Meeting Title: Brainforge x John Boos: Data Initiatives Date: 2025-10-29 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Britt East, Ty
WEBVTT
1 00:00:23.440 ⇒ 00:00:25.430 Uttam Kumaran: Favorite. Hey, how are ya?
2 00:00:25.560 ⇒ 00:00:27.020 Britt East: Good, how are you today?
3 00:00:27.020 ⇒ 00:00:27.840 Uttam Kumaran: Good.
4 00:00:29.650 ⇒ 00:00:34.339 Britt East: See, I was just chatting with Ty. Did he accept the invitation?
5 00:00:34.630 ⇒ 00:00:35.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
6 00:00:35.670 ⇒ 00:00:36.770 Britt East: Awesome.
7 00:00:37.430 ⇒ 00:00:42.219 Britt East: We were just… we’re just large enough where there’s always a personnel issue going on.
8 00:00:43.870 ⇒ 00:00:47.119 Britt East: And we have one right now, so let me see where he is.
9 00:00:47.120 ⇒ 00:00:48.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no problem.
10 00:01:12.490 ⇒ 00:01:14.100 Britt East: I’m just pinging him.
11 00:01:19.050 ⇒ 00:01:20.959 Uttam Kumaran: How’s, how’s the month going so far?
12 00:01:21.410 ⇒ 00:01:29.960 Britt East: Good, it’s… like, the thing with us is always we’re way too successful, and it’s just… It’s hard.
13 00:01:29.960 ⇒ 00:01:33.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you mentioned you’re, like, selling out every time, you’re like, but that’s not a good thing.
14 00:01:33.280 ⇒ 00:01:39.669 Britt East: It is a terrible problem, because it impacts the brand, and your quality, and your lead time. Ty’s hopping on now.
15 00:01:39.670 ⇒ 00:01:40.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
16 00:01:40.390 ⇒ 00:01:44.250 Britt East: So it’s… it’s a lot to manage.
17 00:01:56.430 ⇒ 00:02:02.580 Britt East: And some of these employee things are like head scratchers, you’re like, oh my gosh, never thought that would cross my desk, how are we gonna handle that?
18 00:02:02.580 ⇒ 00:02:03.220 Uttam Kumaran: Oh.
19 00:02:03.220 ⇒ 00:02:04.480 Britt East: Interesting. I.
20 00:02:04.480 ⇒ 00:02:14.179 Uttam Kumaran: I agree. I, I never thought… the hardest part about this business is people. Like, the data work that I’m doing is what I did my whole career.
21 00:02:14.370 ⇒ 00:02:14.720 Britt East: Yeah.
22 00:02:14.720 ⇒ 00:02:28.480 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, it’s the… I would say the easiest part, it’s what we’re really great at. It’s just getting the right people, and often it’s our fault, like, it’s… we set expectations wrong for people, or, like, we’re disorganized, and…
23 00:02:28.770 ⇒ 00:02:34.550 Uttam Kumaran: you’re like, ugh. Like, of course there’s a rare time where it’s, like, something malicious, but yeah, so… Yeah.
24 00:02:34.550 ⇒ 00:02:35.270 Britt East: Yeah.
25 00:02:35.830 ⇒ 00:02:36.800 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Ty.
26 00:02:36.800 ⇒ 00:02:37.640 Ty: Hey, hey!
27 00:02:39.470 ⇒ 00:02:47.670 Uttam Kumaran: Great, yeah, Brad, I’m not sure how much, you know, context, Ty has, but happy to do another intro, or let me know what’s best.
28 00:02:47.670 ⇒ 00:03:06.560 Britt East: Let’s tee it up. We’ve got a lot of things going on here, so it’s just tough to keep everything in your brain, because really, Ty and I are building out the… out the entire technology stack from scratch, every domain, and so we talk with… by the way, your dog is so cute, I almost can’t stand it.
29 00:03:07.460 ⇒ 00:03:12.839 Britt East: That is ridiculous. I almost hope that’s, like, a Zoom background and not your robot, because it’s, like.
30 00:03:12.840 ⇒ 00:03:17.759 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s my… that’s my boss, yeah, that’s… that’s the… that’s the…
31 00:03:17.890 ⇒ 00:03:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: He just… he’s the one that keeps me typing all day, so, yeah.
32 00:03:21.450 ⇒ 00:03:22.180 Britt East: And he’s.
33 00:03:22.180 ⇒ 00:03:22.770 Uttam Kumaran: Sweet.
34 00:03:23.010 ⇒ 00:03:25.980 Britt East: We are both dog people, so that’s… that’s appealing.
35 00:03:25.980 ⇒ 00:03:34.309 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just so… I feel lucky to have an office, and yeah, naturally, he just… he has no concept of the Zoom, but I think it helps to break up meetings well, and…
36 00:03:34.690 ⇒ 00:03:37.419 Uttam Kumaran: And he just roams around, and this is his job, just to.
37 00:03:37.880 ⇒ 00:03:39.640 Uttam Kumaran: Get tired, I can sleep.
38 00:03:39.640 ⇒ 00:03:42.009 Britt East: I would love it, I love it. So yeah, if you wouldn’t mind, go ahead and…
39 00:03:42.010 ⇒ 00:03:42.720 Ty: very…
40 00:03:42.720 ⇒ 00:03:45.329 Britt East: And we’ll… and we’ll kind of do a round robin.
41 00:03:45.330 ⇒ 00:03:55.749 Ty: He looks very similar to, my sister-in-law and her husband’s dog. He’s kind of a mutt, but… and just…
42 00:03:55.890 ⇒ 00:04:01.969 Ty: I can’t remember, like, there’s, like, an Australian sheep herding dog, which was a big…
43 00:04:02.180 ⇒ 00:04:02.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
44 00:04:02.800 ⇒ 00:04:03.250 Ty: that gene.
45 00:04:03.250 ⇒ 00:04:03.789 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so…
46 00:04:03.790 ⇒ 00:04:05.059 Ty: Is he in that?
47 00:04:05.060 ⇒ 00:04:13.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he’s, like, a mix of German Shepherd, Yellow Lab, Great Pyrenees, and has, like, a lot of that, like, cattle dog.
48 00:04:13.430 ⇒ 00:04:14.190 Ty: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49 00:04:14.190 ⇒ 00:04:18.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, very smart, very, very kind. Big dog, he’s, like, 120 pounds.
50 00:04:18.640 ⇒ 00:04:20.009 Ty: Oh my god.
51 00:04:20.010 ⇒ 00:04:25.129 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s… he’s a little bit… it’s a little bit out of frame, but, he is a very,
52 00:04:25.330 ⇒ 00:04:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: Big guy. He’s just scrunched up, so…
53 00:04:29.670 ⇒ 00:04:30.240 Ty: That’s awesome.
54 00:04:30.240 ⇒ 00:04:45.669 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so great, I’ll just give a brief background. So, it’s great to see you, Ty. My name is Utam, I run Brainforge. We’re a data analytics and AI consultancy. My background is in data engineering. I worked as a data engineer for a while, built data teams.
55 00:04:45.670 ⇒ 00:05:01.560 Uttam Kumaran: Worked in, you know, building data products as well for a while. Started this business, a few years ago, primarily coming in, into companies where we’re sort of helping in one or two ways. Sort of coming in, being… helping with.
