Meeting Title: Brainforge x Jason - LMNT Date: Dec 1 Meeting participants: Shivani, Awaish Kumar, Jason
Transcript:
Me: Hello. N.
Them: Good. Sorry. I’m calling from my vehicle. I’ve got a pickup duties for my kids. I’m just hanging out in the parking lot doing calls here.
Me: Have the best quality out of all of us, like, video quality. I feel like. It’s like, I don’t know if you’re. Are you on your laptop?
Them: What kind of. I am.
Me: Okay, that’s not like set a phone. It’s like 4K. Well, it looks like nice weather. Somewhere.
Them: It’s sunny California, I cannot complain.
Me: Nice. Okay, okay. Great. Cool. So I can drive things, Shivani. You know, I can set the stage. So, basically, Jason, you. I mean, you’re in the stock. You kind of. I know. Saw you poking around, just trying to get a lay of the land. On, like, infrastructure. I think more of where I’m interested in is, like, to hear about how we’ve done things to date and, like, sort of like where things are headed and then, like, how we can best support you. As we’re, you know, helping to sort of move this data platform along, let me, we, we work with a lot of, you know, different tech teams. And I, and I know these, these are a lot of questions, some of which we may not have the answer to today, but these are for all the things we try to consider.
Them: Sure.
Me: You know? You know, so want to make sure that we. We get everything, but.
Them: Yep.
Me: I don’t know. Or, like, I don’t know, we. It’s not a priority. It’s totally a fine answer to any of these, but, yeah, maybe we can just start from, you know, your diagram. Is that a good place to start? And like, what. What do you think?
Them: Maybe. Maybe start with just kind of a brief, kind of like, continuation of when we first started talking about kind of some of the background. With how we’ve been doing reporting first and kind of and then we can kind of dive in. And then definitely, as I was kind of going through some of the doc or some of the questions in the doc, there are going to be ones that I can’t answer or also it’ll be questions that we want to ask other folks as well. And it kind of speaks to kind of the disparateness of, like, how we’ve been doing everything here. Right. So and so with that, just as things we probably talked about a little bit when we were first being introduced. But, you know, the biggest thing is, is from a tech team perspective, It’s. We have traditionally been the ones responsible for kind of like the Shopify and our 3PL integration. So it’s like website and, you know, integrating that through. We’ve got a custom middleware that takes the Shopify orders. And then pushes them to our three pl. In the past, it was a company called where to Go. They they were recently acquired by Stored. We are in the process of updating our APIs to like, use the stored APIs and then kind of pushing that forward. Now, the reason I bring that up is because when we first created this diagram, we actually had another vendor help us create this diagram is there were a lot of open questions as well, because there are some systems that either myself or Steve, who’s he’s kind of like our he’s our lead developer. You know head of engineer from that perspective. Even he hasn’t had any, like, ties to them because they’ve all been kind of set up by, by a third party vendors.
Me: Right.
Them: So when it comes to reporting, we’ve even seen some of that as well. So, for example, You know, you. We talked about Source Medium as being, like, our main, like, acquisition dashboards, if you will. That was something that was set up by, like, the Source Medium folks. Prior to myself or Steve both coming on board, and it’s been almost entirely managed. By them. Including. And honestly, I don’t know if we’ve even made any changes to the. The connectors that we have. That, that populate that, so.
Me: Funny. We just. We just talked them for the last hour, by the way, so.
Them: Oh, okay, awesome.
Me: But checks out basically.
Them: Okay, cool, cool. So and I only bring that up. And that’s why I say, like, there are some parts where I said, oh, you know what, Jacob and Best might be the best people to talk to these. So these apps. And then you’ve got some questions around. For example, like, the marketing apps and, like, based on what you’ve seen on some of those. And, like, actually, that’s gonna be a question more for Carlos, because cars, like, administer those apps, so that’s a long way of saying,
Me: Okay? We’re asking everybody. There’s a lot of overlap between some of the questions we’re asking.
Them: Okay, cool.
