Meeting Title: Brainforge x John Boos: Data Initiatives Date: 2025-10-13 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Britt East
WEBVTT
1 00:02:02.720 ⇒ 00:02:03.370 Britt East: Hello.
2 00:02:03.370 ⇒ 00:02:05.050 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, how are ya?
3 00:02:05.240 ⇒ 00:02:06.469 Britt East: Good, how are you doing?
4 00:02:06.700 ⇒ 00:02:08.829 Uttam Kumaran: Good. Thanks for taking the time.
5 00:02:08.830 ⇒ 00:02:09.560 Britt East: Yeah.
6 00:02:10.289 ⇒ 00:02:11.319 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything?
7 00:02:11.770 ⇒ 00:02:16.299 Britt East: Good, good to meet ya. I’m just rolling into town here.
8 00:02:16.410 ⇒ 00:02:25.459 Britt East: I, am in Seattle. I, that’s where… sorry, sorry, I live in Seattle. I’m in the process of moving to Illinois.
9 00:02:25.690 ⇒ 00:02:26.270 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.
10 00:02:26.270 ⇒ 00:02:28.369 Britt East: Our corporate headquarters.
11 00:02:28.720 ⇒ 00:02:30.379 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Where in Illinois?
12 00:02:30.380 ⇒ 00:02:34.539 Britt East: It’s… so I’m moving to Champaign-Urbana, where actually I went to school.
13 00:02:34.810 ⇒ 00:02:47.520 Uttam Kumaran: I almost went to school there. That was, like, my sec… second choice. I went to Bucknell, but I got into engineering school there, and I was very close. It’s… it was, like, awesome school.
14 00:02:47.520 ⇒ 00:03:03.619 Britt East: It’s a great place, the people are incredible. And then our, offices are just south of there. So I started as CIO in January. Kind of commuting between here and Seattle until I re… I bought a house, and just renovating it, and…
15 00:03:04.040 ⇒ 00:03:04.580 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
16 00:03:04.580 ⇒ 00:03:05.200 Britt East: So…
17 00:03:05.500 ⇒ 00:03:08.750 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, big move. Were you… how… were you… how long have you been in Seattle?
18 00:03:08.750 ⇒ 00:03:10.360 Britt East: Since 2000.
19 00:03:10.690 ⇒ 00:03:13.180 Uttam Kumaran: Wow, so big move from the West Coast, okay.
20 00:03:13.910 ⇒ 00:03:23.179 Uttam Kumaran: I grew up in the Bay Area, but then I lived in New York for a while, and then I’m here in… in Austin right now, so…
21 00:03:23.290 ⇒ 00:03:27.639 Uttam Kumaran: found myself in the middle. In the middle.
22 00:03:27.890 ⇒ 00:03:28.680 Britt East: Cool.
23 00:03:29.800 ⇒ 00:03:42.320 Uttam Kumaran: Great, so I know, Dan put us in touch, and, you know, I was, one, a big fan of the product. I have one sitting on my counter right now, so very, very familiar. You know, I spend a lot of time
24 00:03:42.350 ⇒ 00:03:57.930 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve been to, like, sort of La Tab, I see the retail operation and things like that, so I’m definitely curious about the business side. But yeah, he mentioned that you guys may have been interested in some stuff on the data side, so curious on sort of what the initiatives are and, you know, how we can be helpful.
25 00:03:57.930 ⇒ 00:04:04.520 Britt East: Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re not already, you’re free to record this if you want, because I’ve got a ton of information, if that helps.
26 00:04:04.520 ⇒ 00:04:05.270 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
27 00:04:05.440 ⇒ 00:04:09.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah, so I, I… Okay, it’s on on our side, so perfect.
28 00:04:09.800 ⇒ 00:04:26.179 Britt East: Okay, cool. So yeah, we’re a 137-year-old startup, I like to say, from a system standpoint. I’m the first-ever CIO. The reason they created this position was to, go through an ERP conversion, so I’m at the beginning phases of that.
29 00:04:26.180 ⇒ 00:04:33.170 Britt East: I’m hoping to sign with a platform, an ISV implementation partner by the end of the year.
30 00:04:33.170 ⇒ 00:04:36.070 Uttam Kumaran: And what are you… what are you in between for… for ERP?
31 00:04:36.070 ⇒ 00:04:48.209 Britt East: Shortlist, NetSuite, S4 HANA, the public cloud version, Epicor, have some in my back pocket, but,
32 00:04:48.210 ⇒ 00:04:55.680 Britt East: The systems that we’ve been putting into place since I’ve been here are… skew more towards best of breed, like, for instance.
33 00:04:55.680 ⇒ 00:05:09.109 Britt East: I put into place HubSpot, for our CRM. Great. I put into place Binder for digital asset management, data rails for FP&A, so I’ve put a number of systems in place, because we just didn’t have any.
34 00:05:09.110 ⇒ 00:05:23.210 Britt East: Except a really old ERP platform that we mismanaged over the years, Aptian made to manage, kind of a Tier 3 platform. And sort of building the technology stack out from scratch.
35 00:05:23.500 ⇒ 00:05:24.760 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Fun project.
36 00:05:24.760 ⇒ 00:05:25.929 Britt East: Yeah, a lot of work.
37 00:05:26.890 ⇒ 00:05:42.950 Britt East: So with regard to the go-to-market, we go to market in 3 verticals. The one that you referred to as our smallest. So the consumer sales for luxury residential kitchens is probably 20% of our revenue and order volume.
