Corporate Evolution Tales - Ryan Pollyniak: Identifying Champions for Digital Transformation
Mariam:
Welcome to Digital Shift, also known as Corporate Evolution Tales. Join us as we dive into the dynamic world of digital transformation. From illuminating case studies to captivating narratives, we uncover the stories behind company's journeys toward digital excellence. Whether you are a seasoned corporate leader or an aspiring innovator, our podcast explores the shift, challenges of modern business evolution. Hello everyone. This is another episode of Digital Shift, aka Corporate Evolution Tales, and today my guest is Ryan Pollyniak. Thank you, Ryan for being my guest today and accepting the invitation.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on Mariam.
Mariam:
Awesome. Okay. Shall we start from a short introduction of who you are and what field you are in?
Ryan Pollyniak:
Yeah, sure things. My name is Ryan Pollyniak. I've been working in the business systems space now for going on 15 years, primarily focused on Microsoft, the Microsoft stack. I did start my career with ADP. A lot of people know them for their payroll software, but they also had an ERP program a long, long time ago. Aging myself a little bit with that, but I've been working with Microsoft Dynamics primarily and the Power Platform, which is the accompanying set of tools for Microsoft Dynamics, worked with all kinds of businesses, all different sizes from startup to enterprise level businesses and CRM, ERP, workflow document management. Those have been kind of the areas that I've focused, so a lot of various engagements over the years, and I learn something new every day.
Mariam:
Amazing. Okay. I am sure we'll have exciting discussion. Awesome. Okay, let's start from your thoughts about digital and transformation. What do you think it is for you basically?
Ryan Pollyniak:
Well, it's modernizing, right? It's getting off of old processes and old systems and those go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other. And we probably have a lot to talk about around that piece of it in terms of how to make a digital transformation journey considering processes and how ingrained they are in your organization will inform a lot about what strategy you take in technology and software to aid and support that digital transformation. So data is at the core of that as well. What do you do with the data in your old system? Some companies as they grow up, they have many different systems and many different data structures, and at the end of the day, that is a massive asset for your organization.
So as you change systems and you modernize and you transform your business and get to the cloud and all the things that businesses want to do these days, you have to have a strategy around what to do with that data as well. Internal change management is absolutely critical here as well. You've got to clearly define organizationally, and this is more for the business leaders here. What are we trying to accomplish with this digital transformation? Sure, we want to get to the cloud, but why? What is it, security, IT costs, connectivity to some cloud services and things like that? Absolutely all of that is going to be part of it.
But then what you have to do as a leader is to understand how does this affect my people? The people that are going to be using this software and the people who run my business are going to be dramatically impacted by this change. Starting that change management process early by getting buy-in internally is critical. And the way you do that in short, informing yourself first of all to arm yourself with why you're doing the transformation, what tools you're going to use and what you hope to accomplish, and then articulating that to your people. You've got someone in the back office that's been using the same on-premise system for 20 years and now you're taking it away. And that's very personal to some people.
So you've got to be ready to help them understand, we're not trying to ruin your life. We're not trying to force change that isn't necessary here. Here's why we're doing it as a company. We're growing, our data's not secure, we have lots of inefficiency, we have high IT costs to maintain old systems. You name it, the list goes on. And first of all, we are doing this. Here's why. Here's how it's going to affect you. And importantly, we need you to make this a success because you do need your people to take part in making that transformation and translating current processes into desired processes and taking part in testing, training, all the things that go into a software deployment to help transform your business. You've got to have your people.
And the wrong time to start that when you've already selected software and your software provider's already gone all the way through the implementation and then you pull in John and Susan from accounting and you say, Hey, here's our new system. We're going live in two weeks. We need you to test and train on it. And they're like, wait a minute, what do you mean? What about my old system? That conversation needs to start before any project takes place, and you really need that buy-in from your people. I think that's a critical thing.
Mariam:
Yeah. In a lot of episodes, we are actually speaking about communication and how crucial and more important it is and specifically how transparent it should be with people, as you mentioned. And because of the fear that people have of being replaced nowadays with having the process automated, it's always about that communication as you mentioned, to be as transparent as possible so they are not afraid of it and they're supporting because when we are speaking about digital transformation, I think we maybe think that it's just the process, but it's all about the people that were in that manual work that actually can help for the successful digital transformation.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Yeah.
