The SiteVisit

Navigating the Waves of Digital Transformation with Darren Redies, Chief Operations Officer at The Answer Company

• James Faulkner

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We sit down with Darren Redies, Chief Operations Officer at The Answer Company, a top ERP Consulting Group committed to propelling businesses forward with customized ERP software solutions.

Learn how The Answer Company specializes in the construction sector, balancing modernization with the need to preserve unique, competitive processes. We delve into the importance of integrity and long-term customer relationships, and the discovery phase that customizes software solutions to meet each client's specific needs.

Discover the challenges and strategies of digital transitions on job sites, from field management hurdles to the intricacies of data migration. Darren shares his perspective on the benefits and drawbacks of transforming historical data, the cautious integration of AI and robotics, and the evolving expectations of younger employees. Don't miss this enlightening episode about the dynamic world of construction technology, promising a wealth of knowledge and actionable insights for our listeners.

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Speaker 1:

sailing. You're a sailor, I'm a sailor. Do you have one of those anchors on your bicep? All Popeye action.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, any tattoos that are there are going to just remain hidden for this.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I wasn't expecting a show and tell, just an announcement of your tattoos. But no, that's all cool. So, yeah, you sailed from where to where on the weekend.

Speaker 2:

We took off from Point Roberts and sailed to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. Friday Harbor, yeah, yeah, friday Harbor, great spot. So how does that work going?

Speaker 1:

into the States, then Do you get your passport check when you get onto the land, or how does that work?

Speaker 2:

Well, we're starting from the US, because we're starting from Roberts. Oh yeah, Nevermind, yeah, but coming into Victoria, then easy if you're coming in with Nexus, crossing the border both ways.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, cool, that's cool so what size boat do you have?

Speaker 2:

It's an old 26 foot Grampian. Nice 51 year old boat.

Speaker 1:

It's still going strong, nice, so does that get a little sketchy when it gets rough.

Speaker 2:

We got tossed around a little bit on the Sunday, but all good. So do you go through Active Pass then?

Speaker 1:

Boundary Pass. Boundary Pass okay, yeah a little further to the south. Active Pass is kind of nasty right for a sailboat.

Speaker 2:

No, not really anymore, just where we're at and where we're going to.

Speaker 1:

Cool, yeah, that gets you all nice and relaxed to get back into construction and software and tell you Back at it, back at it. All right, so we're going to chat with you all about the Answer Company. Okay, and yeah, all your experience and what you can pass on to everyone about software.

Speaker 2:

Well, I always like to talk, James, so we know software. Well, I always like to talk.

Speaker 1:

James, we know. Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast Leadership and perspective from construction with your host.

Speaker 2:

James Faulkner. Business as usual, as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know you read all the books, you read the emails, you read scaling up, you read good to great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum. We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them. Once I was on a job sale for a while and actually we had a semester concrete and I ordered like a Korean Finnish patio out front of the side show upstairs.

Speaker 1:

I was down in Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber Connect platform on your guys' podcast Own it, crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day.

Speaker 2:

Let's get down to it All right.

Speaker 1:

So Darren Reddy's, let's get down to it. All right. So, darren Reddy's, that's how I pronounce it. Reddy's right, correct, that's probably a very, very good last name for this business, right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I guess it's remembered right?

Speaker 1:

It is. Yeah, you guys Reddy's, I'm Reddy's Always. How was high school?

Speaker 2:

for that. Lots of mispronunciations along the way Was there yeah?

Speaker 1:

That's cool, all right. So a little background on you. How'd you get into this with the Answer Company? What were you doing from DNA until today? How about after post high school? How about that Sure? How'd you get into this?

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah. So I was a customer of the Answer Companies back in the mid nineties. Okay, coming out of university, I started work for a small optical chain based out of Western Canada, first bringing them onto the internet, and then started managing their systems, got involved with the Answer Company and then started working for the Answer Company back in 99. So it's been a long time 99? Back in 99, yeah, holy smote. Yeah, yeah, a bit of a lifer with the organization. So working for many years implementing for a lot of companies and then moved in through a number of roles since then.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So Answer Company has been around for how long? Since 1994. 1994, good Lord, holy smokes 1994. Good Lord, holy smokes. Um, and then? So? What was it? What was its? Uh, has it always been in the in the software systems recommendation business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, always in software systems. Um, obviously a lot of different systems over the course of 30 years, um, so when I first started with them, we were just making the transition from DOS to Windows. Sort of tells you how far we've come since then, but with a number of publishers over the years as well.

Speaker 1:

Crazy 1994. I mean, that's really when I got my career started.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, holy.

Speaker 1:

That's a long time. So yeah, so 1999. Wow, End of the dot-com boom. The dot-bomb boom, the first one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, almost really the beginning of that. So when I first started in the late 90s we were really going through that dot-com boom just coming out of the Y2K craziness and then going into the dot-com boom and then seeing that implode in the early 2000s. Did you buy any Apple stock? No, not me. Talk to our owner sometime about buying stock at that time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I remember I invested $10,000 into this petroleum company and I should have just put it in Apple.

Speaker 2:

Damn it. Well, I remember him buying Nortel the day before it crashed.