38 00:05:42.950 ⇒ 00:05:43.490 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.
39 00:05:43.650 ⇒ 00:05:57.789 Britt East: Okay. And that’s all through our corporate website, johnbooz.com, supported by Shopify, and then through a variety of, B2B2C e-tailors, like SpreeTail gets us into Amazon.
40 00:05:57.790 ⇒ 00:06:04.569 Britt East: manages that for us, and then we have, like, Crate & Barrels for La Tall, Williamsonoma, all the usual suspects you alluded to.
41 00:06:04.570 ⇒ 00:06:13.799 Britt East: And that plant is on one side of the street. On the other side of the street, and I say that because culturally, it’s like we’re two businesses.
42 00:06:13.800 ⇒ 00:06:30.180 Uttam Kumaran: is the majority of the revenue, which is commercial fabricated steel, stainless steel for commercial kitchens. So, independent bars and restaurants, national accounts like Jimmy John’s or Chick-fil-A’s, sports stadia, healthcare facilities, prisons.
43 00:06:30.180 ⇒ 00:06:36.380 Britt East: You know, educational institutions, anything with a commercial kitchen that needs steel, we can outfit.
44 00:06:36.380 ⇒ 00:06:39.330 Uttam Kumaran: And these are countertops, like, every… okay.
45 00:06:39.330 ⇒ 00:06:47.809 Britt East: Chef tables, underbars, sinks, everything like that. And we do all of it from,
46 00:06:47.810 ⇒ 00:07:01.549 Britt East: international buyout through China, Thailand, Vietnam, all the way through engineer to order, and then everything in between configure to order, make to stock with heavy modifications.
47 00:07:01.550 ⇒ 00:07:08.140 Uttam Kumaran: Tell me about, like, the manufacture. Are you guys just the brokering, or are you guys also milling and manufacturing there?
48 00:07:08.140 ⇒ 00:07:11.349 Britt East: We manufacture everything. We design, engineer, and.
49 00:07:11.350 ⇒ 00:07:11.730 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.
50 00:07:11.730 ⇒ 00:07:21.020 Britt East: everything. And then on the business side, we sell through a third-party network of, food service dealers.
51 00:07:21.190 ⇒ 00:07:33.819 Britt East: who are our first customers, and then sell our products on to restauranteurs. So they are basically, like, kitchen in a box. They will sell restaurateurs condiments, napkins, cutlery, hoods.
52 00:07:33.850 ⇒ 00:07:42.599 Britt East: Gas ranges, and then the fabricated steel, almost like, kitchen furniture, in a way, that we manufacture.
53 00:07:42.800 ⇒ 00:07:49.250 Britt East: And they are engaged by a third-party network of independent food service reps.
54 00:07:49.470 ⇒ 00:08:01.710 Britt East: And they are managed by internal regional sales managers. So it’s a weird dance that we do that’s tightly aligned to the construction industry. Plan and spec, design, build, if you’ve ever been a.
55 00:08:01.710 ⇒ 00:08:02.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so…
56 00:08:02.290 ⇒ 00:08:02.960 Britt East: Anyway…
57 00:08:02.960 ⇒ 00:08:18.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ve worked in commercial real estate, so I worked at WeWork for a while, worked a lot of data on the, like, basically the entire supply chain of opening, buying an office building, and then we cut it up, outfit it, inventory, everything, so very familiar with
58 00:08:18.010 ⇒ 00:08:23.550 Uttam Kumaran: with that side of the world. I guess this is more kitchens, but, totally, totally with you.
59 00:08:23.550 ⇒ 00:08:27.880 Britt East: Yeah, there’s a lot… a strange cast of characters that used to… techs, engineers.
60 00:08:27.880 ⇒ 00:08:31.140 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a lot of middlemen people.
61 00:08:31.140 ⇒ 00:08:47.280 Britt East: litigious, very specific business requirements, and all of that. So, that is John Booze. Now, we are owned by a holding company that’s privately held, through an independent majority owner, and family.
62 00:08:47.280 ⇒ 00:09:04.910 Britt East: And then, to a lesser degree, a board of directors, that, has, 3 companies in it. So, John Booz is the power brand. Then we have a company down the street from us, 15 miles west in Altamont, Illinois, called BK Resources, Banana Kangaroo Resources.
63 00:09:04.950 ⇒ 00:09:23.769 Britt East: we used to compete with them, and now we’re collaborating, so they’re gonna be an OEM, specializing in international buyout, and then selling us, the, component parts that we then, use to produce finished goods.
64 00:09:23.800 ⇒ 00:09:27.459 Britt East: And then we recently… so that’s all B2B.
65 00:09:27.520 ⇒ 00:09:36.719 Britt East: And then on the B2C side, maybe a month ago, we acquired our only competitor, domestic competitor, called JK Adams.
66 00:09:36.890 ⇒ 00:09:47.550 Britt East: And that’s… so that’s on the wood side, that’s a plant in Vermont. And, we probably have more… maybe 3 more acquisitions to go.
67 00:09:47.690 ⇒ 00:09:57.660 Britt East: To support our envisioned future of doubling revenue by 2030. So, that’s the go-to market. Now, on this, on this.
