know says I should have this functionality
16:01
Speaker 3: available to me, and it's not or what is this?
16:04
Speaker 3: I see this in the in the portal or whatever,
16:06
Speaker 3: but it's not documented anywhere. What is it?
16:09
Speaker 1: Yep?
16:09
Speaker 3: And so you waste a lot of valuable support engineer's
16:12
Speaker 3: time with questions that could have been answered just by
16:15
Speaker 3: having good documentation.
16:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I want to go back the first point
16:19
Speaker 1: you talked about. I've seen this firsthand. Previous company I
16:23
Speaker 1: worked out, we had both a Google, uh you know,
16:26
Speaker 1: a Space if you will, and then and then Microsoft
16:29
Speaker 1: and we here her paying for double licenses, double storage
16:32
Speaker 1: or everything. And I find that very happens very easily
16:37
Speaker 1: with businesses. They just like, like add another they have
16:39
Speaker 1: all these licenses or or emplays come and go, and
16:42
Speaker 1: they're still they're still paying for licenses that you know,
16:46
Speaker 1: nobody's using. Like you said, so having somebody like use
16:49
Speaker 1: here come in and looking and audit and they even
16:52
Speaker 1: have sometimes even have you know it managed services, but
16:55
Speaker 1: even them are they're not actively looking at that. They're like, well,
16:58
Speaker 1: that's not really I'm not paying for it. So you
17:01
Speaker 1: can have as many licenses as you want, you know,
17:03
Speaker 1: kind of a thing, right, not my problem, right, not
17:06
Speaker 1: my problem. So having you look at it more relistically,
17:08
Speaker 1: stepping back and saying and is this the right fit?
17:11
Speaker 1: Are you paying for you know, the things that you're
17:16
Speaker 1: actually using? And then you brought up so that means
17:20
Speaker 1: so doing a license audit if you will, or what
17:23
Speaker 1: makes sense? So what is your what is your budget
17:25
Speaker 1: or what for whatever technology that you want?
17:28
Speaker 3: Right?
17:28
Speaker 1: How much do you you know and why? Why? What
17:31
Speaker 1: does that look like? And could we do better? Like
17:33
Speaker 1: you said, maybe there's some other options that work within
17:37
Speaker 1: your budget and maybe hey, spending more money on this
17:41
Speaker 1: or adding additional features are going to be beneficial versus
17:45
Speaker 1: maybe getting this other software. You know, I'm sure you're evaluating,
17:49
Speaker 1: right that is, like what is the what's the best
17:51
Speaker 1: fit for the company?
17:52
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Yeah.
17:54
Speaker 1: Technology changes all the time, right, They're always adding and
17:57
Speaker 1: changing features.
17:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's that Stually. One of the things I
18:00
Speaker 3: do as a technology evangelist is I specifically go out
18:03
Speaker 3: and look for new technologies, see what people are saying
18:06
Speaker 3: about once I've been around ones that are coming up,
18:10
Speaker 3: and try to constantly assess, like where where is that
18:12
Speaker 3: company actually stand in across the users that are actually
18:18
Speaker 3: putting it to use.
18:19
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And if you can have you know, have
18:24
Speaker 1: something like yourself, Sarah that's looking at those things and saying, hey,
18:27
Speaker 1: you know what you were using this, it might make
18:30
Speaker 1: better sense to go over here. And I'm sure this
18:33
Speaker 1: is probably important to Sarah anytime somebody's transitioning from one
18:37
Speaker 1: system process to another. Obviously, like you said, documentation and
18:41
Speaker 1: implement guiding people right is super important too, Like how
18:44
Speaker 1: are we going to bridge the gap from here to
18:47
Speaker 1: over here? Because sometimes they will they just should just
18:50
Speaker 1: know it and it's like that it doesn't work that way.