Me: Part of which can be, hey, that’s. That’s totally in them. Part of this is also just to get your perspective on, like, hey, maybe we own this, but like, we shouldn’t, or, like, it’s not being owned. Well, we’re like. I’m trying to also just gather sort of the. Lore behind.
Them: Yeah. Yeah.
Me: Some of the decisions as well.
Them: Well, it’s kind of funny. Is, since I’ve been here, kind of one of the things that. That I’ve been thinking about is, well, how should tech be owning more of this stuff? Because when it comes to supports, typically what happens is they’ll ask us, and we’ll be like, all right, we’ve never touched this, this before, but we can kind of give you, you know, the two sense of, like, how we think we might be happening. So, you know, for example, like, even though we don’t own the CX systems like Gorgeous and Guru. You know, every time there’s a question that comes up, inevitably we get pulled in. Do you know how to fix this? And, you know, we kind of figured out. Right. But it does kind of, you know, lend itself to a broader question of, like, how much are the stacks. Should we own?
Me: Okay? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about that? Like, you know, because there, there is always, you know, and again, the reason why everything sort of goes. A lot of our questions is around, of course, marketing and sales. But do you consider, like, the platform all, like, basically software vendors and like, the configuration, the access, the integrations?
Them: Yeah.
Me: Do you find that, like those that should be owned by the teams themselves. Is it sort of like. Well, if they own it, then they’re gonna. Yeah.
Them: I think. I think we could. I think I’m okay with the teams owning it by themselves, but I think tech should be aware of what’s happening. Because inevitably, like, something breaks. And they don’t know who to reach out to.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Right. Like, you know, all of the marketing software, for example, like those dashboards. I don’t. I don’t touch. Right. And. And a lot of those integrations are kind of plug and play, so we haven’t really had to do much other than, for example, throw a pixel in, you know, on the website and, like, things work. So I’m okay.
Me: Sure.
Them: With, you know, someone like Carlos, like, kind of like owning it, if you will. And then he reaches out, like, when the support needed. There have been some other applications that have just taken up more of our time where he said, all right, guys, we got to stop. It’s like, if we’re going to be putting in this much support, we should have a better. We won’t wish I had better visibility. And we should have a better, like, vote in the room about how it’s done. Right. So I added a new one, for example, under the analytics, like anything else. Sorry, I didn’t highlight that when it read, but in the bottom of the screen, there’s one called Element Ops. So this was like a dashboard that was essentially vibe coded by someone who’s no longer here, that consolidates all of the incoming spreadsheets and, like, certificates of authentication, and like anything that’s. Inventory related. And he used a variety of tools that were all open source, including, like, screen readers, you know, to, like, put together some dashboards. I talked about, like, you know, what the inventory was of our, you know, raw products, as well as, like, our, our inventory that we have, like, at where to go that has since proven to be a nightmare to maintain. So we’re saying, guys.
Me: Okay? Yes. Okay?
Them: This is going to go away when we move over to store it anyways, because one of the major integrations is. Is where to go. And when that goes away, we’re going to come up with a whole different architecture, you know, for this so you can still get the data that you want. You know, but, you know, done in a way that, like, the tech team can support it. Feels good about. So when it comes to, like, larger items in our stack, and this is probably going to have to be a conversation that’s, like, within this group here, and then me bringing in Andy and Steve on our tech team to talk about as well, it’s like, what is, like, what is going to be the recommendation for like, what the infrastructure techniques look like for the bi part of it. So, you know, in a sense, like, not to say that we get a say, but, like, we feel comfortable with how you’re integrating the data, you know? Yeah. Okay. Let’s say. Let’s call it. Let’s call it what it is. Yeah. So, yeah.
Me: No. Why not? I usually gotta say I don’t mind. Gonna say. I actually really need you to have a say, to be honest.