68 00:09:57.660 ⇒ 00:10:06.519 Uttam Kumaran: And then give me the split on the double revenue. I assume that’s, like, is that focused on the steel? Is that focused on the consumer business? Is that focused… yeah, tell me, like, what the sort of…
69 00:10:06.520 ⇒ 00:10:25.570 Britt East: probably preserving existing ratios at this point, and the reason is because of the manufacturing product mix and the throughput constraints. These acquisitions will alleviate a lot of that, but,
70 00:10:26.100 ⇒ 00:10:31.100 Britt East: As of today, maybe the past few decades, we sell out of product every year.
71 00:10:31.440 ⇒ 00:10:32.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
72 00:10:32.250 ⇒ 00:10:51.829 Britt East: Not good. Yeah. So, yes, the demand is awesome, that’s great, we’ve got an incredible brand, like you alluded to, but we’ve got to fix the data issues and the manufacturing issues so we can, start evening supply and demand. Great. On the technology side, the big issue is data.
73 00:10:51.890 ⇒ 00:11:08.590 Britt East: So, that’s the… that’s the theme of the ERP replacement, is data availability, accessibility, accuracy, transparency. Right now, it’s just really hard to get any data out of the system, so we’re flying blind.
74 00:11:08.760 ⇒ 00:11:22.960 Britt East: On the customer data side, we used HubSpot as a forcing function to do remediation there, so we’re feeling a lot better. Still have work to do, obviously, ongoing muscle that you build, but we’ve made really good progress there.
75 00:11:22.960 ⇒ 00:11:25.189 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s all focused on the B2B business?
76 00:11:25.610 ⇒ 00:11:40.170 Britt East: Well, for right now. So we just rolled it out to our first cohort, which is National Accounts, and then hoping to roll it out to the food service piece of that.
77 00:11:40.170 ⇒ 00:11:51.749 Britt East: In maybe mid-November. Cool. And then we’ll start focusing on the B2C side, with Marketing Hub, and then Service Hub in the new year.
78 00:11:51.750 ⇒ 00:11:52.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, perfect.
79 00:11:52.840 ⇒ 00:12:08.529 Britt East: And then, on the product side, it’s languishing. We don’t have a PDM, we don’t have a PLM, we don’t have a PIM, so looking to implement all of those platforms. In the meantime, scrambling to do data remediation there.
80 00:12:08.620 ⇒ 00:12:14.489 Britt East: Sure. Because we’re a 137-year-old company, like, we’ll have SKUs, like, 34.
81 00:12:14.790 ⇒ 00:12:16.250 Britt East: That’s a skew.
82 00:12:16.400 ⇒ 00:12:17.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
83 00:12:17.280 ⇒ 00:12:25.899 Britt East: And, oh, by the way, it’s award-winning, and it’s in the channel, so changing that isn’t just as simple as writing a new number, or.
84 00:12:25.900 ⇒ 00:12:26.260 Uttam Kumaran: Makes sense.
85 00:12:26.260 ⇒ 00:12:28.929 Britt East: putting it into a schema, there’s a PR component.
86 00:12:28.960 ⇒ 00:12:39.520 Britt East: So, it has to be, thoughtfully applied. On the supplier side, the data is all in Excel spreadsheets.
87 00:12:39.540 ⇒ 00:12:49.109 Britt East: Makes sense. People just working around the system, creating their own tools and macros to kind of, like, they’re almost like Rosetta Stones to translate whatever they can to the system.
88 00:12:49.110 ⇒ 00:12:53.429 Uttam Kumaran: You have, like, POs coming through email, there’s probably a lot of PDFs, and… okay, great.
89 00:12:53.430 ⇒ 00:12:55.940 Britt East: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
90 00:12:56.510 ⇒ 00:13:12.969 Britt East: So, what we’re looking for in… is, in the longer term, an MDM platform to house… to focus largely in those three data domains, and then a data warehouse where we can bring everything in
91 00:13:12.970 ⇒ 00:13:21.620 Britt East: perpetuity, leverage it for analytics, data visualization, so something like Snowflake, and then Power BI working in concert.
92 00:13:21.630 ⇒ 00:13:37.040 Britt East: And so we just know we will need help getting there. Now, sequencing it, it is also maybe the most important point of this, because we’ve got so many irons in the fire between ERP.
93 00:13:37.040 ⇒ 00:13:37.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
94 00:13:37.520 ⇒ 00:13:39.859 Britt East: MPLM, you know, all these.
95 00:13:39.860 ⇒ 00:13:43.290 Uttam Kumaran: And the data is all downstream of those decisions, by the way, so, like…
96 00:13:43.850 ⇒ 00:13:50.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, taking those right, it sets the stage for any data work coming down the pipe, so…
97 00:13:50.180 ⇒ 00:13:58.500 Britt East: We think we’ve settled in on Autodesk Vault for PDM, on Autodesk Fusion Managed for PLM, but we still have to implement, and
98 00:13:58.990 ⇒ 00:14:00.969 Britt East: Figured and tested and deployed and reaches.
99 00:14:00.970 ⇒ 00:14:09.080 Uttam Kumaran: Same thing with the ERP, and yeah, so, makes sense. I mean, I would say even just hearing the vendors that you’re going through, all of those.
100 00:14:09.080 ⇒ 00:14:09.470 Britt East: Yeah.
101 00:14:09.470 ⇒ 00:14:22.340 Uttam Kumaran: are pretty standard. I would say you’re doing a good job actually saying we’re just going to use HubSpot for everything. We’re gonna use the Marketing Hub. Those are common decisions we see where people may have chosen HubSpot, but then they also use Segment somewhere they use
102 00:14:22.340 ⇒ 00:14:29.790 Uttam Kumaran: they use Klaviyo somewhere, and they don’t consolidate, and of course, there’s, like, cost considerations, but as much as you can
103 00:14:29.790 ⇒ 00:14:41.730 Uttam Kumaran: consolidate and choose the best-in-class platform. And yeah, like, there may be smaller tweaks to each of those, but HubSpot plays really, really well with any sort of data warehouse, stuff like that.