18:52
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, It's all about onboarding and consistency and making
18:58
Speaker 3: sure that at least management is all on the same page,
19:02
Speaker 3: so that way everyone underneath kind of has that understanding
19:05
Speaker 3: of Okay, we're using this platform for these things, versus
19:10
Speaker 3: I don't know what we're using. You know, we have
19:12
Speaker 3: some things over here, some things over here, there's like
19:14
Speaker 3: a disconnect was expected and what actually happens.
19:18
Speaker 1: Documentation is so key. Sometimes it feels I feel the
19:22
Speaker 1: resistance when it feels like it's slowing things down, But
19:24
Speaker 1: it's important, like you said, because we don't know it's
19:29
Speaker 1: not clear to everybody. And you mentioned another issue I
19:32
Speaker 1: see very common what I call data sprawl or I
19:36
Speaker 1: was just literally just talking to a client this week
19:38
Speaker 1: where they have data regarding employees or contractors, for example,
19:44
Speaker 1: spread across a spreadsheet a different data to multiple databases
19:49
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, where are you finding all this stuff?
19:51
Speaker 1: And then there's a and this isn't even talking We've
19:54
Speaker 1: talked about compliance, you know, or or or our risk
19:58
Speaker 1: right to the dat to reaches and things like that.
20:01
Speaker 1: So can you talk a little bit more about that
20:04
Speaker 1: that aspects there of like what you're what you're doing
20:06
Speaker 1: and helping clients.
20:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So one of the things that you know, as
20:11
Speaker 3: you're pointing out very important about standardization and actually centralizing
20:15
Speaker 3: information in a way that is accessible to management where
20:18
Speaker 3: they understand what's going on. Is you can't have an
20:20
Speaker 3: effective security policy with a without that understanding. You can't
20:25
Speaker 3: know what to regulate, what you know, what to say
20:27
Speaker 3: limitations on or authentication rules for if everyone's on multiple
20:33
Speaker 3: different platforms and you have no awareness of where it
20:35
Speaker 3: all is. So it has to start there. You have
20:38
Speaker 3: to set you know, these are this is what we're using,
20:41
Speaker 3: you know, add in any permissions or other rules that
20:44
Speaker 3: are important for that specifically, and then have whatever automated
20:47
Speaker 3: processes that you need for compliance or otherwise to collect
20:51
Speaker 3: that information, and you know, put it on it, you know,
20:54
Speaker 3: store it somewhere for historical archase or anything else. It's
20:59
Speaker 3: it's all got to come back to how you organize
21:01
Speaker 3: that information. It's got to be kept up to date.
21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, And this is I think a challenge that
21:07
Speaker 1: businesses don't always think about, especially as you're growing smaller businesses.
21:11
Speaker 1: And I know I've dealt with this era of like securities,
21:14
Speaker 1: permissions or things in the right places, even to the
21:18
Speaker 1: point where I've done this. Sarah of like going through
21:20
Speaker 1: with the employee at different levels of employees like what
21:24
Speaker 1: is I call it your tech stack, but what are
21:26
Speaker 1: the what are the software licenses? If you're X person,
21:30
Speaker 1: do you guys have an inventory of saying like, okay,
21:32
Speaker 1: for this lesson, they should have access to this, you
21:35
Speaker 1: know they should, and through this part of your documentation
21:37
Speaker 1: of like these are the software or these are the
21:39
Speaker 1: licenses that you need And then if you're at this level,
21:41
Speaker 1: then yeah, you need to have different access or different
21:43
Speaker 1: types of software. But I don't think companies regularly on
21:47
Speaker 1: my experience era, at least in my in the industries
21:50
Speaker 1: I've worked in, don't always do that.
21:52
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, absolutely, and then you can end up with,
21:56
Speaker 3: you know, folks having unexpected access to something that you
21:59
Speaker 3: never wanted to to and you know, if there does
22:02
Speaker 3: happen to be some risk from inside the company or
22:06
Speaker 3: or even just an external risk of someone breaking in, right,
22:10
Speaker 3: they can have free access to something, for example, in
22:12
Speaker 3: a spreadsheet because someone wanted to do things the easy way.
