The Process Lab Podcast: Sales and Operations Synergy: Developing a Process Mindset with Greg Williams

Greg Williams:

The first thing to integrate between applications is the opportunity.

Sam:

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Process Lab hosted by [inaudible 00:00:16]. This is the show where we talk about having how various process perspectives help businesses create value. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Greg Williams, who's come on the show today. How are you doing, Greg?

Greg Williams:

Good, how are you? Thanks for having me today.

Sam:

Absolutely. Greg has over two decades of expertise in distribution, manufacturing, and project-based businesses within the Microsoft dynamic space. Greg possesses a profound understanding of production processes and a robust technical skillset. His professional journey spans multiple roles, including consultant, project manager, sales and executive positions contributing significantly to the growth of Western computer from a small to a large entity, a prominent voice and Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. Greg has established his name through diverse roles with valuable contributions. Greg, we're very happy to have you, and I think the discussion that we're going to talk about today is how you have a process perspective on the sales going into operations process. So why don't you start us with anything I missed in your intro, and then why don't we just give it a topic?

Greg Williams:

Well, thank you. That was a great intro. I've been at Western Computer for 16 years now, and I've had the experience of being able to help hundreds of companies with their digital transformation, moving from legacy systems to more modern ERP and CRM systems. And one of the trends I've seen is just the difficulty in a lot of businesses and ours included in bridging the gap between sales and operations.

Sam:

Great, so... Oh, go ahead.

Greg Williams:

For example, meeting customer's expectations, working with your sales team to understand operations so they set appropriate expectations and then delivering on those.

Sam:

Great. And when you talk about the gap, maybe go a little more detail of what is the gap that you typically see when people are trying to coordinate those functions? Sales passing off to an operating function.

Greg Williams:

Well, in many cases, in a lot of industries, the sales team is operating at a lower level of detail than the operations team. They're often talking in broad strokes, they're focused on the relationship. They're thinking long-term, they're thinking overall value. They're not thinking about every little detail that needs to be done to make the project successful. And operations, they may be focused on the details, but they may miss some of the big things, like what is the lifetime value of this customer? What are our next projects with them going to be? How do we align with their culture? Those are all things that a sales team may do intuitively because the type of people they are that operations teams don't always understand right away.

Sam:

So this is more than a process problem. Well, in my mind, everything's a process problem, but it's all been a philosophical problem between how sales teams are incentivized and at what level they think versus how an operations team is incentivized and at what level they think. I'd love to hear then, how do you start to reconcile those differences? How do you bring those two groups together in harmony?

Greg Williams:

Yeah, so what I've learned is you have to coach the sales team to get into a little more detail, especially in critical areas or areas that may introduce risk and make sure that they have the tools, whether it's checklists or guided selling tools or things like that that can help them make sure that they have a good sales process and capture the detail and have all that in the handoff. So that's very important for the sales team. On the flip side, the operations team often needs to be coached on soft skills and how to approach problems and how to communicate at the right level so they don't come off as negative.

Sam:

Got it. And you mentioned checklists and some other things like that. What kind of process mechanisms do you articulate or focus on specifically to help those things happen? Like you said, you've got a meeting of the minds that needs to happen, but then how do you facilitate from her process perspective?

Greg Williams:

So are you familiar with, for example, the cone of uncertainty as you-

Sam:

No,I don't know that one.

Greg Williams:

Okay. So as you go through a project at the beginning, you have a wide scope and a wide cone, and as you get farther through the project, you get more certainty over the budget and timeline. And this really goes for anything that you're going to do. If you're building a house, the builder may say, Hey, we're going to be done March 1st, and in November he finds some things or you make some changes. And he's like, okay, that's going to cost you X, and it's also going to change the timeline too, so we're not done until April 1st now. So that happens in almost every project that you work with. What I recommend for the sales team is that they use a guided selling process with tollgates through the process that require them to get certain detail answered before they move the opportunity, the next stage in the process.

So for example, you'll often see a five stage sales process, and stage four is where it's really you're anticipating this project to be realized in the next 30 to 60 days. At that point, you want quality checks on our proposals and on the content of the project documents to make sure that you're capturing the appropriate level of detail. So you can't afford to do that for every project, the beginning of the project, but as you get towards the end of the project, you need to invest more time to make sure that you're capturing that level of detail. And most companies do that instinctively. It's just a natural reaction, but having some process around it in terms of checklists or tools or tollgates can really help.