Speaker 1:

Yikes, okay, so we don't want to talk to him about that Licking his wounds, all right, so let's chat a little bit about specifically the use case of what you're doing in. I mean, we're going to sort of focus on construction, because this is a construction podcast. That's how we know you guys in this context. So let's just talk a little bit about what you're doing for customers, what the answer company is doing specifically within that sector and what the outcomes are of your service.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we've been working with construction companies for a number of years now and again I was mentioning we've worked with a number of publishers over the years, so we've certainly seen the evolution. So when you say publishers, what does that mean? In your business, the companies are producing these software solutions. You call them the publishers. Absolutely, yeah. So as we've looked at the evolution of what systems have been available for construction companies, obviously there's been the same growth and evolution there as for all other industries. But always, as you're going through that journey of going and implementing a solution, we're not talking about just buying QuickBooks and going and installing this and going to work with it. Typically you need somebody to actually go in and interpret what it is you're trying to do.

Speaker 2:

And that's really the value we've always brought to the plate here Really trying to understand what's unique about every organization, looking for what's your secret sauce, what makes you especially competitive in the landscape, and then how do we capture those processes and leverage them and make better use of them and, at the same time, bringing the experience of being able to say that we've seen a similar story play out numerous times and being able to recognize what's the quickest and easiest and best path forward about.

Speaker 1:

What is your special sauce with a company is and we find this with SiteMax is that, and mostly with subtrades is they've invented their own thing over time. Back when it was paper or it was just Excel or whatever it was, especially in field services, like when they're doing their field, they had different forms that they would have out there that were paper with little check boxes, and then they would get those and input those somewhere else. I don't know where they would do those, some sort of data transfer, which is, as you know, yeah, an opportunity for mistakes, to say the least. But you know, as you said, that special sauce there is an element of we've been doing this for 20, 30 years. We are worried that we're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here and mess up our systems, upset our people. A lot of people who have invented these things over time are holding those very true to their own identity as within a company.

Speaker 2:

For sure, and that's always one of the challenges as you go to move forward. But there's always a combination of things that you can take a look at and say this is something that's common within your industry, within your group, your trade, and things where you can leverage off of the learnings of others. And then there are those things that really you know. What is it that makes you competitive? Why are people picking your company, and how much of that is embedded in terms of the way you do business? What are the things that we absolutely need to preserve so that you keep that same spot in the competitive landscape?

Speaker 1:

Interesting I mean a lot of this is the relationship side of things. You know, I find in construction it is that they're showing up at the right times, they're making the right character decisions when things get tough. As you know, construction it changes the minute the schedule is set it changed and how people deal with that. Integrity I know it's the I word. Everyone says that they have Not many people actually implement that word but because it's tough to do, because integrity you have to kind of worry about the bottom line sometimes.

Speaker 2:

You've actually got to be invested in your customers, yeah, for that to really be the case. And you're right, everybody does come forward with this that that's what they're all about and that this partner relationship is going to help them. But I do see that you get a reputation pretty quickly if you really are just transactional in nature. So if you're there to close the sale and then get this over with as quickly as possible, people start to notice as opposed to a company that's working with the same customers for 30 years and continuing to help them on their growth and continuing to help those businesses grow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's pretty cool. So on the, I would imagine that, on the discovery part that we were talking about earlier, when you go into a company and you do this discovery, it's essentially an internal audit of all the systems that they're using. Audit's a nasty word, discovery's a lot more friendly, but going in there and just getting an idea of their stack.

Speaker 2:

And not just their stack. But what is it that they're trying to accomplish with this? Because the last thing you want to do is go in and just replicate what they've already been doing. Okay, the whole idea is to be moving a company forward. So if you want to be moving them forward, it's first of all about understanding what is forward for your company right now.

Speaker 2:

It's not the same for everybody in terms of where they see the opportunities to make gains, and you're absolutely right. This is why it's so vital from our perspective, because the last thing we want to do is just go in and make blanket assumptions to say, oh, you're an MEP, we're just going to go in because this worked for the last five and drop this in and assume that you're going to be good to go Knowing that-.

Speaker 1:

MEP meaning.

Speaker 2:

Meaning that we're looking at some of the sub-trades like mechanical, electrical, plumbing. Oh, okay, mechanical electrical plumbing Okay yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:

But whatever it is, I'm just using that as an example, but my point being that we're not just looking to say, you know, this is the solution. It's a matter of understanding. Oh well, you know, we're having problems with cost overruns, specifically with materials, or we're having problems getting reliable data from the field, or we've got some long lead times that are creeping in to some specialized materials that we're bringing in and we need to be able to better manage those. Where do you want to place your emphasis on this and where should we be spending time and where should we just be trying to get something in fairly quickly? That's fairly standard.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So where are you seeing the accounting dovetail with other software? I mean, it's almost as though they're kind of bleeding into each other all the time these days.

Speaker 2:

And they have been for a while, and I like to use the term dovetail. Dovetail, yeah, because really it should be interlocking so that it is seamless between those, because really it should be interlocking so that it is seamless between those. And I mean, construction is no different from any other industry that I've taken a look at in terms of the fact that, more and more, if we think about I'm going to go back and think about how things have changed over the last 30 years that need for real-time, accurate information isn't a luxury at this point.