56 00:05:01.560 ⇒ 00:05:06.130 Uttam Kumaran: Standing up new data infrastructure, creating data modeling.
57 00:05:06.130 ⇒ 00:05:10.029 Uttam Kumaran: Attacking, sort of, the analysis problem, but of course, helping to achieve
58 00:05:10.030 ⇒ 00:05:18.959 Uttam Kumaran: revenue or profit outcomes. Oftentimes, we walk into, like, one or two situations. There’s either already existing data work, but maybe, like.
59 00:05:18.960 ⇒ 00:05:31.590 Uttam Kumaran: no person that’s, like, owning the whole thing, or there’s a mix of analysts and engineers. We also walk in environments where there’s, like, nothing, or just, like, random S3 buckets, or random BI tools. So we’re sort of a…
60 00:05:31.800 ⇒ 00:05:35.439 Uttam Kumaran: run into the fire type of crew, all, like, ex…
61 00:05:35.610 ⇒ 00:05:55.359 Uttam Kumaran: like, industry engineers. You know, Britt gave me a background on the company, and of course, I’m familiar with the consumer side of the business, big fan, but I’ve heard a lot about the commercial side of the business. And, you know, kind of, he mentioned a lot of, like, what’s going on with, HubSpot, with ERP,
62 00:05:56.690 ⇒ 00:06:07.159 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve done a lot of work, in particular in CPG and e-commerce, with a lot of folks that are attacking problems, similar problems with, like.
63 00:06:07.180 ⇒ 00:06:13.429 Uttam Kumaran: SKU list consolidation, data out of ERPs or ERP migrations.
64 00:06:13.430 ⇒ 00:06:27.569 Uttam Kumaran: Measuring sales, measuring inventory, doing a lot of the shipping side. So, all of the data that goes into landing that somewhere, modeling that, and making it available for reporting, or for other action is sort of where
65 00:06:27.660 ⇒ 00:06:28.760 Uttam Kumaran: We live.
66 00:06:29.610 ⇒ 00:06:43.290 Britt East: Let me jump in, and then we’ll let Ty kind of do some storytelling. He’s really great at telling our story. He’ll fill in a lot of gaps from our initial session.
67 00:06:43.300 ⇒ 00:06:58.289 Britt East: Together, we’re looking at data remediation from a number of angles, because we’ve never done it before. We have no data management muscle here. I mean, I mean literally. We do not manage data. It resides in various places, and we just don’t touch it.
68 00:06:58.420 ⇒ 00:07:08.320 Britt East: And maybe that’s for the vest, I don’t know. But we need to start touching it, we need to kind of turn the ship around here. So,
69 00:07:08.320 ⇒ 00:07:18.580 Britt East: We have a couple of forcing functions, like you alluded to, HubSpot on the customer domain side. The supplier data domain’s really small.
70 00:07:18.580 ⇒ 00:07:28.499 Britt East: Okay. And we need to pick that up at some point, so that’s an opportunity. As we look ahead towards a master data management strategy in the longer term.
71 00:07:28.500 ⇒ 00:07:44.889 Britt East: And then on the product side, Ty and I are hustling to prepare for a PIM implementation as a transitory step to MDM. Not really the perfect step, but there’s just so much value to us from PIM.
72 00:07:44.890 ⇒ 00:07:52.279 Britt East: so much pent-up demand on the efficiency side. Again, we don’t want to drive revenue unless we’re really careful about it, but from.
73 00:07:52.280 ⇒ 00:07:52.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
74 00:07:52.790 ⇒ 00:08:08.440 Britt East: efficiency standpoint, PIM is just so huge. That’s gonna be a forcing function, sunk cost on the product data remediation domain. Great. And then, so Golden Masters will live there, and then we’ll migrate them to MDM at some point down the line.
75 00:08:08.440 ⇒ 00:08:15.280 Britt East: You know, pending approval and business cases and everything like that. And…
76 00:08:15.440 ⇒ 00:08:32.050 Britt East: like you alluded to, the most challenging project of ERP implementations is data migration, and our data is somehow both incomplete and bloated, if that’s possible. It’s like Schrodinger’s CAD of data. It’s like somehow it’s…
77 00:08:32.049 ⇒ 00:08:49.360 Britt East: all things and nothing all at once. And, we’re… it really scares me. Like, in that project, that is the piece that gives me the most pause, is like, how in the heck are we going to,
78 00:08:49.390 ⇒ 00:08:58.440 Britt East: Get through any sort of remediation path that facilitates that migration, earns the moment of implementation and eventually conversion.
79 00:08:58.560 ⇒ 00:09:22.410 Britt East: I mean, we’ll run the two systems in parallel for a while, of course, but then at some point, we’ll need to cut off our current ERP and migrate, so that’s another huge opportunity as well. There’s always data enrichment opportunities from multiple levels. So we’re just trying to understand, or maybe we’re trying to think through our wide array of opportunities and map it to
80 00:09:22.410 ⇒ 00:09:28.109 Britt East: A variety of, consultants and data science professionals
81 00:09:28.110 ⇒ 00:09:44.019 Britt East: statisticians who seem best suited for any given area, any given facet. Okay. And so it’s, we’re talking to all sorts of different people, and, multiple business opportunities.
82 00:09:44.020 ⇒ 00:10:07.250 Britt East: And so, for today, I’m hoping we can just understand, and Ty can start to build a relationship with you, and we understand where your company drives the most success, what type of track records you have in the space, and things like that. So then Ty and I can work offline to kind of, like I said, map opportunities to people.
83 00:10:07.400 ⇒ 00:10:26.100 Britt East: Sure. Ty, I’m wondering if maybe you can do some storytelling about your role, your responsibilities, the data remediation from the business requirements side, you know, what your vision is, where we are, and some of the rollout of our solutions, and kind of your background, maybe?
84 00:10:26.800 ⇒ 00:10:27.920 Ty: Yeah, of course.
85 00:10:28.670 ⇒ 00:10:43.360 Ty: Utam, it is great to meet you. And yeah, I’ve been at Booz now for, going on 3 years. It’ll be 3 years in May. Initially came to the business, to stand up a business development
86 00:10:43.360 ⇒ 00:10:53.060 Ty: arm of the business, very quickly realized that the… and the biz dev they were talking about is in the traditional sense. New markets, new…
87 00:10:53.060 ⇒ 00:10:58.650 Ty: New customers, potentially, new products.
88 00:11:00.570 ⇒ 00:11:09.920 Ty: And… very quickly realized that the business was actually in no shape to really evolve into having new business.
89 00:11:09.920 ⇒ 00:11:24.779 Ty: Primarily because of the data issues, ability to actually make, insightful decisions, because of data gaps, and because of, processes that
90 00:11:24.780 ⇒ 00:11:33.439 Ty: really aren’t standardized in any way to change day to day, and person-to-person. And that has…
91 00:11:33.740 ⇒ 00:11:51.589 Ty: that caused me to kind of go, hey guys, I really don’t think this is the right direction. What we really should be concentrating on is developing the business, and kind of bringing it into a, you know, kind of taking on a modernization journey.
92 00:11:51.830 ⇒ 00:11:53.470 Ty: And so…
93 00:11:53.970 ⇒ 00:12:12.760 Ty: With that, about a year after, maybe a year and a half, I, you know, Britt and I were introduced, Britt came on as CIO as a very clearly necessary part of the business to,
94 00:12:12.870 ⇒ 00:12:24.769 Ty: to… because… because it really was in data and tech stack and, where we were really misaligned with current standards.