Sam:

Got it. And let's say for the company that they may understand it intuitively, but it's still a mess. The sales team is doing whatever they want. There's not a lot of structured systems. I'm sure you run into this quite a bit. The ops team is just throwing their hands up in frustration, but there's no checks, there's no automation, there's no structure. Where do you start? What's your process to help when we've got the Wild West, basically in terms of tech stack, we have no standards? Where do you dig in?

Greg Williams:

Right. So we help people implement CRM and ERP systems. And we find you need both of those in place, but you got to be careful with the integration trying to get to one version of the truth because that's too much change at once. So we'll often take a walk before you run approach. I think the first thing to integrate between applications is the opportunity just so operations first has visibility to the pipeline, the high level scope and the associated revenue numbers. And then as a second phase, get into maybe integrating coding across systems. But you got to be careful with coding because that often means that you got to integrate in a lot of businesses, you have to integrate that inventory or labor resources, and that's where you're introducing a level of detail of the sales team that they're not ready for.

And the operations team, their data may not be clean enough yet to expose to the sales team. So I think taking a walk before you run approach to integrating those applications is really important. What we often see is companies with completely disparate systems, they have a HubSpot for CRM, they have a QuickBooks for accounting, and they don't really talk at all. Or in some cases they do, but in most cases they're just operating completely independently. So doing some real basic integrations or even at the reporting level, just providing an easy reporting dashboard that pulls data from systems can really start to get those departments on the same page.

Sam:

So would that be kind of what you consider the walk before your run approach? Because I'm asking that in the sense that when I think about the chaos that I usually see out there in the consulting world, it would be a very much a run step to say, Hey, we need to get you a new CRM, a new ERP, and they need to talk. Most people are, that's several iterations of maturity away from where they normally are. So even though that's what you led with, would you normally say, Hey, let's just get everyone talking? Let's create basic mechanisms of transparency, basic reporting, because a lot of people, especially sales guys, if you say, Hey, we're going to change your systems and do this and do that, it's a non-starter.

Greg Williams:

Yeah. So yeah, you're right. I was probably leaning towards walk or run because that's what we do. But I think one of the things that we'll focus on is where's your most pain within the organization? Is it in the coding process or is it in the invoicing or process or in the consulting world, it's often in the people and resource management and resource planning. And we'll often address that first, and we'll often take a data-driven approach to first getting you to the point where you have some quality data because you know that you can have all the systems in the world, and if your data's not good, you're not going to get good reporting or good results from it. So I think trying to normalize a data set and some naming conventions across departments, even if it's manual across different systems, or even if sales is using Excel and operations is using some accounting system, just start there maybe and maybe just build some reports across both data sources. That's an easy way to approach it.

Sam:

Yeah. That makes sense. And you had mentioned that you are normally these days more in the more advanced system implementation space. Maybe tell us a little bit more about where you're playing these days. What's your ideal client? Where are you applying your expansive skill set in terms of system process?

Greg Williams:

Yeah. So we will deploy the Microsoft dynamic Stack, which has sales, customer service, field service, and also their ERP systems, which could be Business central or their finance system. We'll deploy those together for a business. So one Microsoft dynamic solution that often replaces five or six disparate systems and they may or may not be integrated together. In some cases they're integrated but they're still separate systems. We find real value for customers by getting them all on the same systems that are all Microsoft, and then they're able to work across systems much more easily. It also sets them up in the future for being able to take advantage of AI because once your systems are on the same cloud platform, then you can use the same set of AI tools to harvest data across those applications.

Sam:

Got it. So in that kind of offering, you said you're basically ripping out their whole stack and replacing it with a full Microsoft stack, is that right?

Greg Williams:

In a lot of cases they have a partial Microsoft stack.

Sam:

Got it.

Greg Williams:

And we're replacing maybe Salesforce with our sales application or replacing... Or they have our CRM applications and we're replacing their BackOffice application with a Microsoft solution. We do do ones where we replace everything with Microsoft, but a lot of times in those cases we will phase it in, we'll say let's do BackOffice first and then let's focus on the field workers or the CRM users.