Them: So. Yeah. So we want to be the one that say yeah. What they’re saying makes sense. And, like, this is something that we feel can be supported in a way that makes sense. There’s any suggestion. So as we, like, go further down and you say, hey, this is what we’re thinking about. Like, we’re thinking about this piece, you know, X number components here. And then, like, how we’re going to integrate it, you know, I’d love to get that reviewed by the team as well, to say, oh, yeah, this all makes sense, or, like, is there any suggestions that we have? You know, so.
Me: Okay? Sure. Additionally, I will say, like, we are also kind of going through a discovery of. Finding all the sources of analytics and data. So if you can use us as a wedge.
Them: Y.
Me: To, like, understand those and understand, like, are they being supported or the scope of it.
Them: Eah. Yep.
Me: I think that’s, like, you should totally, you know, leverage us in that way, too, because we’re gonna go. And again, this is where, like, I. I totally get what you’re saying, which is you sort of become the support of last resort. I’m just like, this thing’s broken. Like, can you. Fix it.
Them: Cool. Yeah.
Me: I think we’re now here to support a lot of that, probably on the reporting side. But also, one of the things, you know, I talked to Shivani about is like, we, we hope to find opportunities for consolidation and simplification. If that’s, like, kind of part of the, the mandate and not just for like, let’s just reduce costs. But I, I will say it won’t be, it won’t be surprising if we find a couple systems that do the same thing. We find legacy system. So we’re a good way while we gonna do discovery, we’ll translate that all to you and make sure that ends up in these, in this architecture.
Them: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Me: Yeah, this is not. I’ve seen this exact. We have another customer that’s, you know, similar size. That’s a very similar thing where they. They sort of built their own, you know, back end and talking to Shopify and Inventory, but. But again, similar. Like they’re sort of the integration.
Them: Yeah.
Me: They’re folks, right? And now they’re. They also had a bunch of, like. They migrated something from their own custom thing to shopify. They set up netsuite, but they were. That was like, what they were kind of owning. So it’s good to hear that like there is this migration at least of like this element ops to stored does the netsuite. Fall under you or, like, how does that. Like, what is the. Like what? Is the. I mean, that. That is like, I have one section just on. On that, but it’s kind of on maybe on theme, just to hear about, like, where the ownership is.
Them: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re not driving that project. It’s mostly driven under. So Phil, who run Shivani team, he’s driving the mostly with the finance and the supply chain team. We’re definitely involved as well. We’re going to be providing a kind of like the integration support into nsuite with whatever’s needed, mostly for the. Shopify side and those components there, so. But. I know that product is still very much early days, you know, so it’s a little bit unclear about what are going to be the asks.
Me: Yeah.
Them: On our side about what we’re what we need to integrate to now, back when we were still trying to integrate to or implement sage.
Me: Okay? Yes.
Them: Different ERP system. Our team we had selected Soligo to help broker the data from Shopify.
Me: Okay?
Them: Into sage.
Me: Yeah.
Them: The next step was going to be Amazon’s data into stage. And those are going to be like the first two proof points. @ that point, we didn’t really know kind of what was going on. But, you know, since that project kind of stopped, I imagine it’s going to be something similar. I mean, the beauty of Soldigo’s already got a lot of pre built. Shopify connectors. So we hope to take advantage of a lot of the pre built integrations. Whereas when we were going with Sage, everything was custom. So we, we worked and we worked with Soligo’s professional services to get most of that set up, which is, you know, not been put on pause, but, you know. If it. If it’s related to Shopify, definitely it’s us.
Me: Yes. Okay? Okay? Okay?
Them: Anything that kind of touches, like, the sales data from that perspective, you know, we’ll probably have, you know, some visibility into it for sure when it comes to some of the kind of like the. Like some of the. Like, the inventory systems we’ve been less involved with. Although we’re getting more involved about how it’s done because of that Element Ops dashboard that we talked about before. A lot of the AC.
Me: Yeah. So when? When without you involved, how are some of the integrations getting managed? Or is it like, how? Like. You know what I mean.
Them: Yeah. Can you give me an example?
Me: Is there? Yeah. I guess I. What I’m asking is, like. Are there technical integrations that are being built, I mean, outside of, of Shopify, like, for inventory or otherwise? And are those just like, people are using native connectors within various platforms? And then, okay.