95 00:12:25.080 ⇒ 00:12:26.890 Ty: And,
96 00:12:27.260 ⇒ 00:12:45.610 Ty: So that’s what we’ve been doing for basically the past year. Hundreds of hours have been spent, map… process mapping, bringing folks in the organization, different subject matter experts, into a war room, mapping out process, understanding.
97 00:12:45.610 ⇒ 00:12:49.350 Ty: The constraints of our system.
98 00:12:49.810 ⇒ 00:13:06.889 Ty: I do come from a product background, that’s spent the majority of my time in product development, and in more complex products, believe it or not, than what we do at John Boo’s. We bend steel.
99 00:13:06.930 ⇒ 00:13:19.920 Ty: And we make cutting boards. So, not… not very complex, but it is complex because of the variety of configurations that
100 00:13:19.940 ⇒ 00:13:38.790 Ty: can, can be implemented into our product. So, we’re at this point now, we’re going, okay, we really should be honing in on what we’re really good at, and start to tell customers that.
101 00:13:38.790 ⇒ 00:13:44.600 Ty: we… don’t do that, but we do do this. So if you want this.
102 00:13:45.230 ⇒ 00:14:00.650 Ty: then we’ll do it for you. If you want that, then you’re gonna have to go to a custom fabricator. Now, alongside that, my other role is in M&A. So, I do oversee the overall strategy of the business.
103 00:14:00.650 ⇒ 00:14:01.010 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
104 00:14:01.010 ⇒ 00:14:16.890 Ty: how we move forward. I work very closely with our CEO to align to his vision and our owner’s vision of how we should grow as a business, and what things we should,
105 00:14:17.310 ⇒ 00:14:19.520 Ty: Really focus on.
106 00:14:19.670 ⇒ 00:14:22.939 Ty: As a business, and…
107 00:14:24.520 ⇒ 00:14:39.190 Ty: M&A is a big part of that, because in our particular product domain to the food service market, commercial food service, which is about 75% of our revenue each year.
108 00:14:40.800 ⇒ 00:14:58.499 Ty: there are several types of different stainless steel players. Guys that do, mostly standard products that they’re having built overseas, importing, and then reselling, so it’s really more of a distribution model.
109 00:14:58.500 ⇒ 00:15:02.059 Ty: And is this in consumer, or in… This is all commercial, yes.
110 00:15:02.060 ⇒ 00:15:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: Commercial, all commercial, correct.
111 00:15:03.190 ⇒ 00:15:22.190 Ty: Yeah, if I were to break up, so we go to market through 3 distinct verticals. Commercial food service, about 75% of our business, the, consumer business, which is about 20%, that’s cutting boards and, residential kitchen furniture.
112 00:15:22.190 ⇒ 00:15:32.069 Ty: That includes what we call KCTs, kitchen countertops, so in place of putting a granite countertop, you might choose wood. We’re the guy for that.
113 00:15:33.050 ⇒ 00:15:50.759 Ty: And then we have this, smaller business, or smaller vertical, about 5% of our revenue in industrials. So these are workbench tops, tables that resell through companies like Global Industrial, McMaster Car.
114 00:15:50.760 ⇒ 00:15:52.250 Uttam Kumaran: Black Decker.
115 00:15:56.780 ⇒ 00:16:04.330 Ty: So… the, the…
116 00:16:06.210 ⇒ 00:16:22.270 Ty: Again, and so that’s a little bit complex, right? And not very many businesses… in fact, I’ve never been a part of one that had 3 very distinct verticals, 3 very distribution models.
117 00:16:22.270 ⇒ 00:16:23.620 Uttam Kumaran: for customer, too.
118 00:16:23.620 ⇒ 00:16:31.060 Ty: It’s a completely different end customer. When we talk about commercial food service.
119 00:16:31.060 ⇒ 00:16:44.919 Ty: We sell through rep groups. Rep groups are independent businesses that are scattered all over the United States. They represent our product, along with other commercial food service equipment. Ovens, grills, ice machines, refrigerators.
120 00:16:44.920 ⇒ 00:16:50.040 Ty: All of it. Anything that’ll go in a commercial kitchen. And they are going to dealers.
121 00:16:50.420 ⇒ 00:17:04.870 Ty: to pitch their portfolio of products, typically exclusive. So, if John Boo’s in their portfolio, then a… one of our competitors is not going to be in their portfolio. I see.
122 00:17:05.560 ⇒ 00:17:13.570 Ty: And… and same with the ovens, the grills, the stoves, and all the other… Products to support commercial cooking.
123 00:17:15.510 ⇒ 00:17:38.720 Ty: then when I… and then those dealers are the ones that are talking to restaurateurs. They’re the ones that are talking to the person who owns the restaurant, or to that big chain, to support a rollout, franchisees, corporate stores, you name it. And the, diverse nature of all those different business models.
124 00:17:38.780 ⇒ 00:17:43.610 Ty: Further, complicates the… the environment.
125 00:17:44.220 ⇒ 00:17:47.330 Ty: Pardon me.
126 00:17:47.590 ⇒ 00:17:50.889 Ty: So… So that’s just one vertical.
127 00:17:51.680 ⇒ 00:17:52.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
128 00:17:52.520 ⇒ 00:18:09.560 Ty: Then we go to consumer, we’ve got our own website. We sell through a third party on Amazon, direct to consumers. On our own website, it’s direct to consumers. We also sell to Sur La Tau, Crate & Barrel, Sonoma. They sell direct to consumers. We also have lines of white label.
129 00:18:09.560 ⇒ 00:18:16.960 Ty: that we campus or LaTob on it, or Williams-Sonoma, and we white label it for them. It’s almost… it’s…
130 00:18:17.000 ⇒ 00:18:25.440 Ty: basically identical to the boards that are on their same shelf as John Boo’s, or as Boo’s block,
131 00:18:25.620 ⇒ 00:18:28.299 Ty: But it has their stamp on it.
132 00:18:28.520 ⇒ 00:18:29.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
133 00:18:29.090 ⇒ 00:18:47.670 Ty: So… and then on the industrial side, you know, it’s direct to global, it’s direct to McMaster Car, but then there are all these other distributors out there that we’ll sell to, might go and talk to a small, locally-owned Ace Hardware.
134 00:18:48.080 ⇒ 00:19:01.520 Ty: Right? So, it… it’s super, super complex. And I, I guess…
135 00:19:01.750 ⇒ 00:19:10.460 Ty: As we’re… as we’re honing in on this, we’re… we’re more focused on the commercial food service side of the business.
136 00:19:10.460 ⇒ 00:19:17.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s exactly kind of a couple of follow-up questions, is like, tell me about how you see the segmentation as a percentage changing.
137 00:19:17.870 ⇒ 00:19:25.600 Uttam Kumaran: Also, you know, I think, Brett, as you alluded to, it seems like most of the onus is on
138 00:19:26.180 ⇒ 00:19:40.440 Uttam Kumaran: margin, and on profit margin, it seems like. But yeah, I would love to maybe start by just hearing about how you see the segmentation shifting over time, and, like, the reasoning behind, like, those goals.
139 00:19:42.170 ⇒ 00:19:59.279 Ty: And I think that gets into the whole product piece that Britt’s talking about, is in that commercial food service, because that is such a heavy part of our business, and it’s a big burden on the business, because of its disjointed current nature.