22:17
Speaker 3: It happens, Right, We've all been there, but it's not
22:22
Speaker 3: caught often for a long period of time because there's
22:25
Speaker 3: just no monitoring, there's no awareness, right, so we help
22:29
Speaker 3: companies to at least be aware of, you know, where
22:31
Speaker 3: is all their information? You know, first of all, how
22:34
Speaker 3: do we want to consolidate that in a reasonable way
22:37
Speaker 3: that's not going to put you know, a lot of
22:38
Speaker 3: stress on the internal employees or for example, even this
22:42
Speaker 3: this does apply externally as well, right, So if it's externally,
22:45
Speaker 3: then how it applies to developers and people who are
22:48
Speaker 3: actively using those resources. And then from there we'll kind
22:53
Speaker 3: of establish those guidelines, write up any workflows or processes
22:56
Speaker 3: or automations, and kind of monitor things, see how it goes,
23:00
Speaker 3: collect feedback, make sure there's someone you know, super unhappy
23:03
Speaker 3: with it.
23:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 3: So, for example, the main postcusqbil dot org community website,
23:08
Speaker 3: at one point in time in twenty eighteen, it was
23:12
Speaker 3: still a nineteen ninety six website. The external information was
23:16
Speaker 3: still very all over the place. It wasn't very organized
23:19
Speaker 3: or cohesive for someone that's new to databases in general.
23:23
Speaker 3: So we took all the existing information, kind of reorganized it,
23:26
Speaker 3: archives some of it that's no longer necessary, and made
23:29
Speaker 3: sure that it's an easy experience to understand where to
23:32
Speaker 3: start and you know what your next steps are.
23:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's important too. I would imagine you mean
23:38
Speaker 1: what you just went through, Sarah. A lot of companies
23:40
Speaker 1: have now because you know just the amount of vast
23:44
Speaker 1: amount of digital data we're creating and stuff is there's
23:48
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff like you said, that was created
23:50
Speaker 1: was useful, is helpful, but it is no longer active
23:53
Speaker 1: or used. Maybe you want to keep it, but maybe
23:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't. You don't even need it at all anymore.
23:58
Speaker 1: Maybe you can just literally be purged and moved and
24:01
Speaker 1: going through I think doing some house cleeping keeping there, Sarah,
24:04
Speaker 1: as important as well, like what are your I know there.
24:08
Speaker 1: You know again I'm not an I person, but I
24:10
Speaker 1: know like what is your what's your what is your
24:12
Speaker 1: maybe your documentation? What is your retention documentation? Right? What
24:17
Speaker 1: do you need to hold on to for whatever reasons legally, uh,
24:20
Speaker 1: whatever that you want to hold on to. And then
24:23
Speaker 1: the same time, what is that that that you're going through?
24:27
Speaker 1: I think the value what you're saying of the documentation
24:29
Speaker 1: because now we've actually thought it all through and so
24:32
Speaker 1: it's just merely a review of like oh yeah, and
24:34
Speaker 1: this is the process is being set up. Do you
24:38
Speaker 1: help identify our ways that hopefully with using technology that
24:41
Speaker 1: can kind of implement or automate those things to a degree.
24:46
Speaker 3: Sarah absolutely from that does include manual checks too when
24:51
Speaker 3: establishing processes for that. For example, if for technical documentation,
24:57
Speaker 3: for making sure it's up to dates, you know, making
24:58
Speaker 3: sure that if the companies using GitHub, that there's a
25:02
Speaker 3: pull request template with a checklist of you did you
25:05
Speaker 3: check these things, make modification to this to the appropriate
25:09
Speaker 3: part of the documentation, and then there's a checklist built
25:12
Speaker 3: into the gethub process for the reviewer as well to
25:16
Speaker 3: again double check these things, make sure it's accurate. On
25:19
Speaker 3: top of that, there are plenty of automated scripts. You
25:22
Speaker 3: can build custom scripts. There's open source tools, a bunch
25:25
Speaker 3: of different testing suites where you can pretty much automate anything, right,
25:29
Speaker 3: whether it's checking the front end of the website to
25:31
Speaker 3: make sure it's accurate or checking the documentation to make
25:34
Speaker 3: sure it builds at least you know, in some cases,
25:39
Speaker 3: I've seen changes just be pushed up without someone even
25:42
Speaker 3: checking to see the documentation server is running after they
25:46
Speaker 3: made that change, and so they you know, left out
25:48
Speaker 3: of semical and there's something like that, and it caused
25:51
Speaker 3: an error and it didn't under and just got pushed
25:53
Speaker 3: out to production. That should never actually realistically happen. There
25:58
Speaker 3: should always be manual check someplace and automated and we
26:02
Speaker 3: can companies set that up from start to finish.