104 00:14:41.730 ⇒ 00:14:44.439 Britt East: And our whole theme is, hey, let’s just be normal.
105 00:14:44.900 ⇒ 00:14:46.110 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t want to.
106 00:14:46.110 ⇒ 00:14:46.700 Britt East: Tunest thing.
107 00:14:46.700 ⇒ 00:14:48.310 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a good way of putting it.
108 00:14:48.310 ⇒ 00:14:53.829 Britt East: Yeah, we don’t need to be exotic, or novel, or weird. Like, we make cutting boards. We make…
109 00:14:53.830 ⇒ 00:14:54.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
110 00:14:54.150 ⇒ 00:15:05.530 Britt East: We make steel, like, tables, and it’s, like, the simplest products, maybe, in the entire marketplace. If we can just do the basics well, that would be transformational for us. We have this.
111 00:15:05.530 ⇒ 00:15:21.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, especially given the demand and the brand of the business, it’s just, let’s just nail the best in class, the basic go-to-market channels, the go-to-market motions. Okay, email, we have promotions, you know, just the normal stuff. Great, perfect.
112 00:15:21.210 ⇒ 00:15:38.099 Britt East: Yeah, so that’s kind of us in a nutshell, and kind of our envisioned future, trying to figure out, how to sequence these opportunities in a way that help us garner leverage, minimize rework, minimize sunk costs. We know that’ll happen along the way. For instance.
113 00:15:38.310 ⇒ 00:15:57.339 Britt East: if we use PIM as a forcing function for product data, we know we’ll have to rejigger integrations, we know we’ll have to move Golden Masters to whatever MDM platform we pick down the line, but it means we can extract value from PIM day one, even with those sunk costs, so we’re currently evaluating that as an example.
114 00:15:57.340 ⇒ 00:16:10.210 Britt East: To determine is the juice worth the squeeze, or do we move that to the end? We think it’ll go first, but it could go last if we determine the value isn’t there. I think the value is probably so strong that we’ll have to go first, even with all the rework implied.
115 00:16:10.210 ⇒ 00:16:29.890 Britt East: So those are… that’s the kind of how we approach these decisions, really pragmatically understanding, like, it’s accounted sunk costs are fine, it’s the unaccounted sunk costs that are resume-generating events. Yeah. You know, so as long as everything is well choreographed and we have a tight story, people here kind of roll with the punches and are.
116 00:16:29.890 ⇒ 00:16:30.250 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
117 00:16:30.250 ⇒ 00:16:39.649 Britt East: It’s the, unforced errors, the stepping on our own toes that kind of kill us from an opportunity cost standpoint. So, that’s kind of John Bloods in a nutshell.
118 00:16:40.510 ⇒ 00:16:53.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, sure, so let me kind of tell you, like, what we do. So, I mean, the exact type of work that you described, we… that’s sort of our background, where we fit in. So, you know, my background is in data engineering. I worked as a data engineer for a while, led data teams.
119 00:16:53.960 ⇒ 00:17:15.939 Uttam Kumaran: building out, sort of, this entire… not only the team of, like, how do you support, like, an entire data function, but also procuring, setting up vendors, and then supporting every data… every function, you know? We’ve done a lot of work in e-commerce and CPG in industrial, so a lot of work with NetSuite, and sort of the host of ERPs, similarly on the marketing side, so…
120 00:17:16.030 ⇒ 00:17:33.140 Uttam Kumaran: establishing go-to-market digital channels and supporting existing ones. We typically walk into clients that are in one of these two fields, where one, they’re… they’re just, like, starting, and they’re figuring it out, or they have some established, maybe they have a couple warehouses or a couple CRMs.
121 00:17:33.140 ⇒ 00:17:39.870 Uttam Kumaran: There’s not, like, a clear owner of it, and so we’re sort of the people you come in, you just toss into the fire, and we just run into it.
122 00:17:39.870 ⇒ 00:17:54.479 Uttam Kumaran: And my team, that’s all we do, is, like, figure out what’s the burning data issue and run towards it. And so one thing that I think would just be a helpful, like, visual, is, like, this is sort of, like, what a typical data stack can look like, right? So you have…
123 00:17:54.480 ⇒ 00:18:05.470 Uttam Kumaran: a bunch of stuff on the ingestion side, you have warehouse, you have modeling, transformation, then BI dashboard, and you have, like, activation. And so one of the things that’s important to us
124 00:18:05.470 ⇒ 00:18:18.060 Uttam Kumaran: And where I think you can leverage us is helping making those procurement decisions. We’re very, very opinionated on the tools we use and why we use them. We don’t take any kickbacks from any vendors.
125 00:18:18.060 ⇒ 00:18:32.739 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’re always in the market finding the best shovels for companies. You know, there are a lot of big players, there’s also a lot of up-and-coming folks, so depending on budget, depending on who’s gonna be using it, like, what the team structure is.
126 00:18:32.740 ⇒ 00:18:41.379 Uttam Kumaran: what the future is gonna look like, okay, are we talking about just batch, and then maybe we have more real-time stuff later, like, so who to invest in? Also negotiating those, like.