Speaker 2:

No matter where I'm at in the organization, I need to know what's happening in the field and I need to know immediately. I need to be able to be able to control what's going on and make reactions, not a month or 90 days later. I need to be able to do that within a couple of weeks and go and pivot and make changes. So if we think about within the construction industry, your project managers are needing information from the accounting team. They need to know where things are at and vice versa. The project managers need to be able to quickly indicate what's ready to be built. Accounting needs to be able to get on that. We know how slow the industry is to pay. We know that we need to get timely and accurate invoicing out. We know that the project managers need to know when things are going sideways on their project, when there's been unauthorized purchases that have come across us, when all of a sudden, their labor budgets are ballooning out of control.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that real-time stuff is. I mean, that's one thing that we initially did in SightMax was I mean, this is our early days. Was the digital PO, field PO.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because that was they were doing those books. You know the multi-part books. And then they would ship those back to the head office and then you got like three, four day lag there and then you don't even know how much you got to add up the sheets.

Speaker 2:

Three, four day lag, at a minimum, I would say. And then inaccuracies of this coming in, and you know, things get tagged to the wrong project or even just, you know, to the wrong task code and we don't really know where things are going on, right, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's kind of interesting how the field is still a very quick reactionary. You know we'll see things like you know, and we're finding tools to address these, but there'll be a similar company spelt three different ways in the context. It's like okay, so because there's, you know there's, obviously now we have. Do you mean this? You know you need to have these and AI can allow you to do that, or machine learning can allow you to do that Absolutely. But yeah, it's amazing how it's very, very I think we're seeing this change over time. Is the newer generations coming, are just so used to this digital world, rather than somebody going ah, if I could just write it with a pen, it'd be easier?

Speaker 2:

And you're right. I think the generational piece has a lot to do with the trends that we're seeing, because they're no longer content, as they take over the business, to do things the way dad did it. It's got to be easy to use and it's got to give them information detailed information as much as they want, as quickly as they want it, and we're all used to now carrying around a smartphone and being able to see everything at all times. And why should that be different for your business, then? Why shouldn't you be able to see exactly what's going on on any job at any time?

Speaker 1:

Well, you can. I always think that the complexity within software is within the permissions of who can see what within the software and having the UI being flexible enough to not look empty to those who can only see some.

Speaker 2:

Security is always a part of this, and it's funny you talk about not wanting it to look empty, but vice versa is also true Not wanting to overwhelm people with just so many choices and so many things that they can look at. I just want to be able to see what I need to see quickly, right, limit their choices to actually help them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I got some questions, let's hear them. No-transcript.

Speaker 2:

You kind of touched on this already, james, in terms of the fact that change is always something that people are going to be resistant to, and it really doesn't matter age or any kind of a background or anything else. Once you've established a way of doing things, it's really difficult to go and completely change that approach. And when we look at this this is why again, when I was talking about discovery and looking at what's important and what it is you really want to change it becomes so important to not try to just change everything, not change for the sake of change, but change where it's got meaning, and change where it not only helps upper management and those are maybe looking at the financial side of things but where it actually helps those in the field as well too, because the last thing you want to do is, say, streamline an accounting process just by putting that same workload on people that are in the field. Now, all of a sudden, you're making them do more work. So why are they going to want to adopt and why are they going to want to make this project a success?

Speaker 2:

So you need to look for those wins throughout the organization and look at what's benefiting overall and then start to look at. Where can we make the biggest difference for the least amount of effort? And start there. You don't need to do everything all at once. Start small and continue to grow. Start small and continue to grow.

Speaker 1:

So which audience? Let's say, you have a new accounting audience and you have your project managers, and then you have your field management, and then you have your front side field. You have to do time cards, all that kind of stuff. They do the stuff themselves. Which do you find is the hardest?

Speaker 2:

yes okay great. Obviously varies, but if you were to see a trend, for sure is the hardest. Yes, all of them. Okay, great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it's Obviously varies, but if you were to see a trend, For sure I mean kidding aside probably the biggest amount of resistance is in the field, because they're concerned that they are just going to have to do more as part of this and all of a sudden, things that were really easy to just quickly note something down on paper, there's a concern that this is going to get to be a lot tougher for me and all of a sudden I'm going to have to learn a new system and how much work is going to go on there. But at the same time I see the resistance from the top as well, to um, in terms of you know, somebody down the chain has said hey, you know, we need to improve our systems, we need something here. And you see it at the top in terms of well, how much is this going to cost me? We've got a system that's been established for 15, 20 years.

Speaker 2:

It seems to be working fine from my perspective. Right, I don't see how I'm going to make more money if I go and I change this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, I even see it at our company.

Speaker 1:

We obviously have software that we use internally, sure, and when I look at it as an autonomy part, when somebody has ownership for something and someone from my team's like, look, we're thinking of using this for, like, a CS tool, or, and I'll say, okay, so you know, with this other thing that we like with the redundancy, or we're going to be shrinking this bill from going from this one to this one.

Speaker 1:

You know we don't want both, but I think that on the field side, I've always found it's very complex, because when you're in something like field services, you like building Lego and I just want to build the Lego, I want to get my hands dirty, I want to do the reporting side of things which, if you're doing anything other than cameras, is it going to have to be human input, either, you know, by voice or by fingers. It's going to have to get into that somehow. So you're correct. And when you're saying that there is a diversion of effort that has to go to the field crews to be able to get that information, and they're like, oh gosh.

Speaker 1:

So to them it feels like red tape. Not red tape to get something done, but just like, oh, okay, not only do I have to do this, I have to do this way now, I have to do this way now. I have to do this way now, and there is an element of what's in it for me.