26:05
Speaker 1: That's great. I think you know again thinking about it's
26:08
Speaker 1: it's it's not only you know, thinking about the adoption
26:11
Speaker 1: and getting evaluating the software, but it's all or whatever
26:15
Speaker 1: the you know, technology they're bringing in. It's also looking
26:18
Speaker 1: at the back end of how we're implementing it and
26:20
Speaker 1: like you said, closing out things and and and having
26:24
Speaker 1: both that automation but also that human checklist and I
26:28
Speaker 1: and so that that's that's glad to hear that you're
26:32
Speaker 1: looking at that, Sarah. Yeah, and I would imagine something
26:36
Speaker 1: else like you know that are there's always what's the
26:41
Speaker 1: way I want to say as I was sharing that,
26:43
Speaker 1: you know, you're coming in and evaluating any new changes
26:47
Speaker 1: processes from an independent third party, meaning you're not the
26:51
Speaker 1: you're not the vendor per se, you're not Microsoft or
26:53
Speaker 1: get up but whatever it is. But you're like saying, hey, look,
26:55
Speaker 1: I'm independent of all of these I'm just auditing and
26:58
Speaker 1: looking at them and seeing what's the best. Because we're
27:00
Speaker 1: always being I would say, sold or brought up like
27:02
Speaker 1: this is the new best thing, and of course it's
27:04
Speaker 1: in their best interest to, you know, try and get it,
27:06
Speaker 1: and they and they, I generally think, mommy believe that,
27:09
Speaker 1: but they don't know how it interacts with everything else.
27:12
Speaker 1: The analogy that comes to mind, Sarah is people that
27:16
Speaker 1: have you know that whenever we're taking any kind of medication, right,
27:19
Speaker 1: we're saying, well, the medication in and of itself by
27:21
Speaker 1: itself isn't bad, but what happens if we don't look
27:24
Speaker 1: at how it interact with everything else? Right, that could
27:27
Speaker 1: cause some major problems. If if we're not looking at
27:30
Speaker 1: the collateral collateral impact. But if I'm just ex company
27:34
Speaker 1: that's trying to sell you this product or service, right,
27:37
Speaker 1: and I'm concerned about that, right, they're not concerned about that.
27:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's your problem if if you, if you implement
27:44
Speaker 3: it after that point, we're hands off. It's all up
27:47
Speaker 3: to you.