127 00:18:41.440 ⇒ 00:18:57.949 Uttam Kumaran: you know, personally, I’ve procured Snowflake almost, like, 30 times now, so understanding how to get the best discounts, like, dealing with those vendors, it’s something that we do a lot of. And then the last piece, I think this is where understanding how the data comes out is really important, so picking the right
128 00:18:57.950 ⇒ 00:19:13.120 Uttam Kumaran: BI tool, understanding who needs to get trained to leverage it, and then also sending data out, so you guys are going to want to take calculations or segments from your warehouse, shove them back into HubSpot for segmentation, for activating different channels. So.
129 00:19:13.260 ⇒ 00:19:22.690 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like we’re pretty aligned on, like, our capabilities. We help on the ingestion side, we help on storage and modeling, getting it out into BI, and getting it out into
130 00:19:24.160 ⇒ 00:19:44.189 Uttam Kumaran: you know, getting it out into another CRM or marketing platform that you need to activate. You know, we… the other thing I’ll put in is we’ve worked… we typically work in very imperfect environments, so either there’s difficulties with people, where, okay, IT is used to a certain way of working, and we work through that, or people aren’t used to sort of new tools, and so that’s… that’s the world we live in.
131 00:19:44.190 ⇒ 00:19:49.379 Uttam Kumaran: I think similar to what you said, very mindful of, like, short-term
132 00:19:49.380 ⇒ 00:19:57.480 Uttam Kumaran: versus long-term, and very mindful of where things commonly go wrong, and how do we mitigate as much of that up front as possible.
133 00:19:57.550 ⇒ 00:20:01.669 Uttam Kumaran: And so, you know, I feel pretty aligned. I think what… one thing that…
134 00:20:01.820 ⇒ 00:20:04.029 Uttam Kumaran: Would be helpful is to hear about
135 00:20:04.100 ⇒ 00:20:21.710 Uttam Kumaran: is that… do you already have something in mind for that order of operations on the data side? Is that something that you would want someone like us to come work with you on? Typically, at a size project like this, usually we just come in and start hourly, and we’re like, okay, let me just help you craft
136 00:20:21.770 ⇒ 00:20:40.890 Uttam Kumaran: what the story is around data, John Booze. Okay, so we make… we basically put together, like, a spike on, like, what are we considering here? What are the pricing options? What are the timeline options? Like, what can Brainforge do? Should we work with the service… professional services from the vendors themselves? So basically, like.
137 00:20:41.160 ⇒ 00:20:55.239 Uttam Kumaran: representing y’all and helping you kind of create that… that long-term plan. Especially if you have a lot… if you don’t… if you aren’t locked in on any of these, you have great opportunities to set the company up for the future.
138 00:20:55.240 ⇒ 00:21:06.179 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and that’s… that’s where we can support, and then we also execute all the work from… from sort of full stack, so however we can get utilized there is a great place to…
139 00:21:06.270 ⇒ 00:21:24.079 Uttam Kumaran: to leverage us, and then, you know, the reason why we… we kind of talked to Dan is we leverage other best-in-class service partners for specific tools. Like, Dan’s company is great at segment. All they do is build out amazing customer data platforms, where you see every customer, the touch points, where they came in from, how to reactivate them.
140 00:21:24.080 ⇒ 00:21:27.949 Uttam Kumaran: And so, there are areas where we will partner with other folks.
141 00:21:27.950 ⇒ 00:21:31.190 Uttam Kumaran: But we do a lot of this zero-to-one setup.
142 00:21:31.300 ⇒ 00:21:41.750 Uttam Kumaran: at companies, you know, your size. And sort of, especially when we get an opportunity to… to plan longer term is where we really like to play, because
143 00:21:41.750 ⇒ 00:21:59.109 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes we walk into smaller companies where they’re like, you need to plan and just, like, start doing things now. I can tell that you’re really committed to, like, making the best decision, but also still maintaining a sense of urgency, you know, around things. So, I just said a lot. Let me know if any of that sort of, like.
144 00:21:59.460 ⇒ 00:22:02.610 Uttam Kumaran: Is helpful, or where would you like to go?
145 00:22:02.950 ⇒ 00:22:15.620 Britt East: Yeah, absolutely, and then also I’m, you know, I’m working on the staffing model for the next 5 years, as I take over the departments, and all the entities for IT, and
146 00:22:15.860 ⇒ 00:22:23.340 Britt East: thinking through, on the data side, what our investment’s going to be, and I suspect we will outsource quite a bit.
147 00:22:23.430 ⇒ 00:22:38.130 Britt East: Okay. I think we will focus FTE resources in other domains of IT, I suspect, so, you know, I think there’s lots of opportunity to potentially work together.
148 00:22:38.130 ⇒ 00:22:45.840 Britt East: Because I just don’t think that we will be able to afford, like, data scientists and…
149 00:22:45.840 ⇒ 00:22:50.920 Britt East: managers and stuff, I just think it’ll be more cost-effective for us to outsource things.
150 00:22:50.920 ⇒ 00:23:10.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and that’s something that, like, we also… we tend to talk to people a lot about, which is, again, you must… I think it’s clear you have a background, but we work with some companies that have never outfitted a data team, and it is extremely hard. After doing this for a while. It’s not only hard to find the right people, but especially find the people that have done this before.
151 00:23:10.600 ⇒ 00:23:12.590 Uttam Kumaran: In an environment like John Boo’s.