140 00:19:59.280 ⇒ 00:20:04.800 Ty: When I look at, a stainless steel table as an example.
141 00:20:05.050 ⇒ 00:20:10.120 Ty: On my shelves in inventory, I have a very standard table.
142 00:20:10.660 ⇒ 00:20:28.480 Ty: Two and a half feet deep, it’s 48 inches long, it’s got stainless steel legs, it’s all welded together. That came from overseas. We do that, too, because we’re trying to have things available in stock when needed. Every project needs that.
143 00:20:28.880 ⇒ 00:20:44.900 Ty: But then, shifting up the complexity ladder just a little bit, you have what we call configured-to-order products. So, it could be that very same table built exactly the same, except I need a sink right in the middle of it.
144 00:20:45.230 ⇒ 00:20:45.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
145 00:20:46.350 ⇒ 00:20:57.210 Ty: So, I’m gonna build that from scratch, meaning I’m gonna take flat stainless, throw it on a laser, we’re gonna deburr it, we’re gonna put it up on a panel bender, or, you know, press break.
146 00:20:57.210 ⇒ 00:21:07.310 Ty: To, to bend the steel into shape, and then it’s going to roll down a line, get welded together, those welds are going to get polished, it’s then gonna be put on a crate and shipped to the end customer.
147 00:21:09.170 ⇒ 00:21:20.359 Ty: inside of those options of what I could do, I only talked about a sink, but you could change and you could do a lot of different things. You could change the edge detail, you want a backsplash, you want a marine edge.
148 00:21:20.360 ⇒ 00:21:20.940 Uttam Kumaran: Of course.
149 00:21:20.940 ⇒ 00:21:33.870 Ty: all these different options that you could do to that table. There is kind of this tipping point where we get into what we call… where we shift from configured to order.
150 00:21:34.300 ⇒ 00:21:35.980 Ty: to custom.
151 00:21:36.360 ⇒ 00:21:36.990 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
152 00:21:37.840 ⇒ 00:21:39.540 Ty: Custom is…
153 00:21:39.540 ⇒ 00:21:59.549 Ty: really complex, I want a unique edge detail, it looks like this, I need this particular angle cut in this, I need this type of weld. I’m getting very, very prescriptive about that thing, and that’s what ends up falling kind of out of our standards.
154 00:21:59.710 ⇒ 00:22:00.480 Uttam Kumaran: I see.
155 00:22:00.480 ⇒ 00:22:09.849 Ty: The challenge that John Booz has had is we have built our brand on being everything to everyone, even at our own
156 00:22:10.320 ⇒ 00:22:11.510 Ty: demise.
157 00:22:11.660 ⇒ 00:22:19.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. It’s, I mean, very similar in our business. It starts that way, you know, and… but you have to… you have to…
158 00:22:19.300 ⇒ 00:22:34.770 Uttam Kumaran: you have to standardize and still deliver for the customer, but it requires a lot of data, right? It requires where are… where is the true profit coming from? Where is the demand coming from? Can we backtest new pricing so that we can adjust
159 00:22:34.930 ⇒ 00:22:47.610 Uttam Kumaran: the custom, so that we end up making money, even if we take the burden on shipping, the manufacturing, the risk, right, versus this. Like, who… which of our customers are low-hanging fruit, and so we should say we only do the
160 00:22:47.770 ⇒ 00:22:50.170 Uttam Kumaran: the buy-off-the-shelf stuff for them, so totally…
161 00:22:50.170 ⇒ 00:22:56.580 Britt East: But, Tom, welcome to the intersection of data and culture.
162 00:22:56.990 ⇒ 00:22:57.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, of course.
163 00:22:57.810 ⇒ 00:23:14.029 Britt East: The stories we tell ourselves, that’s what culture is, what makes meaning, makes shared meaning for the individuals here. The stories that we tell ourselves about our business are crucial, and they shape our behaviors every day.
164 00:23:14.140 ⇒ 00:23:19.149 Britt East: And so, like Ty is saying, if we say that we do custom work.
165 00:23:19.290 ⇒ 00:23:36.580 Britt East: all of a sudden, 5, 10 years down the line, it’s like, what the heck are we doing? We don’t… we shouldn’t be over here. This is… we’re not engineered to order, we’re configured to order. How do we… and just because we use that word, you know, a few times to tell ourselves these stories, all of a sudden, it’s like we’ve hypnotized ourself.
166 00:23:36.670 ⇒ 00:23:46.939 Britt East: So, the point here is it’s not just a data project, it’s a cultural shift. Tons of process shift. A process shift.
167 00:23:46.940 ⇒ 00:23:59.449 Britt East: And it’s multifaceted, and it’s tender because the brand is award-winning and beloved, because the people are extraordinarily passionate. The revenue per employee here is off the charts.
168 00:23:59.450 ⇒ 00:24:16.490 Britt East: What we do with the shoestring staff is incredible. And so, these are sacred choices and paths that we’re headed down. And we take you through these stories to help give you a sense of us as people.
169 00:24:16.490 ⇒ 00:24:21.000 Britt East: Because that is gonna be what works here, as opposed to just math.
170 00:24:21.490 ⇒ 00:24:31.899 Britt East: If it was just about the math, then I would just plug it into ChatGPT or something, and we’d be good. But like we said before Ty jumped on, the hard part is the people.
171 00:24:31.910 ⇒ 00:24:46.529 Britt East: And that’s the art that comes in, and so that’s… that’s why we’re taking you on this journey, so that you can get a sense of what you would be stepping into with us, and an engagement. We… we’re looking to build partnerships, we’re not interested in transactions.
172 00:24:46.530 ⇒ 00:24:58.390 Britt East: We want relationships to know people for a long period of time. We want to have a sense of you as a person, that you’ve got confidence, clarity, conviction, broad shoulders, and that we have a bat phone.
173 00:24:58.390 ⇒ 00:25:03.999 Britt East: For when stuff goes south, we won’t get lost in the layers of higher-order clients that you might have.
174 00:25:04.000 ⇒ 00:25:04.580 Uttam Kumaran: Definitely.
175 00:25:04.580 ⇒ 00:25:11.280 Britt East: And so that’s why we kind of take you on this journey. We’re atypical, we’re eccentric, we’re unconventional.
176 00:25:11.280 ⇒ 00:25:26.040 Britt East: But we just tend to be more heart-centered, maybe, than other corporations out there. We’re not necessarily mission-driven, but we tend to approach things as relationships, kind of one friend at a time.
177 00:25:26.360 ⇒ 00:25:26.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
178 00:25:27.700 ⇒ 00:25:29.679 Uttam Kumaran: No, I totally hear you.
179 00:25:29.680 ⇒ 00:25:51.790 Ty: from… and that comes out of necessity. Also, we’re kind of geared… Britt, myself, CEO, we’re all geared that way anyway, but particular to the John Booz dynamic, this business has been… has not been built on systems and data in the backbone. It’s been built on throwing people at problems.
180 00:25:51.810 ⇒ 00:25:56.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So, and all of our people are redlined.
181 00:25:56.420 ⇒ 00:25:57.599 Ty: All the time.
182 00:25:58.410 ⇒ 00:25:59.260 Ty: Okay.