Sam:

Yeah. And in terms of your process, I'm fascinated by this especially pulling out so many central pieces and integrating them all under the same Microsoft header basically. Is this typically for small companies, medium companies in a particular industry, where... If you had to make a recommendation, who is most right for this type of transformation?

Greg Williams:

Yeah, so most of our customers are between 25 million and two-hundred million in revenue. So we would say that's small to mid-sized businesses is how we would target that. Microsoft does have a footprint in larger companies as well. That's just not where my specific firm plays. We don't typically deal with companies that have revenue in the billions of dollars, more in the hundreds of millions. So that's our focus, and there's a lot of pain there because people have a lot of legacy systems on very old technology that were just too expensive to replace. And 5, 10 years ago, there was no value to them replacing them with another on-premise solution. They said, Hey, we might as well wait until this stuff is in the cloud and do it then. So ERP and accounting software was the last holdout for the cloud. Everything else was Cloud-based 10 years ago, and the accounting softwares were kind of the last of the party.

Sam:

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. And if somebody's listening, who would be interested in this kind of offering, how long does this normally take? Let's say out of five core components, maybe they have one or two on average.

If you're going to then change the rest of them based on this type of process change, how long would this kind of journey one would expect to take to get it all turned on?

Greg Williams:

Yeah. So for one of those smaller businesses where we're upgrading someone off of QuickBooks and into a new ERP, that might be a four to six month process, typically. It's never our team slowing it down. It's always the customer's ability to absorb change. So we come in and we do some training and help and configuration, and then we let them one catch up on their business and also absorb some of that change and roll it out to their users. But really our goal as a technology firm is to be a long-term business partner for our customers. So most of our customers are with us 10, 15 years or longer, and they count on us to advise them on what's new in the market, what fits their business, which vendors have good reputations and help them keep their business moving forward and aligned with technology. So that's really our goal is that yes, we have goal lies, but that our relationship with the customer never ends.

Sam:

For sure. I want to step back though for a second on something you mentioned about the customer is always the limiting factor, right? It's never you guys slowing the project down. It's mostly the customer. It's heavy process work for the customer in terms of giving you requirements for configuration and kind of understanding how they're going to transform in systems, what would a client do... What would you recommend? What would be the homework a client can do, or what muscles could a client really flex to make this kind of project be more successful? What is usually missing and what is really slowing these things down from a process?

Greg Williams:

Great question, Sam. I think the biggest challenge we run into with those businesses is data migration and the quality of their data. So if you will start cleaning your data and whatever system you have, start deduping customers, start having a good format, start thinking about how your items or your labor resources are described and categorized. That's a system agnostic exercise that can really make moving to a new system easy. A lot of people fall in the trap of thinking, oh, we'll just do this when we change systems. And that's what delays their project and gives them cost overruns. And then one more thing I'll add is if you'll do some really basic cross-functional with swim lanes process mapping in [inaudible 00:17:49] for example, just say, Hey, here's our order to cash process. It can be very high level, but take the time to sit down cross-departmentally and put that down on paper and you'd be surprised by how it makes you think about your business.

Sam:

Yeah. And you're preaching to the choir over here. You're talking to one of the world's foremost process mapping advocates.

Greg Williams:

Okay, good.

Sam:

So we can have a whole other podcast on that, but I'd love to know, when you talk about basic... Most clients, if they don't have process maps or they probably haven't done them by the time you show up, do you usually facilitate them doing it? How do you normally get those processes down on paper?

Greg Williams:

We'll often do process maps with them at a high level and just get them used to thinking that way. And then a lot of times they'll take it and put it down into more detail. But a lot of times we're just trying to explain handoffs between departments and what happens at different stages in the process. What happens within the general ledger, for example, when the numbers get updated. Because that helps the accountants often to say, okay, at this stage we're going to ship the sales order and at this stage we're going to invoice it and here's the impact on the general ledger in each one of those steps.

Sam:

Got it. And stepping back for a second for the data cleanup, because you got me excited about process mapping, so I sort of [inaudible 00:19:20] for a second, but I totally agree with the data cleanup aspect. For anyone listening who think, oh, I don't even know where to start with that because their data is so bad, there's data cleanup, like you said, that's sort of a basic cleansing, right? Just to make sure that the data is not complete crap. But then there's the whole idea of, well, does the data tell a story? Because you can have clean data and it's still be pretty bad quality, at least in my opinion. So I don't know if you have a perspective on that. Maybe you could clarify that a little from your perspective for people who might be contemplating cleaning their data because that's such a loaded term these days.