Speaker 2:

Always, always, and it can be more cumbersome depending on what it is, or it can absolutely make life a lot easier. So which is easier? To go onto a job site and have to go in and either do a punch card or have to take care of some sort of a timesheet, or to walk past a QR code and just scan it? Yeah, which is easier to go when you see an issue out in the field, to go and to get out a form and start writing this all up, or to be able to just bring that up and take a couple of pictures and a couple of quick notes and it's instantly in there and ready for approval.

Speaker 1:

Do you know I think part of it is is that when you see the assembling of people at a job site, this is.

Speaker 1:

This specific scenario is there is, let's say, you're in the old school days and you're doing a punch card for your time into that machine, right? Or you're just writing in I'm here, you can have your other fellow workers around with you sipping a coffee, you're eating a Danish or whatever as you're doing it. The one thing about digital is it's a very especially with men. Men can't do two things at once. They cannot. They can kind of write and talk Okay, yeah, it's 9.30.

Speaker 1:

I'm here, or whatever that is, but going, hang on a sec, leave me alone. I got to check in here. I got to put the right cost code in on what I'm working on today, those kind of things. This is a very insular moment where I can't sip a coffee, I can't do anything. So I got to make sure I don't mess this up, because when I hit submit, I just can't just like go up to the board and scratch it out and like say, oh no, I meant this. So I think that there's a coldness to digital interaction than there was in the warmth of analog on the job site.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

Speaker 1:

I mean, hey, I'm advocating for the digital side. Trust me.

Speaker 2:

For sure.

Speaker 1:

But I do understand the behavior. When I used to go on the sites and I would just watch, I'd go, wow, this is a sense of community going on here while they're doing something Right.

Speaker 2:

So, then, I think we need to think about how we reduce those insular moments. What are ways that we can, first of all, reduce the time where you're having to look at this and concentrate on this and make sure that you're just focused on getting everything right, versus coming up to, like I say, to, a central QR code that everybody's coming up to and that gives you that oh yeah, everybody's going in and checking in and you're scanning. How much thought does that take to go in and scan in?

Speaker 1:

right? Well, it does and it doesn't. But just imagine this you have a sheet and everyone's pen is different. So one person goes and it's very easy, like the ink's flowing nicely. Let's just say this is on an analog version. Come in and sign the big sheet with your own pen. Can't use our pen, bring your own pen, make sure it's got ink. Can't be a pencil and it can't be red ink, it can't be purple ink, it's can't be red ink, it can't be purple ink, it's got to be black ink. That's what the phone is like, because it's a bring your own device situation. Often, often, often, and it's like if you have to bring your own device, it's. It's just this other complexity is my battery low? Oh, I'm using my data now. Oh, do you not pay me for my data? All this stuff that is all about on the analog version, supplying the pen.

Speaker 1:

So I can understand where even in the job site to me I'm digressing here a little bit, but the job site, from a building and achievement point of view on a daily basis, is a place of mental freedom to a lot of people. They're like okay, I'm away from my house where it's chaos. I got to drive here. It's kind of beautiful. I'm out in the open, there's all these people achieving things around me and, yes, I do understand that maybe what I'm getting paid is there's no real uptick there. I'm spending my whole paycheck at the end of the month or the end of every two weeks. It's gone, but at least when I'm here I feel, oh yeah, like I built that thing, or I feel, you know, my friends are around or the people colleagues are around, or people who I connect with. I can talk about what was going on with the hockey game or whatever. There's this, it's this other place.

Speaker 1:

And when we ineffectively dovetail there's your word, this other place with prickly things that they get this sense of it's not free anymore. When I say free, I don't mean no cost, I mean freedom, lack of freedom. You can see that that cultural part can have some. It's not gonna necessarily be animosity, but it's just going to be an uncomfortable kind of a feeling where the culture of that team on that job site and it could be the GC's self-performance team, it could be some of the sub-trades that are showing up, those fly-in teams that are doing all of those most of the sub-trades that are showing up, those fly-in teams that are doing most of the job. The culture of that tribe that shows up there is the net sentiment of their behavior. So it's an interesting piece when we push this technology towards a group that might not understand the larger reason why they're doing things and what's in it for me part isn't accurately addressed.

Speaker 2:

And I think you're also talking right now about what I'd describe as that secret sauce and the need for flexibility and creativity. The need for flexibility and creativity. So this is not a one size fits all that everyone should always clock into the job site in the same way and everyone should record whatever it is in the same way at the job site. And so you know, if you're describing to me and saying, you know we've got this real familiar and familial atmosphere on the job site and that's really important to us and everybody likes coming to work and likes working with job site and that's really important to us and everybody likes coming to work and likes working with each other and a lot of that is their interactions. Well, let's look at ways that we can be a little bit creative about data capture and about what we're doing out there. That preserves that. That's where some creative thinking, some creative solutioning perhaps comes in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that makes sense. So what else do you think on those different stratus of positions Management, accounting, ownership, project management, all the way down, as we've spoken about? What about the how is it the moving accounting systems, what's that like? Yeah, it's probably one of the most disruptive things you can do to a business moving accounting systems.