183 00:25:59.430 ⇒ 00:26:03.940 Ty: We are also in a very small, mid-America
184 00:26:04.440 ⇒ 00:26:09.739 Ty: City, with 12,000 population of, like, 12, 13,000.
185 00:26:09.970 ⇒ 00:26:19.039 Ty: So, we’re now at a point where we have to do something, because, frankly speaking, we probably have all the good people in town.
186 00:26:19.830 ⇒ 00:26:36.700 Ty: So we can’t go out and get more people to help us solve problems. We have to leverage systems and process to solve the problems that the people have been relied on for so many years to work around.
187 00:26:36.700 ⇒ 00:26:47.439 Ty: the tribal knowledge, the whole culture, and also, we’re in the midst of shifting that from a very top-down-driven organization, hierarchical in nature.
188 00:26:47.440 ⇒ 00:26:49.980 Ty: To a servant leadership organization.
189 00:26:49.980 ⇒ 00:27:14.890 Ty: And that flips things on its head, because as well-intentioned as that is, the people get shocked by it, because it’s not what they know, even though it feels better, even though they’re being trusted, even though they’re being empowered, and also… and getting, you know, expected to be accounted
190 00:27:14.890 ⇒ 00:27:21.369 Ty: accountable, but also be empowered, whereas before they were accountable with no empowerment. Yeah.
191 00:27:21.910 ⇒ 00:27:28.290 Ty: All of those things are all in this incredible juggle that we’re…
192 00:27:28.290 ⇒ 00:27:28.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
193 00:27:28.620 ⇒ 00:27:30.030 Ty: doing right now.
194 00:27:30.030 ⇒ 00:27:31.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
195 00:27:32.080 ⇒ 00:27:40.100 Ty: So yeah, it’s it’s fun, it’s why we get up every day. It’s not easy, but that’s also.
196 00:27:40.100 ⇒ 00:27:40.860 Britt East: Wild Ride.
197 00:27:40.860 ⇒ 00:28:00.490 Ty: every day, it’s a little bit of wild, wild west, but that’s what gives us the energy to do what we’re doing as leaders and stewards of this business. Because we do care. We care so, so, so deeply. And,
198 00:28:01.210 ⇒ 00:28:17.640 Ty: But it is a lot for people to juggle. We’re trying to move fast, which can also be difficult, because you end up leaving people in your wake unintentionally. You have to turn the boat around and go pull them back out of the water and say, hey, dude.
199 00:28:17.910 ⇒ 00:28:19.940 Ty: I told you, stay in the fucking boat.
200 00:28:19.940 ⇒ 00:28:20.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
201 00:28:20.620 ⇒ 00:28:25.130 Ty: And and just trust me, right? Yeah. So…
202 00:28:25.540 ⇒ 00:28:29.970 Ty: Those are… those are all the various dynamics that we have.
203 00:28:29.980 ⇒ 00:28:46.520 Ty: And… and so you mentioned, product and the profitability and being able to make data decisions. We know that we are a profitable, and by profitable, I mean, we have NDA, right, Britt?
204 00:28:46.880 ⇒ 00:28:47.980 Britt East: No.
205 00:28:47.980 ⇒ 00:28:59.239 Ty: Okay. I’m just gonna say we’re profitable. Sure. Extremely so. And and we do, and our top line is…
206 00:28:59.610 ⇒ 00:29:08.089 Ty: Extremely high for a business of our, of our size in the way of people.
207 00:29:08.200 ⇒ 00:29:18.209 Ty: Typically, a company that does the revenue that we do would have almost twice the number of people that we have today. Heck.
208 00:29:18.210 ⇒ 00:29:21.870 Uttam Kumaran: And so, we’re blinded by our own success.
209 00:29:22.620 ⇒ 00:29:32.219 Ty: because the money’s good, and the profit’s good, but I don’t… but the only reason why I know the profit is good is because at the end of every month, I know how much
210 00:29:32.780 ⇒ 00:29:39.250 Ty: I know how much, Money is in the bank.
211 00:29:39.530 ⇒ 00:29:40.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
212 00:29:40.550 ⇒ 00:29:42.309 Ty: I don’t know.
213 00:29:42.640 ⇒ 00:29:58.730 Ty: if this product was profitable, or this product was profitable, which one was more profitable? My suspicion is that every time we’ve done a custom job, we’ve probably lost money. But I have no means to tell that story, because…
214 00:29:59.130 ⇒ 00:30:10.959 Ty: inside of our current system, there is no structure. There is no structure of all those options I was talking about associated with a product line.
215 00:30:10.960 ⇒ 00:30:12.060 Britt East: It is.
216 00:30:13.140 ⇒ 00:30:14.590 Ty: Product model number?
217 00:30:14.820 ⇒ 00:30:19.700 Ty: Oh, there’s customizations to it, or there’s configuration done to this? Sure.
218 00:30:20.280 ⇒ 00:30:20.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
219 00:30:20.900 ⇒ 00:30:37.070 Britt East: Let me interrupt and be the really jaded cynic, just for the sake of argument. It could be that’s all by design. It could be that the previous leadership didn’t want data, they wanted to manage their fiat and personalities.
220 00:30:37.070 ⇒ 00:30:47.089 Britt East: And that’s just not our MO. We operate… this new leadership team operates on a system of radical transparency and servant leadership.
221 00:30:47.090 ⇒ 00:31:03.340 Britt East: And again, I just keep bringing you back here because the key to working successfully with us is to building a relationship with us as people. I recognize, I’m sure we’re, like, probably the only call you have like this when everybody else is just about.
222 00:31:03.340 ⇒ 00:31:11.179 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, I, I’ll… let me… maybe I’ll… I’ll also share a little bit of our story, and I… and I think I would love to…
223 00:31:11.430 ⇒ 00:31:25.249 Uttam Kumaran: I would say you guys are exactly who the folks that we try to work with, and the type of relationships we try to build. It’s not often the situation in where our clients are upfront with that’s what they actually want.
224 00:31:25.250 ⇒ 00:31:34.659 Uttam Kumaran: Typically, they hire folks like us to solve one problem. They realize that actually what they wanted was a long-term outcomes partner.
225 00:31:34.670 ⇒ 00:31:48.700 Uttam Kumaran: Who can have high agency over problems, and think through not only picking a snowflake or picking a tool, but think about it as tools, as people, and as process.
226 00:31:48.700 ⇒ 00:31:58.939 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re a completely bootstrapped business. It’s a business me and my business partner started just, sort of, with us, and all our backgrounds are delivering data work.
227 00:31:58.940 ⇒ 00:32:12.070 Uttam Kumaran: In startup world, in enterprise world, but really, we’re focused on outcomes. Like, data and AI are just the tools that… what we’re good at. Everybody has different ways of achieving the outcomes. For us.
228 00:32:12.300 ⇒ 00:32:16.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we come from that standpoint, and so we help people make
229 00:32:16.110 ⇒ 00:32:31.109 Uttam Kumaran: the best decisions short-term and long-term on infrastructure. We’re helping them think through why data is even important in a business, and encountering all the exact same pushback that you guys explain, and we’re completely game for that.
230 00:32:31.110 ⇒ 00:32:42.559 Uttam Kumaran: None of that makes me scared at all. In fact, those are… often, it’s when we come into a company with everything figured out, and they have perfect data, and they bring us in, there’s maybe not as much to do.
231 00:32:42.610 ⇒ 00:32:47.559 Uttam Kumaran: Here, I think even with… I would say even before anything.