Greg Williams:

Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about the basics. Deduping, getting rid of or deactivating customers or vendors that you haven't done business with in five years, discontinuing or blocking old inventory items or old resources. I've run into all kinds of things over the years. People that have a lot too many ampersands in their data, and then you try to export it and it creates issues there. Those are just the basics. The other thing I'll say is almost every customer that comes to us that wants to go to a new ERP system, they say, I want to bring all my history forward and post it in the new ERP. And we say, no, you don't, and here's why. So getting yourself educated on that whole process before you get into looking at new ERP systems can really save you some time in that process because really what you want to do is export that to a data warehouse somewhere and just bring an open transactions to the new system.

Sam:

Makes sense. So you heard here from the expert everyone, clean your data first, map your processes, you got to clean your own house. There's no magic bullets. There's no magic bullets out that are going to fix all your problems. Consultants will do it for you, but it's usually more expensive. So I want to reemphasize that. It's very important to clean your house before you invite someone in.

Greg Williams:

That's a good analogy. It's almost like clean your house, straighten up your house a little bit before the house cleaner comes over so they can do the deep clean and they'll spend all their time just picking up a mess. So if your house cleaner's going to be there for two hours, let's have them do the dirty work and not the basics.

Sam:

That's such a great analogy. I think I'm going to use that forever more because how [inaudible 00:21:53] is that, right? Because even if you do have house cleaners, you don't want them just moving your shoes around and doing all the little things. You want them to do the things that you don't want to do or necessarily even have the capability or the tools to do-

Greg Williams:

Exactly.

Sam:

The real deep stuff. So do the things you already have the capability to do in house before you hire external capability to do the things that you don't have. I think that's a very strong logic in process work generally, which is to what extent you can utilize your own resources first, you should. Because getting external resource is always going to be more costly.

Greg Williams:

You don't want to pay someone $200 an hour or to dedupe your customer list. Right? You just don't. Yeah, you can do that a lot more effectively to lower rate.

Sam:

Yeah. And for those of you listening too, who think consultants have a bad rap, I think what Greg's talking about here is actually most consultants just want to do the good work that they want to do. They don't want to be paid to do this work that's simple, right? It's not high value work. I think that can be a misconception a lot of times in the consulting industry, which is Greg doesn't want to be the person who tidies your house before he cleans it. He just wants to get in and do the deep cleaning that only he and his team can do. So I think that's a partnership. You want to make sure you're making good on your consulting dollars and consulting budget that way also.

Greg Williams:

Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm going to start using this analogy as well.

Sam:

So with that, we talked [inaudible 00:23:28] about talking about sales and operations, but really it always comes back to the same thing, which is you've got to have data flow. You've got to have departments talking to each other. You've got to have good tech solutions, especially if you're going to have a competitive edge today. And that's maybe a very high level summary, but I'll pass it back to you. Would you agree with that?

Greg Williams:

Yeah, I completely agree. You have to think about your systems holistically, not just department by department and process mapping and can really help you do that from what I've learned.

Sam:

Yeah. And again, he's singing to my tune the process mapping thing, if you've watched any Process Lab, that process mapping is the key to starting to understand your process data, to start to understand and manage your processes. You always say you manage what you measure, but how do you manage all of your processes, your whole operating model? You've got to measure it, and that starts with mapping out and documenting your processes. So that's super important. Well, Greg, I appreciate you coming on sharing some of your experience. If anyone who's listening wants to find you or you have any last parting wisdom, I guess, give it to us before we end up today.

Greg Williams:

Yeah, if you'd like to find me, you can reach out to me and LinkedIn is probably the best place. Greg Williams at Western Computer. I'm easy to find on there. Or if you want to visit our website at westerncomputer.com, we have a lot of videos around different solutions, different best practices. There's a lot of self-service content on there that you can take advantage of.

Sam:

Awesome. Any closing thoughts?

Greg Williams:

No. Clean your data.

Sam:

I like that. Clean your data. All right, with that, thanks for stopping by to the Process Lab for another episode. We will see you next week. Thank you very much.

Greg Williams:

All right. Thanks, Sam.