Mariam:
And lots of people are like, okay, yeah, we'll be replaced. But it's not about that. It's more about if you are going to support, it's sure that you will have a job. So you will be able to support the process that is maybe automated, but it's still depending on the person and on the human being. And you mentioned also about the processes. So is there any tip that you can, like any suggestion that you can give for identifying specific processes like from where people can start digital transformation?
Ryan Pollyniak:
Well, it does depend on the business and on the industry, but almost universally the hub of a business from a technology standpoint is the ERP, the financial management and the inventory management system. And maybe if you don't have inventory, maybe it's projects or service, but that core application that you use to generate your financial statements and to count your pennies and report on that to your shareholders or your investors or the bank or whomever, that's where it all starts. So what I see sometimes is we need to run our business and we've got eight different applications and we bought three of them when we started and we've piecemealed. Marketing went and got their solution and sales went and got their solution. The warehouse went and bought a warehouse management solution, and it's all tied back to QuickBooks or whatever.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
You can't do it that way, if you want a holistic solution going forward. Even if you don't replace all eight in this scenario applications, right, at once, you do need a plan and you need a strategy. And a lot of that will be driven by your existing technology stack. Maybe you're very heavily investing in Microsoft Office 365 and Power BI. Microsoft has a set of solutions that will tie in nicely for that.
Now, if you go let marketing do their own thing and sales do their own thing and warehousing do their own thing, you're going to end up with a bunch of systems that don't talk to each other natively. You're going to end up with a lot of custom integrations, which we have the tools to do. Most companies have the tools to do it, but there's an upfront cost to doing custom integration. It's a development cost and there's an ongoing cost. It's not set it and forget it because in today's world, the cloud systems, they're updated automatically by whomever you bought them from, Microsoft of the world or Sage or whoever, Oracle. And so what happens if you've got disconnected systems with custom integrations is you're getting two, four, eight automatic updates a year on these applications. That affects the integration at times. Right. I mean, most cloud solutions,-
Mariam:
And the price.
Ryan Pollyniak:
And the price, there you go. So,-
Mariam:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
There's an ongoing maintenance cost for that. Sometimes you have to keep people internally or purchase expensive middleware, and that's all an option, but it's much better to take a step back, take a survey of all of the systems that you have from an executive leadership standpoint and don't allow department heads to make software decisions in a silo. That has to be a unified strategy as an organization. Now it might be, well, we're going to replace our core now, our ERP or our CRM inventory management, right, and then later we'll do marketing and we'll do quality management and we'll do whatever. It doesn't all have to be at once. But when you're building a 10-story house and you're only doing the first two stories today, you still want to make sure the foundation is ready for a 10-story house eventually.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Or you're going to end up ripping your foundation out and building it again, which you don't want to do. So plan and then roll it out as you see fit. You can't do it all at once. There's a lot of cost there. There's a lot of change management, something we already touched on briefly there, and you need internal bandwidth to execute these projects. People have day jobs. An ERP deployment, your key people are going to be devoting 25% of their day for months to do something like that.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Your key process owners, they have jobs to accomplish. Right. So maybe you can't also pile on marketing and CRM and everything else at the same time because you just can't do it all at once. And so there's something to be said for phasing, but that doesn't mean just go focus on one piece of it in a silo and not consider the rest. You still need that blueprint, that long-term plan.
Mariam:
Yes, agree. And when you mentioned about the change management, I think it's also important to speak about the documentation that is coming with it because a lots of people are, okay, we'll just sync and that's all. But I think based on the experience that I have, the documentation is so important generally to be there for people to understand and to read out when they need to basically review stuff and check on the changes. So what kind of historical development was done? Because as you mentioned, digital transformation is ongoing. It's not like, okay, we did it and that's it, we finished with it. It's always something that can be improved or should be improved based on the technology that is there. Right. So yeah. Awesome. And what do you think about the challenges that there are? You mentioned some of them already related to the communication and others. So are there any other challenges that are coming to your mind when people are deciding to do the digital transformation?