232 00:32:47.620 ⇒ 00:32:58.599 Uttam Kumaran: for example, if we can even get you a spreadsheet with something that shows something, it might be a huge win, and so we’re aware of that. We’re aware of building something that works.
233 00:32:58.600 ⇒ 00:33:12.919 Uttam Kumaran: Versus building a perfect system and telling the story. We’re also aware of the fact that, yes, there is this dynamic between what we’re doing new and what’s old, but how do you bridge the story? How do you show how data helps those people accomplish those goals?
234 00:33:12.920 ⇒ 00:33:20.429 Uttam Kumaran: and do a lot of, like, managing up. And so we’re… we… we built the whole business through long-term client partners.
235 00:33:20.660 ⇒ 00:33:39.359 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve only been in business a few years, but all of our partners have been with… like, all of our clients, a lot of them are exceeding now over a year. We tend to come in and get small wins and grow. We’re not coming into just, like, high-flying startups. We’re coming into a lot of legacy organizations that have a lot of baggage.
236 00:33:39.360 ⇒ 00:33:56.669 Uttam Kumaran: that are trying to make change, and so we don’t come in and just tear things up and buy new software and go for it. It’s very methodical. And it’s very people-driven. In fact, we come in and try to get some wins, but our job is to go meet everybody, understand their true incentives.
237 00:33:56.670 ⇒ 00:34:01.120 Uttam Kumaran: Understand, well, how can we deliver a win for them, to them… for them to go to their boss.
238 00:34:01.120 ⇒ 00:34:08.190 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of get a data-driven story, and how do we affect their work with data, and show them why it’s important.
239 00:34:08.219 ⇒ 00:34:13.480 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so we’ve dealt with a gamut of folks, people who never measured their businesses.
240 00:34:13.480 ⇒ 00:34:28.869 Uttam Kumaran: that are making a ton of money, people that are measuring a lot, but it’s not gone anywhere, they’ve been sold X amount of software, so we deal with folks in the same boat, but I would say we’re very similar in, like, the relationship approach. As you can tell, like.
241 00:34:28.870 ⇒ 00:34:36.790 Uttam Kumaran: I, you know, I’m happy to go through, and I would say you’ll have confidence that we’re very technical, but that is often, like,
242 00:34:36.790 ⇒ 00:34:47.950 Uttam Kumaran: the least important piece, that is like a checkbox for us, because we can come in, we know how to architect the systems, but unless we have that relationship, there’s no adoption, there’s no trust.
243 00:34:48.360 ⇒ 00:34:59.940 Uttam Kumaran: Britt, as you mentioned, it’s not gonna go right the first time. Dashboards are gonna go down, pipelines are not gonna work. You need to know that you can call me on the phone, and that we have an SLA that will move
244 00:35:00.040 ⇒ 00:35:12.209 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the world to sort of get things done. Like, that is what we do. And that’s our background. None of us are actually consultants by trade, where we come in and we just throw up fancy decks. I would say we’re actually
245 00:35:12.360 ⇒ 00:35:26.289 Uttam Kumaran: we actually just recently learned how to do a lot of that sort of more consultancy-type mindset. Most of what we do is come in and architect great internal systems, and that’s our… that’s our background from industry, and that’s a lot of the clients that we’ve worked with.
246 00:35:26.290 ⇒ 00:35:29.109 Britt East: Tom, remind me where you live again?
247 00:35:29.110 ⇒ 00:35:30.140 Uttam Kumaran: I’m in Austin.
248 00:35:30.140 ⇒ 00:35:35.150 Britt East: Austin, okay, and then your team is entirely remote, and you don’t have an office, you’re in different places, right?
249 00:35:35.150 ⇒ 00:35:46.149 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we have… we have staff, in New York and LA and some folks abroad, but no real, strategy apart from just, like, good engineering talent.
250 00:35:46.150 ⇒ 00:35:47.809 Britt East: Yeah, meeting people where they are, yeah.
251 00:35:47.810 ⇒ 00:35:48.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
252 00:35:48.920 ⇒ 00:35:52.540 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re a completely remote business, completely async business.
253 00:35:52.540 ⇒ 00:35:53.160 Britt East: Yeah.
254 00:35:53.400 ⇒ 00:35:58.539 Ty: What’s the size of the business today, then? Asking more so on the people.
255 00:35:58.540 ⇒ 00:36:14.590 Uttam Kumaran: Sure. Yeah, we have about 15 people, I would say 12 of which are on the engineering side, a mix of data engineers, AI engineers, solution architects, and then me and my business partner sort of play, like, more of the strategist role, and both of us sell, all… all the…
256 00:36:14.790 ⇒ 00:36:16.529 Uttam Kumaran: We sell all the business, you know.
257 00:36:16.980 ⇒ 00:36:17.950 Ty: Gotcha.
258 00:36:18.640 ⇒ 00:36:37.519 Uttam Kumaran: And then we… we do a lot of partnerships, so we have partners with other agencies if we don’t… if we lack the expertise. We, of course, are very opinionated on the software that we bring in, and that is just one part of the equation, just choosing the right tools, but we’ve built great partnerships with them to make sure that our clients get great discounts, get great support.
259 00:36:37.800 ⇒ 00:36:41.649 Uttam Kumaran: And so, yeah, but we’re… we’re… we’re a growing small business.
260 00:36:43.400 ⇒ 00:36:44.170 Ty: Awesome.
261 00:36:47.680 ⇒ 00:36:57.840 Britt East: So, tell me some, Utam, about, your client portfolio in terms of business categories, business size, like, who do you like to work with? Where do you have track records of success?
262 00:36:58.170 ⇒ 00:37:06.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so typically we work with, mid-market and large private businesses, so typically at least $20 million in revenue and up.
263 00:37:06.970 ⇒ 00:37:24.700 Uttam Kumaran: We have a couple clients in the portfolio that are north of 100 million, that we’re working with right now. We have… our… both of our backgrounds are in B2B SaaS, and in e-commerce. So, my business partner worked at Flexport for a while, worked at Ruggable for a while.
264 00:37:24.700 ⇒ 00:37:25.099 Britt East: That works.
265 00:37:25.100 ⇒ 00:37:28.180 Uttam Kumaran: I was at WeWork, I was at a couple of other
266 00:37:28.200 ⇒ 00:37:46.930 Uttam Kumaran: you know, B2B software companies, but each of us also have done stints at pretty large, you know, CPG companies like Athletic Greens. We have a flower… large flower, e-commerce company in the portfolio. We have a large online pharmacy company in the portfolio.
267 00:37:47.310 ⇒ 00:37:56.660 Uttam Kumaran: And increasingly, I would say, over the last 6 months, we’re working with larger and larger businesses, and in fact, you know, what I tell my team is the technical challenge there is actually
268 00:37:56.670 ⇒ 00:38:07.710 Uttam Kumaran: less and less, it’s more of the people and process challenge that we’re having. So, we’re used to working with, you know, companies north of, you know, $50 million in revenue.
269 00:38:07.710 ⇒ 00:38:17.629 Uttam Kumaran: lots of different stakeholders, lots of legacy IT, lots of figuring out access to things methodically and getting in there. You know, we…
270 00:38:17.630 ⇒ 00:38:36.899 Britt East: Let’s get an NDA in place, so we can speak more frankly. In general, we fit your profile there, maybe be on the larger side, but definitely in the sweet spot, so I think that’s a good fit. On the consumer side of the business, we have
271 00:38:36.900 ⇒ 00:38:40.230 Britt East: Well over 100 e-tailors.