152 00:23:12.610 ⇒ 00:23:28.239 Uttam Kumaran: Where there’s a lot of moving pieces, but it is an old, historic company that’s sort of modernizing. I think certainly where… what we like to do is find your internal champions, of course. Like, find who’s gonna be… who on the marketing side is, like.
153 00:23:28.240 ⇒ 00:23:37.469 Uttam Kumaran: consuming the great marketing data, and our job is to make them successful. But of course, like, what do we bring to the table is that fractional, like.
154 00:23:37.630 ⇒ 00:23:44.600 Uttam Kumaran: head of data, fractional, like, VP of data type support is where you can leverage us without having to
155 00:23:44.940 ⇒ 00:23:56.179 Uttam Kumaran: spend half a million dollars and wait for those people to ramp up, and then, you know, it’s extremely hard building a data team these days. And I think you’re… I would say it’s…
156 00:23:56.260 ⇒ 00:24:07.879 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of where I think we’ll… we’re definitely on the cost-competitive side, and certainly the amount of times we’ve done this, like, we’ll… we can move things forward really, really fast.
157 00:24:08.330 ⇒ 00:24:18.679 Uttam Kumaran: And so I feel like until you see that you have an established stack, and then you can start to invest in experts. But also, it’s… there’s also very small wins that don’t require, like.
158 00:24:18.910 ⇒ 00:24:29.549 Uttam Kumaran: full-time data scientist, full-time head of data, you know, and I think you want to find there. I think where you could find opportunities to invest is once you have recurring
159 00:24:29.550 ⇒ 00:24:41.890 Uttam Kumaran: needs for the business on, like, hey, we need to produce these, like, weekly business reviews or monthly business reviews, then you can start to think about, okay, do I need a full-time analyst? Things like that. And we also, you know, again, like, we’re not… we don’t…
160 00:24:42.020 ⇒ 00:24:58.759 Uttam Kumaran: this is where, like, we’re… I’m not a consultant by background, we don’t really gatekeep. So we actually built out data teams for a lot of our clients before, because we also understand the need to have someone internal who can go search for the problems and build those relationships, and we… our job is to support them. So whether it’s, like.
161 00:24:58.760 ⇒ 00:25:03.579 Uttam Kumaran: you guys need help hiring your first data analyst, or things like that, it’s definitely a great place to
162 00:25:03.610 ⇒ 00:25:05.149 Uttam Kumaran: to leverage us. We hire…
163 00:25:05.270 ⇒ 00:25:13.869 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we hire data folks all the time, but also, like, it’s important to make that and find the perfect person for that that’s gonna stick with y’all, you know, so…
164 00:25:14.400 ⇒ 00:25:30.919 Britt East: Yeah, I think our approach will probably be, I suspect, will probably be to empower subject matter experts in the business units to be excellent consumers of data, but that we will probably outsource in perpetuity the data science.
165 00:25:30.920 ⇒ 00:25:34.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And, I just…
166 00:25:34.170 ⇒ 00:25:53.039 Britt East: I just don’t see that changing. I think what we will invest in FTEs is much more around support engineers, and things of that nature. you know, on the application layer, I just don’t think building out the data layer is… I think it’s prohibitively expensive.
167 00:25:53.060 ⇒ 00:26:06.350 Britt East: From a number of dimensions. So, I think we’d rather invest in, like you alluded to, cultivating and continuing education, shoring up expertise in the business units to be.
168 00:26:06.350 ⇒ 00:26:16.130 Uttam Kumaran: And they already have this tribal knowledge, you know? And, like, they probably are doing stuff in Excel, or wherever they’re doing it, so those people will be extremely happy.
169 00:26:17.640 ⇒ 00:26:18.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
170 00:26:18.020 ⇒ 00:26:29.659 Britt East: so much tribal knowledge and stuff, so something is lost, whereas on the data science, it’s just… it’s a much more logical fit. So I suspect that’s where we will come down in perpetuity on the…
171 00:26:30.280 ⇒ 00:26:32.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so give me a sense of…
172 00:26:32.180 ⇒ 00:26:39.090 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, like, what you guys are looking for this quarter, and, like, what information I can… I can get for y’all, or… or what you need.
173 00:26:39.090 ⇒ 00:26:57.079 Britt East: Right now, it’s all about figuring out how to land the plane on ERP, and, help the board and owners understand the alphabet soup of adjacent technologies. PIN, PM, PLM, TMS,
174 00:26:57.080 ⇒ 00:27:10.219 Britt East: CDP, I mean, it just goes on and on. It’s so alienating. It’s a bunch of old guys, all they care about is the money, and it’s like, why would I con… and then not understanding the continuous transformation and improvement of each…
175 00:27:10.220 ⇒ 00:27:14.540 Uttam Kumaran: So what’s been working… what’s been working for you? I’m just curious, like, how’s… how’s it been selling?
176 00:27:14.540 ⇒ 00:27:16.949 Britt East: I mean, I’m just really good at it.
177 00:27:16.950 ⇒ 00:27:27.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Frankly, and it’s, like, because of my verbal skills, and so I’m a really good storyteller, and because my background is outside of music, I mean, outside of, IT and music and this kind of stuff, I’m just… I have…
178 00:27:28.290 ⇒ 00:27:30.410 Britt East: I’m cut from a different cloth.
179 00:27:30.760 ⇒ 00:27:37.710 Britt East: Excuse me. So I’ve been very lucky so far, but, you know, the big ticket items are ahead of me.