Ryan Pollyniak:
It's going to be funny. Sometimes it takes people by surprise a little bit. But as a business leader, sometimes your main internal challenge in transforming your technology and modernizing it will be your own IT team.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
And IT has evolved. Used to be setting up servers and updating SQL and maintaining VPN so your people can remotely access. Those days are disappearing because modern cloud-based solutions, SaaS Solutions, software as a service that is all handled by the provider. You go get Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft hosts it, they update it, they secure it, they provide disaster recovery. You don't need IT for that. They provide remote access. You log in with a username and password on any browser or any app. You don't need IT for that anymore. So sometimes what you get is a little bit of inertia in the IT team saying, well, right now I have access to SQL and I can go get into my database and do whatever I want. If I move to the cloud, I no longer have that access. And that's for good reason. You can't, and I keep going back to Microsoft because I know it best, but they're all like this.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
You get an uptime guarantee from Microsoft if you subscribe to one of their business solutions. So they're providing 99.9% uptime guarantee and they pay you back if it's down. Well, they can't have your IT team in the database messing around because then they lose control. So on one side you gain with that kind of security is one thing you gain, reliability is another thing you gain and you could still have access to the data.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Every company's worried about that. And I saw it more five, seven years ago, a little bit of trepidation about, well, I don't want to move to the cloud because I want to make sure my data is secure. Reality is that the Microsofts of the world are much better at securing your data than really any internal IT team or third party IT company. They don't have the same resources. You're not going to see a ransomware attack on one of these big cloud softwares like Dynamics 365.
Even the CrowdStrike thing that hit didn't really affect Dynamics 365. That was more companies that had failed to update their systems over the years. And were using older on-prem stuff, on-premise. And so IT will present a challenge sometimes because now they can't get into SQL and write query directly. They have to learn other tools which are available. Nobody's going to say, okay, we're ready for our digital transformation. We have 20 years of business data and we don't need access to it anymore. Of course. So that's important though. As you make that journey, depending on what platform you choose, everyone's going to have different rules in terms of data security, data access, data ownership, which is more important than ever because you have the concept of AI now. AI doesn't create information out of nothing. It requires data to feed the algorithms and to make intelligent suggestions.
So when you're in a cloud system, and I get this question all the time, well, is Microsoft going to take my data and use that to inform decisions for my competitors? Because AI, and the answer to that in Microsoft's cases, no, it's all private. They're very transparent in how they use your data. They don't sell it. They don't use it to drive other AI algorithms for other companies, but that's not the same across the board. So you've got to make sure that you understand when you move to the cloud, who owns my data? How do I get access to it? What tools do I need? What's it going to be used for? That's all very, very critical. And of course those tools exist. II has to make a change as well. And that shift is really from maintaining systems like they used to, servers and SQL and VPNs to innovating and driving change in the organization with new tools and driving that transformation. So you don't want an IT team that's holding you down because that's the way that they've always done it, and that's what they know.
I mean, that is human nature to do that, but just like the business users have to change, IT has to change their thought process and their approach to this as well. And that has to come from the executive team. Again, it's change management. It's hey, you're still going to have access to your data. We're still going to be able to do all these things and we're going to modernize you as an IT professional to use modern tools. And that increases your own personal brand and your own personal value so that you can go to the next organization. If you move on from here or you move up the chain here and you've now modernized, you're not writing SQL queries anymore against the database. You're leveraging Power BI, and Azure Synapse and all these modern tools. So I think you got to get around the IT. You asked about challenges. That was a long-winded answer, but I think IT can be a big challenge.
Mariam:
Yes, no, makes sense. And when you mentioned about the people that are basically experienced enough to support on the digital transformation and generally being the part of it, is there any suggestion or anything that is coming to your mind, like how we can identify those people, the people that can lead the digital transformation or own the part of it? Is there any way to understand it?
Ryan Pollyniak:
Well, I think the leaders have to be the leaders of the company in general because it has to come from the top down and it has to be mandated. And that change management we've talked about has got to be a top down thing. But at the same time, you are going to be able to identify within your organization champions.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Not the people saying, I don't want to change, and that you're dragging, kicking and screaming. But the people that say, this is great. I want to learn what's new. I want to learn how to leverage modern no code tools to create your reports for you. Mr. CFO, Mrs. COO, teach me. I want to be part of this and sign me up. Those are your champions. Right. And during the project, depending on which part of the business you're doing, I mean it could be different departments, but you're going to need subject matter experts in the areas that you're addressing to really jump on board with you. And so they can incentivize their co-workers and better word than incentivize is motivate their co-workers, inspire their co-workers to follow suit. You will need people like that, but it's got to come from the top.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
It's a big red flag to me personally when we get involved and the executive team says, well, let's see what the users think. Let's make sure that this person's happy and this person's happy. It can't be that way because the natural human tendency is to just, well, I like what we have now.