Speaker 2:

What's that like? Yeah, transition, it's probably one of the most disruptive things you can do to a business, and this is where often, these conversations for me start with why would you ever want to do this? So there's got to be some really good reasons. Because it's going to be expensive to you, and I don't mean just in terms of the software. You can find some good deals there. It's the time, it's the time and it's the disruption to the business. So it absolutely is painful to go through. You want to make that as painless as possible, but you're never going to completely eliminate that pain. There's always going to be that period that you're going to go through. It's funny we talk about the project life cycle when people are doing this implementation, because at the beginning everybody's all excited We've got this new solution and it's going to solve all of our problems, and then inevitably there's a huge trough that you go through.

Speaker 2:

And it's like why would we put ourselves through this? We were better off, we should have just stayed where we were. And eventually you come back out of that again. So this is it's a journey to go through, and if you've got that understanding of here's how things are going to be different on the other end, and when that's been properly discovered and documented and you've got goalposts to aim for, it becomes a lot easier. When it's just one of these oh, you know, I've got to change everything because my boss said so that's a tough, tough journey. That's a tough pill to swallow Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:

Is the boss my told me so paradigm coming back in vogue, seeing as some of the Elon Musk stuff about being tough, meritocracy, the things that the guy from NVIDIA said, aren't we back? Do you think we're getting back to a mix of leadership top-down plus meaning of your work?

Speaker 2:

I think that's so different from organization to organization in terms of culture and how people approach this, from organization to organization in terms of culture and how people approach this, because what I see is competitive, as the job market is right now, as tough as it is to get people. If it is all just top down and there is no job satisfaction, it's very hard to retain people.

Speaker 2:

Oh, for sure, yeah, I know for sure, and so perhaps that's working within some organizations, but for the most part, that's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing this need to make sure that you are considering people and that you actually are going and facilitating a quality of life for them within your organization as well.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I think that those things are table stakes these days, sure, but I think, on the leadership side, what they want to know is that their leader is pushing for their future.

Speaker 2:

Ah, yes. So I mean there's got to be a vision, absolutely. I mean in terms of leadership, has to lead. It's not about being a boss and it's not about going and micromanaging people, but absolutely is there a vision in terms of where we're going forward and is it a vision that your people can get behind? That, to me, is the critical piece, and that's where you see organizations that thrive are ones that have that leadership and provide that to their team. And so when we think about these conversations, too, in terms of where they start, they do typically start at the top in terms of what is that vision? Where is the company going to be in the next 5, 10, 15 years and what are we going to do to facilitate that? How are we going to make that move?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what are some of the? When it comes to the, let's just talk about accounting for a second. What's the time of double entry on both systems until you can deprecate the last one? Like how does that work?

Speaker 2:

None, Never. So yeah, no, it's very rare that we'll look at double entry. The idea is that there should have been enough testing through the implementation process. So I guess you can kind of view that, James, as a little bit of double entry in terms of the fact that you are taking real-world scenarios, things that are actually being done in your system, and you're going and flowing those same running that same project in for a little bit and doing some testing through there.

Speaker 1:

But in terms of actually running parallel systems, that's definitely not our approach Okay, so do you find ways to export the data from the old system and get into the new one?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you've got to be a little bit careful.

Speaker 1:

Because some of the schemas are different.

Speaker 2:

Well, and one of the things too. I mean, the schemas are actually the easier part for us. I mean, we've got the ability to go in and extract from one and move to the other. But if you're just keeping things exactly the same, why are you changing?

Speaker 1:

Well, it could be a reason like if you don't want an on-prem server anymore.

Speaker 2:

Sure.

Speaker 2:

That's a reason Sure and that happens, but even still, usually you're looking at well, how can we make things run better in the new system? And that usually means that we're going and we're restructuring things, sometimes in some pretty dramatic ways. So give us an example. So all of a sudden now we've decided that we're actually going to go and even change our chart of accounts. That's probably one of the most basic things in accounting. So we're going to change the way we want to be able to slice and dice our data. So we're going to restructure our chart of accounts.

Speaker 2:

As part of that, we're going and we're realizing that we need to go and group all of our customers in a much different way and we want to go and realign those again for reporting and analysis purposes.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to change that. We're maybe even changing the way we go and we structure our projects going forward. So, as we think about okay, well, now we're wanting to bring over historical data, then you've got to go and transform all of that data over as well too. So it's again something to be considered carefully in terms of what's the value of bringing that over versus what about just leaving some of that data in the same state and just making it available for reporting for comparative purposes, that there's always the need to be able to go and say what's happening with my costs this year versus the last three years. So you need some sort of analysis there. We need to be able to see what's happening in terms of training, of profitability, that sort of thing. That doesn't necessarily mean bringing everything over Sometimes. It just means retaining that ability to do some of that comparative reporting.

Speaker 1:

I see. So how often is the old system? It probably never gets deprecated for a while. I shouldn't say never, but like it shouldn't, it's probably there.

Speaker 2:

So it's going to depend from certain point is forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's going to depend what you're coming from too. I mean, if you're coming from some of the cloud solutions some of them you don't own your data. At the end of the day, you stop paying your subscription fees, that's gone and it's gone. So you can try to get as much as you can out of it. In other cases, one of the reasons you're maybe switching is you mentioned oh, we want to get off of an old legacy system. Well, that old legacy system is running on an old server that's no longer supported.