180 00:27:37.900 ⇒ 00:27:38.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
181 00:27:38.940 ⇒ 00:27:42.380 Uttam Kumaran: The CRM’s one thing, but MDM… Yeah, yeah, yeah.
182 00:27:42.380 ⇒ 00:27:56.099 Britt East: those are horses of a different color, so we’ll see what continues. And, you know, how much of the story do you tell that engages them versus alienates them? There’s an art to that, so that’s where all my focus is right now.
183 00:27:56.330 ⇒ 00:28:02.089 Britt East: And then alongside of that, the term I have coined is remedial remediation.
184 00:28:02.250 ⇒ 00:28:03.360 Britt East: Meaning…
185 00:28:03.680 ⇒ 00:28:10.419 Britt East: In order to begin data remediation on the product side, we have to do some initial activities, like to…
186 00:28:10.420 ⇒ 00:28:14.060 Uttam Kumaran: You have to start asking some questions just to find out what we… what we can give and get.
187 00:28:14.500 ⇒ 00:28:33.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where we do, like, kind of, like, one, I come in, I say, ask us questions, and while we’re answering them, I can start to say, like, okay, there’s… we found a random, like, bunch of CSVs somewhere. Okay, generally, here’s what you guys need. So we… we tend to do that in parallel, where we find a champion, we just, can I get a win for this person?
188 00:28:33.450 ⇒ 00:28:34.170 Britt East: So…
189 00:28:34.170 ⇒ 00:28:41.609 Uttam Kumaran: in some amount of time around something in data, and in the meantime, I’m like, okay, I can go back to Britt with some ideas on, like, what.
190 00:28:41.610 ⇒ 00:28:42.370 Britt East: Beautiful.
191 00:28:42.370 ⇒ 00:28:44.140 Uttam Kumaran: Procurement strategy needs to be.
192 00:28:44.140 ⇒ 00:28:52.589 Britt East: Yeah, absolutely, and then helping us, determining, where on the maturity curve
193 00:28:52.590 ⇒ 00:29:13.379 Britt East: our product data needs to be, because that customer data will be there, but our product data needs to be in order to implement a PIM, in order to get into ERP, in order to, you know… Sure. Like, just because we sign an agreement, that’s very different than making it through a design phase, or much less deploying in steady state, so…
194 00:29:13.380 ⇒ 00:29:21.869 Britt East: it could be that we sign an agreement with ERP knowing our data won’t be ready until March or May, but we’ll be in design through the next 12 months, or some, you know, and so we’re okay.
195 00:29:21.870 ⇒ 00:29:26.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so you’ll need a master SKU list with all the segments and everything. Correct, for sure.
196 00:29:26.030 ⇒ 00:29:33.770 Britt East: And so it’s determining, like, okay, where do we need to be? So the data remediation’s always one step ahead, or 10 steps ahead, or whatever.
197 00:29:33.770 ⇒ 00:29:46.540 Britt East: And so there never feels like there’s a bullwhip effect. It’s all… that’s the main thing here. As long as things are well choreographed, like I was saying, people roll with the punches, it’s the surprises that get us.
198 00:29:46.540 ⇒ 00:29:58.680 Britt East: And I think that’s really the, the kind of the open, question that needs to be answered that we’re kind of wrestling with.
199 00:29:58.680 ⇒ 00:30:19.620 Britt East: In terms of next steps, I think the best thing is to introduce you to my peer in the business. So, I’m the CIO. My peer is, the head of, product and… sorry, the head of data and strategy. So, not only does all the mergers and acquisitions, but is responsible for all the product data and customer data.
200 00:30:19.620 ⇒ 00:30:32.560 Britt East: kind of a weird role, but, absolutely critical, and he’s my main business partner, and all of this. And then I think, that will help us determine
201 00:30:32.560 ⇒ 00:30:44.880 Britt East: like, a roadmap of success and impossible points of engagement to test the waters. His name is Ty Jones, and I can send you his contact information.
202 00:30:44.880 ⇒ 00:30:54.440 Britt East: So he’s the one doing that remedial remediation. I’m flagging issues, and then he goes off in the woodshed with his team and figures it out.
203 00:30:54.440 ⇒ 00:31:08.889 Britt East: But they’re not data scientists. They’re product people, they’re business people, they’re whatever, they’re not, you know, data scientists, and they’re the first to admit that, and so we definitely need help. It’s just figuring out which levers to pull when.
204 00:31:09.330 ⇒ 00:31:13.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I can talk to him and kind of get a sense of, like, okay, if you were to do this.
205 00:31:13.690 ⇒ 00:31:19.179 Uttam Kumaran: how could you do it? And let’s say you need to do this every month in perpetuity.
206 00:31:19.180 ⇒ 00:31:35.039 Uttam Kumaran: a product, like a product SKU audit or something like that. Okay, what can we talk about? So, totally. And then again, even for us, as I mentioned earlier, we are, like, a throw-us-into-the-fire type of crew, so even if we want to start on something small, or hourly, or whatever, and we just…
207 00:31:35.040 ⇒ 00:31:54.650 Uttam Kumaran: kind of burrow and find out what you need to know. That’s sort of how we are. We’re… we’re big on just sort of building these types of long-term relationships and finding where we can be helpful. So, happy to talk to Ty and then see if we can arrive on something. And yeah, I know it’s sort of getting into busy season, so I’m kind of interested to see how much you guys are trying to tackle
208 00:31:54.870 ⇒ 00:32:01.620 Uttam Kumaran: While that’s also happening, but also it’s a… could be a great moment, because you will probably need some of this data stuff to…
209 00:32:01.790 ⇒ 00:32:06.029 Uttam Kumaran: You know, to… to happen for some of those questions, so, yeah.