27:48
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm. And so having somebody like you, Sarah that says, okay, well,
27:53
Speaker 1: let's hold on, let's look at these interactions together and
27:57
Speaker 1: see is this actually in a good hopefully in a
28:00
Speaker 1: multiplier a good way, or is this detracting, right, is
28:03
Speaker 1: this actually causing it, you know, more problems and and
28:07
Speaker 1: maybe unintended problems because like I said, how these things
28:10
Speaker 1: work together or they don't work together? So so as
28:18
Speaker 1: we're looking at kind of oh man, all these different
28:21
Speaker 1: areas of technology and adding them in, you know, you're
28:28
Speaker 1: working with both the companies and the individuals do you
28:32
Speaker 1: work with like so I'm trying to think about this
28:35
Speaker 1: when you're you're working with the bigger company, the higher up,
28:40
Speaker 1: and then you work with like each I don't want
28:43
Speaker 1: to say the word if they're a group manager or
28:45
Speaker 1: division or they're working with them too. So that again,
28:49
Speaker 1: what I find is you have to have like champions
28:53
Speaker 1: if you will, like that take from what you're saying, Sarah,
28:56
Speaker 1: and like empowering them to like you know, I mean,
28:59
Speaker 1: you're giving them the road, but you have to have
29:00
Speaker 1: other people like how do you empower those or where
29:03
Speaker 1: have you seen those people to be successful? Taking what
29:06
Speaker 1: you've done? And I'm asking this from a leadership perspective
29:09
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, Sarah, you've come through, you've done the documentation,
29:13
Speaker 1: you've identified the right software and the things to us,
29:17
Speaker 1: where do you see the adoption successful like, hey, we've
29:21
Speaker 1: done all this work, and to make all that effort
29:23
Speaker 1: that you just spend there doing successful the company in
29:27
Speaker 1: the long run. So if I'm the leader, if I'm
29:29
Speaker 1: in charge, where do you see them being most successful
29:32
Speaker 1: implementing all that work that you've just done for them?
29:35
Speaker 3: It really depends on their attitudes, right, So if they're
29:38
Speaker 3: actually willing to make the changes that are necessary and
29:41
Speaker 3: commit to it, then they have to have a cohesiveness
29:44
Speaker 3: across management. So it's got to start at some It
29:47
Speaker 3: depends on how wide reaching the changes are, but generally
29:52
Speaker 3: whether we're coming in as a support team or as
29:54
Speaker 3: a consult or as a consulting team at that point
29:56
Speaker 3: to either continue helping them implement it themselves or and
30:00
Speaker 3: to implement it with them or for them. We like
30:04
Speaker 3: to have management actually introduce us and say like, look,
30:08
Speaker 3: we're working together. This is a collaborative relationship. This is
30:11
Speaker 3: what we're going to do and why, and this is
30:13
Speaker 3: designed specifically to improve the experience for you, Like we're
30:18
Speaker 3: not here to sell licenses. We're not here to try
30:22
Speaker 3: and make your job more difficult or make you change unnecessarily.
30:25
Speaker 3: We just want to make sure that everyone's kind of
30:26
Speaker 3: on the same page. So as long as they're willing
30:29
Speaker 3: to have that kind of conversation and then kind of
30:31
Speaker 3: work with us to implement that across different teams, then
30:37
Speaker 3: managers just need to seek to be consistent in implementation. Right,
30:41
Speaker 3: So they themselves have to set an example. For example,
30:44
Speaker 3: you know, going back to what we talked about earlier
30:45
Speaker 3: with information management across Google Docs or Microsoft Office or
30:49
Speaker 3: whatever else. Right, if we suggest, like, okay, we're going
30:52
Speaker 3: to all collaboratively move to next cloud and use that
30:55
Speaker 3: for information management, the managers all have to be consistent
30:59
Speaker 3: at doing that when they share out files to their
31:03
Speaker 3: to their employees or to their coworkers just across the board.
31:06
Speaker 3: If they're not doing it, why should.
31:07
Speaker 1: Anyone else, right, Right.
31:10
Speaker 3: But as long as we can get dumb convinced and
31:11
Speaker 3: make sure that we're seeing it across them, then generally
31:14
Speaker 3: everything else kind of falls into place from there, and
31:17
Speaker 3: then that just continues to be monitored by managers by
31:21
Speaker 3: you know, everyone in the company collectively saying like, Okay,
31:24
Speaker 3: we're going to try to make this change. Just make
31:28
Speaker 3: sure that we're actually being consistent about it, and then
31:30
Speaker 3: go from there. And automation helps tremendously to play. So
31:34
Speaker 3: for things like you know, like get Hub reviews and
31:36
Speaker 3: things like that, if you build it right into the process,
31:38
Speaker 3: then it kind of stops you and goes like, oh,
31:41
Speaker 3: I can't actually submit this PR until I've done these things.