Speaker 2:

And we know that that's going to run a problem. Now there's things that can be done to go and say, well, let's extract that and put it into just the same data schema that it's in right now and drop it in some tables on a new server and that might even be part of your cloud solution server that's using to power that. There's strategies that we can take around that, but there's not a one answer on that for sure.

Speaker 1:

So I would imagine that you would. Part of your discovery process is establishing a relationship with those people internally, that they trust you. Yeah, and again, it's one of those things, establishing a relationship with those people internally that they trust you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and again, it's one of those things where everybody's going to be trying to establish that trust up front. I think it comes down to actually genuinely having curiosity and genuinely being concerned about where this company is going and where it's going to end up. About where this company is going and where it's going to end up. And if you come into that discovery and if you approach an implementation, looking at what's truly in that customer's best interest, that comes across fairly quickly and people start to recognize that because the questions you ask are different from the questions you ask to try to close a deal.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. So how often do you get in the pre-closing deal on your side? How often do you get those, the middle management, accounting staff, coming in on those meetings, like maybe with the owner or the operator or the person writing the check, let's say. Let's say it's a meeting of four or five people do you often have this person sitting there with the crossed arms that you have to convince?

Speaker 2:

There's almost always going to be one person in the organization that doesn't want to change and that's just going to be the way it is. You can tell the minute they sit down right. Absolutely, body language says a lot, which is why I like in-person meetings, to be sure. But again, if we roll back to what we were talking about before it's, can we go and find some gains for that person so you can see that resistance and you can understand that they're not keen on this. Maybe they were the ones that helped architect the last system, but can you go and take that knowledge that they've got then and leverage that and make use of that and not just have it be something that's left behind, but instead something that you can grow on and something where you can learn?

Speaker 2:

But perhaps there may have been areas that they were wanting to work on and that they never got to. Are those some of the areas that we can help them with now as part of this? So change management is one of the most difficult aspects of this, you. So change management is one of the most difficult aspects of this. You know this. I know this anybody who's been implementing goes through this Change management.

Speaker 1:

it's such a broad term.

Speaker 2:

It is to cover a multitude of problems, for sure.

Speaker 1:

So when the answer company like, what is the pitch to like, how do you guys fit into the needs of a company? So when you're prospecting new, obviously you get referrals.

Speaker 2:

Those are easier.

Speaker 1:

But if you're like, okay, what about this company? Do you guys have a process where you just reach out to companies? What are you doing with your systems? That kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

Sure, we try to make ourselves known in as many ways as possible Of course, it's just business For sure.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes that's us reaching out directly. Often that's being at some of the same places that I know SiteMax is at at industry events and making sure that we have a chance to talk to some companies and have those conversations. You mentioned referrals. Those can take all sorts of forms too. Often those are referrals that are coming through from somebody who's gone from one company and gone over to another and said I worked with the answer company previously. This is what they helped us do.

Speaker 1:

Nice, okay, and then so what?

Speaker 2:

is the pitch to that customer. So and pitch is one of those things that, to me, can be a little bit of a dirty word as well, too, because I'm not looking to pitch somebody in terms of trying to give them just an elevator talk. But what I am curious about, and what I'm wanting to learn about, is what's happening with your company and what are the challenges you're going through and what is it you're actually trying to do, and can we be part of that conversation? Is that something where you think we might be able to help you out? Here's some of the things that we've done with some similar companies.

Speaker 1:

Right, so I get the approach. It's good. It's the anti-pitch pitch, which is a good one. It's called the soft sale. There you go. So what impact does cost have when people are considering there must be a threshold when they're going? Yeah, if it's, is it? Let's say it was, and obviously the initial price tag is relative here or relevant here. Is it double the cost, triple the cost? Wow, this has quadrupled the cost. People start to go. Is this worth it? Like, how much of this is an impact?

Speaker 2:

Sure, and we could talk about this for a while for sure, because I've had both sides of this conversation too. I've had people come to us and say your price is way too low. I don't believe that you can do it for that low a price, and I had the opposite. But this is your price, your consultant price.

Speaker 2:

It's a combination, though it's the whole package Absolutely, where they're taking a look and saying what's wrong with this software Because it looks too cheap. And then you go and talk to somebody who says this is way more than we're ready to pay for. This price seems way too high. So, in terms of what's the cost of going and doing this and the reaction to this full across the board, what I would say is a lot of times this comes down to what's the cost of not doing anything too. Oh, yeah, okay. And if a company really appreciates that and they're looking at the cost of staying in their current system, they maybe don't have that same sticker shock. A lot of companies are doing their research ahead of time too, and I think the question of how much is this going to cost me is much less of a shock these days when I go in to talk to somebody. As it was, you know, compared to where it was 20 years ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the opportunity cost the cost of not doing it.

Speaker 2:

Well, even just the actual cost of the software too. These things are fairly transparent now. Yeah, so you can go and you know, jump on the internet and find out. You know what am I looking at for a subscription cost? Those prices are out there. But you're right, the cost of staying the same is actually probably something that people understand internally too, and that's what's brought them to the table and the reason they're having that conversation. Because what's the cost of not getting out your billing on time or getting out inaccurate billing? What's the cost of not being able to accurately track change orders? What's the cost of missing a compliance or having a subcontractor not be compliant and you having to pick up their WorkSafe? These are very real costs to the organization. What's the cost of going and having to continually hire more people to just do these basic tasks?