272 00:38:40.230 ⇒ 00:38:56.259 Britt East: That represent our products, but it’s consolidated among a top 20, like most things in life. And there’s distinct data sets for the top 20. That’s arbitrary, that’s not the literal number. Sure. And then, on the commercial side.
273 00:38:56.260 ⇒ 00:39:09.260 Britt East: It’s… things get really interesting. That’s where we have a variety of product portfolios, and digital channels. That’s upwards of 500.
274 00:39:09.380 ⇒ 00:39:26.879 Britt East: And, I mean, like, we’re just pushing flyers out to the market. This is the most rudimentary market, like, slow digital adoption, low propensity, and so what we… what we need are ways to find, you know, PIM is a key lever for us, certainly
275 00:39:26.880 ⇒ 00:39:31.760 Britt East: Yes. But how can we leverage that externally to.
276 00:39:31.760 ⇒ 00:39:32.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
277 00:39:32.170 ⇒ 00:39:43.330 Britt East: efficiencies into the market. They’re not used to working with PIMs. We might be one of the first companies any of them have ever worked with in our industry that has a PIM that will be as robust as ours.
278 00:39:43.330 ⇒ 00:40:06.509 Britt East: will at the end of the day. Right now, we’re just, like, publishing PDFs to them, and it’s like, they do their own data management, so how do we start to, engage… these are the kinds of opportunities that we’re thinking through. Definitely the market segmentation that you talked about, you know, HubSpot’s the forcing function there, but, thinking through how we’re going to visualize and parse the data, and
279 00:40:06.510 ⇒ 00:40:25.210 Britt East: That’s just gonna get more and more complicated, you know, until we have a data warehouse and formal BI, in place, when we have… and Ty and I have not even talked about this, we haven’t even had conversations about this, but Ty, we’re going to have asynchronous data where it’s like.
280 00:40:25.210 ⇒ 00:40:47.420 Britt East: the different underlying assumptions are such you cannot get apples to apples without a… Yes, you have to make a decision. And so, like, having standard KPIs through the enterprise become really challenging. We haven’t even gotten there, because we’re still trying to win approval to put in the systems and go through the design and implementation and migration path. So there’s.
281 00:40:47.420 ⇒ 00:40:52.639 Ty: We’re still trying to figure out what we actually do with it. We’re still trying to understand what.
282 00:40:52.640 ⇒ 00:40:53.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
283 00:40:53.770 ⇒ 00:41:00.210 Ty: And have spent the better part of the last couple of years just discovering.
284 00:41:00.790 ⇒ 00:41:17.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, just doing a ton of discovery on what data is even available. I mean, so it seems clear, Britt, that there’s two… that there’s objective around this ERP migration that I would say is kind of, like, driving a lot of the ship, per se. Are there also any additional, like.
285 00:41:17.240 ⇒ 00:41:26.320 Uttam Kumaran: time-based, Like, achievements that are going for it all sort of ladders into into… that execution.
286 00:41:26.570 ⇒ 00:41:27.400 Britt East: So…
287 00:41:28.520 ⇒ 00:41:35.070 Britt East: The business does not know what it’s asking of, I’ll just say, me. Yeah. As a straw man, as a proxy.
288 00:41:35.070 ⇒ 00:41:35.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
289 00:41:35.510 ⇒ 00:41:49.570 Britt East: like, this is just not done, and I’m just being kind of nice about it. But it’s like, the kind of radical transformation and pin-up demand that we’re addressing. I mean, usually ERP is a big enough project for an entire business.
290 00:41:49.570 ⇒ 00:41:50.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
291 00:41:50.060 ⇒ 00:42:04.549 Britt East: 18 months, to do every domain simultaneously is a little bit screwy. And so we’re going to need to be really pragmatic in how we sequence this stuff. You know, signing an agreement is very different than cutting over to a system.
292 00:42:04.550 ⇒ 00:42:05.090 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.
293 00:42:05.160 ⇒ 00:42:09.130 Britt East: Well, I guess, tell me, what is, like, a short-term win for you?
294 00:42:09.130 ⇒ 00:42:18.099 Uttam Kumaran: if you would… if you would think about a data partner that would come in and support, what is the… of course, there’s the discovery piece, there’s a long-term strategy.
295 00:42:18.100 ⇒ 00:42:18.480 Britt East: Right.
296 00:42:18.480 ⇒ 00:42:25.150 Uttam Kumaran: But what is, like, hey, if this was enabled, like, okay, like, we’re… it’s a… it’s a big win.
297 00:42:25.150 ⇒ 00:42:47.129 Britt East: So part of it’s going to be… I’m gonna answer your question, and part of it is also going to be you continuing to tout your capabilities in specific facets of data science. For instance, you’ve kind of broadly alluded to data enrichment. So, after we go through initial remediation, there’s all sorts of enrichment we could do.
298 00:42:47.130 ⇒ 00:42:47.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
299 00:42:47.590 ⇒ 00:43:04.550 Britt East: the board. And I think that is a fairly immediate, you know, in the next few months opportunity. Our calendar year aligns… our budget year aligns with the calendar year, fiscal year, so, you know, we’re probably talking 2026 at this point.
300 00:43:04.550 ⇒ 00:43:28.669 Britt East: We’re going through the budgeting process now. Great. It’s not a stringent process, it’s not like it has to be in, or you have to wait a whole year. It’s not like that here. It’s kind of loosey-goosey in certain respects, but we’re mapping out initiatives and approaches for the year. So as we go through initial remediation, if we have challenges, that’s an opportunity for you, but also taking that data and
301 00:43:28.670 ⇒ 00:43:47.110 Britt East: and enriching it, I think, is, like, maybe a first kind of proof of concept, get to know each other. That’s what works well for us, like, incremental, light work, getting used to transacting as businesses, and then mainly building relationships and trust as people.
302 00:43:47.110 ⇒ 00:43:52.220 Britt East: That tends to be… work well here, as opposed to just Big Bang, whole hog.
303 00:43:52.220 ⇒ 00:43:55.669 Uttam Kumaran: No, we’re very similar. I would say all of our clients
304 00:43:55.960 ⇒ 00:44:10.869 Uttam Kumaran: for us, we don’t bite off more than we could chew, but we… we try to over-deliver. And then we have conversations of, hey, like, we’ve, you know, we’ve done very sophisticated pricing analysis. I actually failed, and we… we worked with a steel manufacturer before,
305 00:44:10.870 ⇒ 00:44:21.490 Uttam Kumaran: you know, based out of Georgia, and they have a… their primary, mode of selling was through a B2B e-com, you know, website that they build, and we help them optimize that whole thing about how people.
306 00:44:21.490 ⇒ 00:44:21.980 Britt East: We’re putting in.
307 00:44:21.980 ⇒ 00:44:23.220 Uttam Kumaran: POs, the outputs.
308 00:44:23.220 ⇒ 00:44:35.339 Britt East: Thank you for saying that, because I forgot, in my storytelling, I got wrapped up in the numbers. Some of the 500-ish, on the commercial side, some are e-com and some are not.