31:44
Speaker 3: And then there's an automated lot for example, that will check,
31:47
Speaker 3: you know, did you do these things? You know, check check, check,
31:50
Speaker 3: and if there's not, then Okay, we've got a problem.
31:52
Speaker 3: Now let's go through and address that before it can
31:54
Speaker 3: actually be merged.
31:55
Speaker 1: That's a great point. I mean, that's one thing I
31:57
Speaker 1: think is you know, seeing the advancement of technology and
32:01
Speaker 1: the automnations that are available now sure, and then you
32:05
Speaker 1: don't in part of your documentation process. I'm sure Sarah
32:08
Speaker 1: like is you're like, Okay, what do you want to achieve?
32:10
Speaker 1: What are the steps that need to have happened? Who
32:11
Speaker 1: needs to be notified? How what's the workflow? Right? I
32:14
Speaker 1: think it's super powerful. So it does help because in
32:17
Speaker 1: the sence you guys have already vetted it, right, you're like, Okay,
32:19
Speaker 1: we went through the whole process, and there's we're minimizing
32:23
Speaker 1: the manual necessarily components or as much because yeah, I
32:29
Speaker 1: see that that we didn't have that as much in
32:32
Speaker 1: the past, and I think that's a great tool, and
32:33
Speaker 1: it's being more common. I'm seeing across lots of different
32:38
Speaker 1: softwares and things right there, so I see more of that,
32:43
Speaker 1: I guess is what I'm saying is that if you're
32:46
Speaker 1: a company and you're not including more automations or workflows,
32:51
Speaker 1: then you probably you should have Sarah come in here
32:53
Speaker 1: and look at because maybe Sarah're like, hey, you're doing
32:55
Speaker 1: a lot of things manually, or there's steps here for
32:57
Speaker 1: gaps or missing things right that could be stream line
33:00
Speaker 1: and then you can focus your time where it's more
33:02
Speaker 1: important and effective you're doing all these little, you know,
33:05
Speaker 1: manual things.
33:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that time saved is money saved right on top
33:11
Speaker 3: of it being a little bit more consistent too, in
33:13
Speaker 3: making sure that there's less room for human error. Yeah,
33:16
Speaker 3: not to say that, you know, machines are automations don't
33:18
Speaker 3: also have errors, which is why we make sure that
33:20
Speaker 3: those human checks are in place, but we make it
33:22
Speaker 3: easier for those checks to happen.
33:27
Speaker 1: Use me. So, yeah, that's important, and I think that
33:32
Speaker 1: that that alone is would be huge. I've seen what
33:36
Speaker 1: you're talking about Sarah, where people will do, you know,
33:40
Speaker 1: workarounds and I try to gently correct them of like okay,
33:45
Speaker 1: well that's how we were doing it before. However, now
33:50
Speaker 1: that you you said, if you have written documentation in
33:53
Speaker 1: a process and it's all agreed upon, I think that's
33:55
Speaker 1: the important thing is, like you said, if what I've
33:58
Speaker 1: seen sometimes happen not at the management level. It's at
34:01
Speaker 1: a lower level where somebody sees the issue and they're
34:03
Speaker 1: trying to do it. They're trying to fix it within
34:05
Speaker 1: their team or that that that that group, but it's
34:08
Speaker 1: not company wide. It's kind of it's an uphill battle
34:11
Speaker 1: because you haven't got adoption from other groups and like, well,
34:13
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, you could do it that way, but
34:16
Speaker 1: we do it this way. So you're to your point
34:18
Speaker 1: of getting management buy in and say come here and
34:20
Speaker 1: bringing you in there, or anybody saying hey, guys, this
34:23
Speaker 1: is what we're all in this together, this is what
34:26
Speaker 1: our plan is going forward. But if you don't have that,
34:29
Speaker 1: that's going to be obviously a challenge for folks to
34:32
Speaker 1: buy in.
34:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean that even applies to things
34:37
Speaker 3: as simple as us coming in to help augment content
34:41
Speaker 3: creation services for them, right. If we don't have that
34:43
Speaker 3: kind of exceptions within the company, makes it a little
34:45
Speaker 3: bit more difficult to work with the engineering teams to
34:48
Speaker 3: get blog drafts, to you know, actually create the content
34:51
Speaker 3: that's needed to put out there, or to work with
34:53
Speaker 3: the sales department, because the sales department fields, well, why
34:56
Speaker 3: why do we need coaching? You know, we have experience,
34:58
Speaker 3: We've had decades of it. Why do we need to
35:01
Speaker 3: be told what to do? Well? And I'm trying to
35:03
Speaker 3: tell you what to do is just helping you adapt
35:05
Speaker 3: to the position you're in now, which might be a
35:08
Speaker 3: little bit more technically oriented than they've had experience but
35:11
Speaker 3: in the past. Yeah, and so having you know, being
35:13
Speaker 3: more open and receptive to that really does It does
35:17
Speaker 3: start with the individual, of course, but having that management
35:20
Speaker 3: kind of step in and say like, look like this
35:22
Speaker 3: isn't the threat. No one, you know, no one's affected
35:25
Speaker 3: negatively by this. We're just you know, they're just here
35:27
Speaker 3: to help. That's it. That's all we're trying to do.
35:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we're getting close to the episode here the podcast.
35:35
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I hope this is very helpful
35:37
Speaker 1: for those of you that are listening and thinking and
35:39
Speaker 1: feeling about tech and getting overwhelmed with it. You know,
35:42
Speaker 1: you have something like Sarah here on the on the
35:44
Speaker 1: podcast say come here, let me look at things, let
35:46
Speaker 1: me help you understand what's what's working not working? And Sarah,
35:51
Speaker 1: you you know are connected on LinkedIn, But what's the
35:54
Speaker 1: other what's the best way for people to follow up
35:55
Speaker 1: if they've got quite they've got tech questions, I want
35:57
Speaker 1: to talk with you and and and what's the best
35:59
Speaker 1: way for them to reach you?
36:02
Speaker 3: Primarily LinkedIn if you happen to have a LinkedIn I'm
36:04
Speaker 3: also on mastered on as well, which you know we
36:08
Speaker 3: can link to in the post for this.
36:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:10
Speaker 3: Sure, but besides that, email will be best info at
36:13
Speaker 3: talk to me about tech dot com. Yeah, and if
36:16
Speaker 3: you actually go to my LinkedIn page or I'm assuming
36:19
Speaker 3: we can send it set up.
36:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:21
Speaker 3: Well, there's actually a booking invite through needle cow where
36:26
Speaker 3: you because I have an initial one on one consultation
36:28
Speaker 3: call for thirty minutes if you'd like to just speak
36:30
Speaker 3: to me directly versus you know, asynchronous communication.
36:33
Speaker 1: There you go, There you go. So, Sarah, I appreciate
36:36
Speaker 1: you so much coming on the podcast, just sharing some
36:38
Speaker 1: insights encouraging folks. Hey, you don't have to go let alone.
36:41
Speaker 1: There's somebody else there in your corner that can help
36:43
Speaker 1: you talk about tech, talk about something the challenges, that
36:46
Speaker 1: knows the language of just what you've been sharing way
36:49
Speaker 1: more than I do. And I appreciate that because even
36:52
Speaker 1: if it's something simple like you said, licenses and data
36:55
Speaker 1: sprawl two more complex things, you know you've got an
36:59
Speaker 1: advocate here. And Sarah, So thank you so much for
37:02
Speaker 1: joining us.
37:03
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
37:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, thanks everybody for being on the
37:08
Speaker 1: podcast with us, joining us again. Of course, we always
37:11
Speaker 1: appreciate you liking and subscribing, finding us on YouTube your
37:15
Speaker 1: favorite podcast platform. Leave us a five storder to you
37:18
Speaker 1: if you really enjoyed this one, that would be fantastic.
37:21
Speaker 1: And until next time, everybody, have a great day. Thanks
37:23
Speaker 1: for listening. Thank