Speaker 1:

Interesting, yeah, but in terms of your bill that the answer company charges. I would imagine they probably just look at that and go well, if we were to hire somebody internally to do this, you guys are a fraction of that, typically for the year, right?

Speaker 2:

Oh for sure, and you asked before. You know like what the answer company brings. You know what we're coming in to do and you know I was talking to also about some of the experience as well, you know, of looking at similar organizations, then also going and capturing what it is that's unique about the organization. This is what we do for a living. This is all we do. This is what we do every day of the year is to go in and look at an organization and to figure out how can we help them with technology. So what's our ability to do that?

Speaker 2:

And if you build high-rises, you're a developer whatever. And if you're, you know you build high rises you know you're a developer, whatever it is you do. We're not going to try to do your job, but you know you trying to step in to do ours is also going to be problematic. Now, that being said, it's not like we're looking to do this in isolation. We're absolutely seeking collaboration and we want your team directly involved and we want them shoulder to shoulder with us and we'll help you understand what it is you're trying to accomplish and how you can do this with software, but we're there to guide you along that journey okay, so uh, what new trends do you think will impact construction productivity over time?

Speaker 1:

Like, what do you think? Where are things? What? What things are you hearing out there that you think are going to make a huge difference, sure, so I mean, there's things that are already making a huge difference.

Speaker 2:

We've talked a little bit about that. You know, the idea of just mobile data capture is something that's been around for a while now. That's not going away, that's going to just continue to grow, and I think it's going to get easier and easier. The whole move to the cloud has just made such a change too, and we can talk about that too in terms of a lot of things here.

Speaker 2:

One of the things I think that everybody's talking about and everybody's looking at right now is AI, and in some cases, I'm seeing this as just being a little bit of a hype and a gimmick, and then there's some real, actual gains that can be made with this too. So I think there's a huge runway ahead of us in terms of what's going to be done with AI and, james, you already mentioned some of the things where you can start to actually have this start to make some meaningful suggestions, this start to make some meaningful suggestions, but I would just urge a little bit of caution there, too, because I do see companies going and just using that term and trying to do anything that goes and pulls in some of the most basic integration and saying that, oh yeah, this is an AI solution.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's interesting. You say that because I think AI will be very useful if just on the input side of things is where it can increase project consciousness. So I think where the danger is, it decreases project consciousness because of laziness, of just expecting AI to do something. So that is a slippery slope and I think everyone's trying to. You know, keep away from that side of things.

Speaker 1:

The job site is a very dangerous place and you know, if you expect chat GCP to like just write your blog post for you and then Google is suddenly indexing stuff that sounds like that doesn't work anymore, sure, it's going to see the same but way more acute, dangerous version of that going on on the job site where you have a safety report that like, oh you know, it's going to give you AI suggestions, et cetera, or was it like this last time? And it's wrong? I mean, a lot of this stuff is wrong, and wrong on the job site means an injury or possibly worse. So Wrong on the job site means an injury or possibly worse. So yeah, I think we've got to really kind of approach this with some caution.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, could we have used ChatGPT to generate this podcast? Probably could have gotten all sorts of things coming out of it, but how much of it would have really been relevant? There's suggestions, always, as you say, that you can take out of this, but maybe it will continue to evolve to a point that it requires less and less eyes on it to go and check it. But right now it's exactly the word that I look at it as is a suggestion. It gives you ideas and it can help shorten your time to coming to a proper decision, but it's not at a point where we should be relying on it for decisions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean what I find interesting on our side when we look at SiteMax and some of the AI stuff we're working on right now. We can't just unleash AI on our current database just because it's slow and that's constantly changing. We have to duplicate that into another model and that has to go somewhere else. And when I say somewhere else, it's still ours, but it's not like it's going to a third party or anything, but it still needs to go somewhere else in order to be analyzed and to be able to see those different trends.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, you just talked about it going out to a third party too. This is again one of those areas where you've got to be a little bit cautious and thoughtful about what you're doing. You pop stuff into chat GPT. Thoughtful about what you're doing. You pop stuff into chat GBT it's now part of the public domain. Did you get the okay from your customers to go and pop their data into there that you've gathered as part of your accounting system? But it's still things that are related to their organization.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, that's definitely something we're not doing there. Well, that's pretty cool. So anything else you see in terms of you know I know that you guys are into you know, field software and accounting software, inventory, all this equipment et cetera what do you see where equipment is going in terms of where it fits with robotics? And I'm totally interested in that. Anybody I talk to I'm like what do you think about robotics? Do you think about that stuff? Do you follow how robotics is going to be utilized within the human interaction?

Speaker 2:

Sure, probably not so much in the construction industry as some of the other companies we've worked with in other verticals, particularly manufacturing, but even some of the distribution. We see some of the robotics that have come in there and there's some cool, cool stuff as part of that. Now, let's face it, as people working in construction, we're still going and having things made for us. We're still going and buying things, so I think it's more something that's adjacent to us for construction more than anything else. But yeah, and again, this is not new stuff. This is a continuing, a continuance of that evolution, right, and so much of you know what we talk about in terms of what's relevant, and you know what are things that we should be watching are not things that we shouldn't have been watching a decade ago. It's just something that, and if we think about AI, ai is on the early part.