309 00:44:35.340 ⇒ 00:44:49.930 Britt East: And so, there’s tons of opportunities. It’s like, I don’t even know how we’re driving and managing that e-com business. I have not looked at that at all. What statistics are we getting back? How is that being managed? How are we managing these channel partners, if at all?
310 00:44:49.930 ⇒ 00:44:50.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
311 00:44:50.290 ⇒ 00:44:58.670 Britt East: giving and carte blanche and crossing our fingers. So, there’s tons of opportunities. Ty and I just need to go into the woodshed and map it out. Like I said.
312 00:44:58.670 ⇒ 00:44:59.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
313 00:44:59.050 ⇒ 00:45:02.659 Britt East: Okay, because we have platform providers, we have independent software vendors.
314 00:45:02.660 ⇒ 00:45:03.360 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, totally.
315 00:45:03.360 ⇒ 00:45:09.400 Britt East: We have agency parts, so it’s like we’re coming at it from multiple angles, and we need to choreograph everything.
316 00:45:09.400 ⇒ 00:45:34.400 Britt East: So I think in terms of next steps as we kind of come to the hour, NDA, so we can talk frankly, if you can send me your paper, we’re pretty easy, so I’ll sign that. And then, continue to have conversations. We’ll get a meeting on the books, but Ty and I will talk offline and kind of look for opportunities to do, like, a proof of concept on a specific
317 00:45:34.400 ⇒ 00:45:42.459 Britt East: use case, and so you can get to know us, we get to know you and stuff. And then continued storytelling, even through email, asynchronously, like, we’re.
318 00:45:42.460 ⇒ 00:45:47.019 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m happy to, you know, I would love to send you some more in-depth about some case… I have some case.
319 00:45:47.020 ⇒ 00:45:47.760 Britt East: Awesome.
320 00:45:47.760 ⇒ 00:45:55.990 Uttam Kumaran: slides and one-pagers I’ll get over to you that are pretty in-depth, and again, hopefully we can show our technical depth, but again, like, we’re also…
321 00:45:56.000 ⇒ 00:46:10.420 Uttam Kumaran: for me, where I’m confident is that, apart from other orgs that may want you to sign huge engagements up front, like, even if you want to start with us on, like, hey, just come spend time with us on an hourly basis, and just do this.
322 00:46:10.420 ⇒ 00:46:23.550 Uttam Kumaran: and we start there, and we grow, we’re totally fine. Like, for us, we… we’re biasing towards long-term relationships where we can really affect, and without the trust, like, we can’t do anything, even if we have all the data. And so…
323 00:46:23.570 ⇒ 00:46:42.840 Uttam Kumaran: for us, it’s… I think we’re aligned there, so we’re happy to move at your pace. I will say that we have a heartbeat internally, that we have a sense of urgency, and so we do try to make sure that we enable you, through various and different methods, to sell the story of data internally. We proactively think about opportunities once we come in and look at
324 00:46:42.840 ⇒ 00:46:50.599 Uttam Kumaran: the history, we do our own sort of, like, 80-20 analysis on what is short-term versus long-term, so you don’t have in us, like, a…
325 00:46:50.690 ⇒ 00:46:59.510 Uttam Kumaran: like, a engineering dev shop. Like, that’s not what we do. We are… we have to be a partner. We don’t operate… we don’t do any sort of,
326 00:46:59.780 ⇒ 00:47:15.140 Uttam Kumaran: subcontracting, dev shop work, all of our clients are our own clients, where we have… we sell directly to the C-suite or the operators in the company, and we typically either manage a fractional data team, or we’re coming on to manage a different division or KPI.
327 00:47:15.140 ⇒ 00:47:15.660 Britt East: I know.
328 00:47:15.660 ⇒ 00:47:17.590 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t do anything where it’s, like.
329 00:47:18.240 ⇒ 00:47:21.849 Uttam Kumaran: 10 engineers somewhere for some amount of work, like, that is not how we.
330 00:47:21.850 ⇒ 00:47:27.319 Britt East: And it’s music to our ears, that’s exactly what we want, and we really like you, otherwise we wouldn’t be on the call.
331 00:47:27.320 ⇒ 00:47:28.019 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate it.
332 00:47:28.020 ⇒ 00:47:37.370 Britt East: let’s keep the conversation going, and you know, like I said, we’ll find another time to touch base on the calendar in the not-too-distant future. We have a lot going on right now with.
333 00:47:37.370 ⇒ 00:47:45.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’ll send you stuff, and again, I’m happy to talk async, or if we… if even Looms, if you want me to explain things, happy to do that, so…
334 00:47:45.220 ⇒ 00:47:45.700 Britt East: Awesome.
335 00:47:45.700 ⇒ 00:47:51.760 Uttam Kumaran: whatever’s easiest, and I can also send my phone number, like, whatever gives you guys confidence, or however I can help. Please, yeah.
336 00:47:51.760 ⇒ 00:47:57.469 Britt East: Yeah, thank you, really appreciate it. Hey, Ty, I don’t want to wrap it up. Do you have any other questions or comments?
337 00:47:57.470 ⇒ 00:48:02.490 Ty: No, I really appreciate the conversation. Tom, wonderful to meet you.
338 00:48:03.420 ⇒ 00:48:07.339 Ty: Impressive stuff. I really appreciate the engagement.
339 00:48:07.730 ⇒ 00:48:10.169 Ty: And, so thank you.
340 00:48:10.470 ⇒ 00:48:20.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s really inspiring to hear, like, the work you guys are doing. It’s a really complicated project, so I… I know how hard it is to hold the marathon and, like, the next.
341 00:48:20.390 ⇒ 00:48:23.499 Britt East: baton pass in your head at the same time. It is…
342 00:48:23.500 ⇒ 00:48:39.159 Uttam Kumaran: I… we built this… we built… we’re building this business, too, while I’m on this conversation, so very, very aware of… of, what’s going on in your guys’ brain, and how hard some of those questions I asked today can be, so, I think it’s, I appreciate you guys sharing, so thank you.
343 00:48:39.160 ⇒ 00:49:00.230 Britt East: Yeah, we’ll definitely find something to do together, so we can get to know each other better, and like you said, just send me some stuff, NDAs and case studies, we’ll take a look, and we’ll find… we’ll get on your calendar to touch base. We’re getting… we’re in a very volatile time, so we’re getting lots of new information rapidly, and it’ll start to come together here, and then, you know, because data’s…
344 00:49:00.320 ⇒ 00:49:10.479 Britt East: really the whole ballgame for us. Yeah. And so it’s gonna start to come together, and there’ll be some opportunities for you, and so we just gotta… we just gotta map it all out, so we’re not duplicating efforts.
345 00:49:10.710 ⇒ 00:49:28.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and certainly, if I can help with… we procure a lot of software, so if I can be helpful on getting you guys best discounts, and we have… it’s a small world in the data world, right? So, I would say for all of our clients, we’re like, just don’t get sweet-talked by vendors. So if we can help there, at least that’s a good place to use us, so…
346 00:49:28.580 ⇒ 00:49:30.350 Britt East: Yeah, alright, cool.
347 00:49:30.350 ⇒ 00:49:30.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect.
348 00:49:30.900 ⇒ 00:49:34.810 Britt East: Thank you for your time, we really appreciate it, and it was great to see you again.
349 00:49:34.810 ⇒ 00:49:36.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thanks both, appreciate it.
350 00:49:36.640 ⇒ 00:49:37.400 Britt East: Next time.