Mariam:
Yes.
Ryan Pollyniak:
There's nothing wrong with it. Let's not change. But the reality is what's best for the business might be something very different than that.
Mariam:
Agree. Awesome. And I think this will be my last question. And it's related generally to the advice that you would offer to other companies or like individuals to take into account when starting their digital transformation too?
Ryan Pollyniak:
Sure. So when you go start your digital transformation, man, we talked about, a little bit about making sure to have a strategy, which I think is critically important. What do you want to do with your digital transformation? Why are you doing it? Is it just to reduce costs or is it because you've outgrown your old systems or is it because you've got an acquisition coming? Right. All of these are different reasons to do a digital transformation. Forming that strategy is going to help you say, where do we need to start? And my recommendation, because it's going to look like a big project because you start to look at digital transformation and you say, okay, we need it everywhere. Just like we bought a 30-year-old house, my wife and I. And you look at it and you're like, we got to fix every room. Well, you can't do every room, but you do have to prioritize and you've got to figure out where are we going to start and why? And then keep the nice to haves to a minimum.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Typically, companies are starting a digital transformation for one particular reason. Our ERP system's out of support. It's ripe for ransomware attack. That's what would keep me up if I'm a CFO or a CIO of a company or a CEO. Hey, I've got this old system. Ransomware is rampant out there. It's always on-premise systems too. Never is it a SaaS solution.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
And so maybe that's it. And then you start looking at ERP and you say, well, hey, we also want to drive some efficiency in the warehouse as we do this. We've never done scanning before, so let's do that. And marketing wants something. What does everybody want? Raise your hand. It can't be that way because your scope will balloon, your cost will balloon. But I did say create a plan and that stuff can come because you want it all to align from a strategy standpoint and from a technology standpoint, from a family of technology. You might say, well, we're going to do marketing. And you might even go pick a tool like, Hey, do some demos and things like that.
And then you say, okay, well here's the stack of applications that works together the best. We're going to start with ERP because we're not going to be able to generate our financial statements or pay our vendors if this ERP gets ransomware attacked because that's why we started this journey. Right. So let's stay focused and do that part first, but you already have a plan for how you're going to do everything else, building off of that core.
Mariam:
Yeah.
Ryan Pollyniak:
So develop a strategy, develop a plan, pick what's most important, prioritize, and stay to that. Don't let it balloon too much. Kind of walk, crawl, run from a foundational perspective and build outwards. It's important.
Mariam:
Yeah, so many good points. Definitely agree with having the goal and making sure that the work is prioritized and as you mentioned, to understand what is really important and to keep in mind that the time will come and you will be able to change everything, but it just needs to be step-by-step, which is so important.
Ryan Pollyniak:
That's it.
Mariam:
Awesome. Okay. Any last words to the audience, Ryan, before we'll wrap up?
Ryan Pollyniak:
No, it's been a great conversation. I think we stayed very high level. If anybody wants to talk deeper about it, I'm glad to do that. You can find me on LinkedIn. There's not too many Ryan Pollyniak out there, so I'm right there. Feel free to reach out, drop me a line if you'd like, and always glad to talk through any of this type of stuff with you.
Mariam:
Yes, for sure. I'll make sure to tag you in the LinkedIn post and everyone will be able to find you there.
Ryan Pollyniak:
Yeah, that's great.
Mariam:
Ask more questions.
Ryan Pollyniak:
I don't even know if I mentioned, by the way, that our company is Western Computer here. We do Microsoft Systems, ERP, CRM, data warehouses, digital transformation for all kinds, types of different industries and businesses. So that's who we are and what we do.
Mariam:
Yes. Amazing. Well, I'll make sure that people are able to contact with you. Amazing. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being my guest today.
Ryan Pollyniak:
My pleasure.