Speaker 2:

Where's it going to be in 10 years from now? That's when we probably really need to be using this. Well, when we think about going and moving to the cloud or going and, you know, improving real-time information, these are things that people have been doing for a while now and there's a lot of companies that still haven't. Yeah, how many companies are still on a 10, 15-year-old on-premise solution that they can only access in the office and where they're still taking paper records and transcribing them into there. Yeah, crazy right. There's a ton of companies in that group that we work with that are just realizing yeah, we need to catch up.

Speaker 1:

So do you see the large accounting companies expanding into field and trying to do that? Does this don't seem to be doing it that well Because it's just too hard to do, or is there's too much of a diversion from their own core business?

Speaker 2:

So I think that depends on the company that you're talking about, because there's those that specialize in that and I think there's some great solutions out there.

Speaker 2:

There's some that are trying to dip their toe in and realizing this is maybe a little bit more complex than they first anticipated, and this is why I would say going and determining again what is the importance and what is it that you're really wanting to focus on here. And if you need something that's super robust and we need to go and absolutely optimize our field operations, more than anything else, why not look at the solutions that are best going to be able to do that and then think about how that again to use the same word again dovetails into bringing that information into the back office. On the other hand, if our key problem is really, say, invoicing and it's being able to watch cash flow and it's being able to go and have proper financial reporting around each project, well then maybe our field service, in terms of the data that we're gathering, it's already working and we need to think about that other side of the information flow.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. So why do you think construction takes so long in general to move, when it comes to technology and when it comes to, like, moving platforms, and what do you think that is? What are the key factors?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, because you're not wrong. I mean, I would definitely say this is a group that we define as laggards, laggards.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, is that too derogatory Laggards? It just has a phonetics that are not great. On that, I suppose.

Speaker 2:

But you're right that there's this resistance and it does seem to be a little bit of a cultural piece just to the construction in general and there's always been though those companies Is it just a lag bolt? I'm still stuck on lag, it's a lag bolt the lag bolts of the industry.

Speaker 1:

Okay, anyway, sorry.

Speaker 2:

There's always been. We sometimes oversimplify these things, I think, and say that, oh well, you know, construction companies are slow to adopt. There's been those that have absolutely, you know, gone and jumped in and always looked for what can technology do to move my company forward? Yeah, and then there's those that are extremely resistant and still want to keep everything on paper. And this is the way I've been doing it for 30 years. Why would I change? So perhaps we're oversimplifying to say that construction is this way. But why are people hesitant? Maybe because we haven't had to and we haven't been pushed to. And now that's changing, because I would say we're past that tipping point right now.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it's been optional for so long, exactly, but I think we're well past that at this point. It's getting hard to compete at this point. Margins have never been great, but they're just getting tighter and tighter, and if we think about some of the issues that we've faced within the industry so most recently, all of the issues that we've faced within the industry so most recently, all of the inflationary issues but we think about supply chain issues that were plaguing us from 2020 on, yeah, it's getting harder and harder to compete unless you've got quality information that you can rely on. That's coming in quickly. Yeah, and this is where paper isn't cutting it anymore. Hasn't for a while and so now, just to keep your head above water, you've got to start looking forward.

Speaker 1:

Nice, cool, okay. What about that big question? What do you think? Let's go for it, okay, all right, so let's modify the big question, okay.

Speaker 2:

So what are we not talking about in relation to construction software today? Think about what's maybe not being considered right now, and at least by some companies. Ai probably is one of those topics where I don't know that that's really being thoughtfully looked at and considered and where people are necessarily looking at what does this mean for the construction industry? Where are some of the spots where this logically really actually does help my organization, because I do think there are some opportunities there already. One of the other things that I think is perhaps not being talked about and needs to be considered and especially if you're a company that's been doing things in the same way for a lengthy time is the expectations of the workforce.

Speaker 2:

Yeah exactly so. We've got young people coming in. We need to bring in young people and throughout the organization, throughout the you know, all different levels, all the different areas that we've been talking about the expectation is that it should be easy to do my job. I use a smartphone. I, you know also, I'm on my computer, everything else. It's always easy for me. I can be able to do this. It should be intuitive. It shouldn't take me a lot of time to go and learn this. And if you're going to bring me into some 20-year-old system where I've got to go and have a manual to go through screen by screen and I'm going to learn through this, the churn that's associated with that is something that I don't think is always considered and needs to be looked at, because I'm seeing this firsthand numerous times, where people go in and they hire somebody and within six months they're gone and the primary reason for leaving when they do the exit interview is the systems are just too hard to work in Crazy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That makes perfect sense. So when we think about the cost of hiring and training and you bring that in, this is again when you were talking about costs before Well, what's the cost of that, of losing people, that you went and spent three months to find the right candidate, hired them, only to lose them in six months?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, crazy. Well, that's pretty cool, darren. So just tell us a little bit more about for anybody listening the Answer Company how they can get hold of you guys and um, yeah, I know you won't pitch them, You'll give them the soft sell. We're happy to have a conversation with them.

Speaker 2:

How about that? Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

So um website is wwwtheanswercocom. Perfect.

Speaker 2:

And then you guys are on LinkedIn. We're on LinkedIn. Um, absolutely, you can find us there. You can find me there. If you want to look for me personally, you can also find our owner and founder, sean Ostheimer, there.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, all right. Well, this has been awesome, very informative. That time went very quickly. Excellent, it's always a good sign. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, james, thanks, darren Cheers. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.