210 00:32:06.030 ⇒ 00:32:20.630 Britt East: And the interesting thing is, while the spikes in demand are very predictable on the consumer side, they are unpredictable on the commercial side, because it’s all project-based. So even weather construct… we do so many retrofits and remodels…
211 00:32:20.630 ⇒ 00:32:23.859 Uttam Kumaran: Is it geo? Is it any geo, like, concentration? Okay.
212 00:32:23.860 ⇒ 00:32:46.749 Britt East: It’s continental U.S, 99% of it. You know, we flirt with Canada, flirt with Mexico, and we sell through distribution in Europe on the consumer side, not the commercial side, but it’s really 99% intercontinental U.S, I mean, but even weather issues, there’s just no rhyme or reason to the commercial side, it’s just whatever projects happen to be in the hopper.
213 00:32:46.750 ⇒ 00:32:51.550 Uttam Kumaran: Is there concentration with certain developers, or are there certain, like, Customer.
214 00:32:51.550 ⇒ 00:32:52.500 Britt East: dealers.
215 00:32:52.590 ⇒ 00:32:56.979 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. It’s all about food service dealers. Food service dealers, yeah, okay.
216 00:32:56.980 ⇒ 00:33:09.210 Britt East: And that is the key to our business, the industrial kitchen commercial manufacturing is… it’s all about the food service dealers, and so it’s whatever they need, whenever they need it.
217 00:33:09.210 ⇒ 00:33:20.330 Uttam Kumaran: So they have… they’re who’s assigned the account managers, the regional sales reps are working with them. Okay, cool. So it makes sense on how there’s this, like, B2B relationship management with… with those guys, and…
218 00:33:20.330 ⇒ 00:33:28.939 Britt East: Exactly, and to your question, yes, we have a lot of shared services between the two, go-to-market.
219 00:33:28.940 ⇒ 00:33:29.850 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.
220 00:33:29.850 ⇒ 00:33:40.909 Britt East: So, yes, there can be resource drains, but it’s not as bad as you might think this time of year, because we’re not solely concentrated in consumer. Within it would be, don’t even talk to me until January.
221 00:33:40.910 ⇒ 00:33:41.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
222 00:33:41.930 ⇒ 00:34:00.249 Britt East: We do have resources, and we are doing data remediation as we speak. Great. The remedial part on the product side, and actively on the customer side, I’m feeling a lot better about that piece. And so, yeah, so in terms of the calendar, we have,
223 00:34:00.250 ⇒ 00:34:08.460 Britt East: So a bunch of HubSpot we’re doing… work we’re doing offsite next week, so it would be the week of the 27th when we could get together with Ty.
224 00:34:09.030 ⇒ 00:34:09.699 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
225 00:34:10.469 ⇒ 00:34:15.319 Uttam Kumaran: That’s perfect, yeah, so if you want to send an invite, or I can send an invite even for…
226 00:34:15.820 ⇒ 00:34:18.759 Uttam Kumaran: if this same time works on that Monday.
227 00:34:18.760 ⇒ 00:34:33.100 Britt East: Let’s see here… let’s… let’s not do Monday. Let me look at Ty’s calendar. Give me a quick second here, because he often travels. He lives in, outside of Salt Lake City, and then often flies into the office on Monday.
228 00:34:34.520 ⇒ 00:34:40.870 Britt East: Let’s see, Tuesday the 28th at noon, works well.
229 00:34:47.620 ⇒ 00:34:49.259 Britt East: Does that work for you by any chance?
230 00:34:49.260 ⇒ 00:34:52.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so Tuesday… yeah, that’s perfect.
231 00:34:52.440 ⇒ 00:34:55.370 Britt East: I’ll put his info in the chat here.
232 00:34:55.520 ⇒ 00:34:56.150 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
233 00:34:56.150 ⇒ 00:34:58.970 Britt East: Anti.jones at…
234 00:34:58.970 ⇒ 00:35:00.829 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s noon Eastern, or…
235 00:35:00.830 ⇒ 00:35:08.700 Britt East: Oh, sorry, that’s… Or noon… hang on, let me check, because I don’t want to do… I gotta do a lot of math here. That’s noon Central.
236 00:35:08.700 ⇒ 00:35:10.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, great.
237 00:35:14.400 ⇒ 00:35:18.499 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’ll let him know that you and I talked, so he’ll accept your invitation.
238 00:35:18.880 ⇒ 00:35:19.540 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
239 00:35:20.080 ⇒ 00:35:27.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and again, like, if you’re… in case I can be even helpful with questions, if you’re talking to anybody on the data side in between then, just… I’m happy to…
240 00:35:27.650 ⇒ 00:35:28.400 Britt East: Great.
241 00:35:28.400 ⇒ 00:35:30.740 Uttam Kumaran: Help give my perspective on anything, so…
242 00:35:31.040 ⇒ 00:35:34.400 Britt East: Awesome. Well, it’s great to meet you today, I really appreciate your time.
243 00:35:34.400 ⇒ 00:35:38.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, thank you so much, and best of luck with the onsite and everything, so…
244 00:35:38.150 ⇒ 00:35:39.279 Britt East: Alright, thank you.
245 00:35:39.280 ⇒ 00:35:40.890 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, talk to you soon. Bye.