Them: Yeah.
Me: Okay?
Them: I mean, you’re kind of like, opening up the can of worms that is the Element Ops dashboard. Right, so, long story short was.
Me: I’m just gonna. I’m. I’m just here to ask some questions, so I’m not. Yeah.
Them: No, ask the questions. Right. So, long story short was there’s a lot of, like, data that’s out there. That was all getting pulled manually. We had an analyst, you know, who’s no longer here, but you said, oh, I can automate this, and he just did it. Without. Without us know. Without us knowing. And then one day we were told. Why do we have this element ops.com domain? You know, on our. On our. On our namecheap account. And then. And then we kind of dug a little bit more into it, and then we figured out what was going on, and it was like, oh.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Anyways, I don’t want to bash too much on the system, but that, that was going to like a full rewrite there. That, that’s, that’s probably the only example where we’ve had like a lot of like really like no involvement before. Otherwise the involvement with third party system has been pretty light because the integration has been pretty stable. You know, from that perspective there.
Me: I don’t know. Okay? Okay? Yeah.
Them: So if I don’t know the answer, we could probably find it pretty quickly. It’s just I might not have that knowledge right away. Only because we haven’t touched it in so long right now. And a good example of that is like the source medium data.
Me: Okay? Yeah.
Them: You know, so we use Livar for kind of a lot of that acquisition. So, you know, Elevar has like, you know, a pub sub integration that I know source media taps into, and they’re the ones that kind of set that all up. They also sent to a Google Analytics platform. So we use ga as well. But when it comes to acquisition reporting, like a lot of that source of truth is coming from from the source medium dashboards that are there.
Me: Okay, okay. Great. So, yeah, I mean, on the netsuite side, again, talking about, like, next year, like, I mean, data will be, like, one of the big downstream consumers of that data. So whether we figure out, like, we have another client that has, like, a ODBC hookup into Redshift, and then we’re sort of like we’re sort of downstream of that. I guess my question is, you know, right now, very commonly when you’re reporting on Shopify,
Them: Yep.
Me: It’s mainly just using, like, you know, probably. I’m not recommending an ETL tool that we can pipe that, but is there data sitting in S3 or in sort of a data lake anywhere? Or any type of, like. Okay. Cool.
Them: Yeah. The. The answer really is Source Medium. Right. So there’s an integration for Shopify. Or I think they kind of from the API there.
Me: Yes.
Them: And a lot of the data lives there.
Me: Ok? Ay. Okay?
Them: Yep.
Me: Okay. I mean, otherwise, I think on. Yeah, I mean, I think we will also. How far along are you on the stored? Like, process. And is that something that we should keep in mind in terms of making sure we get data out of that?
Them: Yeah. I think we need to keep that in mind. Yeah. Cuz that’s going to go live in January.
Me: Okay?
Them: So on the development side, I mean, essentially, we’re just doing user testing right now. And. And, you know, so Andy on the tech team, he’s the one that’s been responsible for that. But we’re basically just like, you know, just doing all of our kind of like, last minute testing to edge cases right now.
Me: Okay?
Them: That would go live in January. And at that point there will be fully on the stored like API framework. So when it comes to kind of getting any data from there, they’ll be the guys that will want to talk to to understand how we want to pull the data from stored. Because. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, they’ll be the guys they want to talk to on how do we want to pull the data from stored into, you know, whatever we’re going to do on the bi side.
Me: And then on the architecture diagram, you know, I see Triple whale. I see L of R. Are those all still valid?
Them: Yep. LB is definitely valid. Triple whale. Great question about triple wheel, because that’s the one that no one knew anything about. So.
Me: Triple Whale is like. It’s similar to L of R. It’s similar to North Beam. It’s just acquisition attribution.
Them: Yeah. I think at. At one point we were playing with it. I. That’s when again, I’d have to ask Carlos if we’re still using here, but when we created this doc. So we created a stock back in October.
Me: Okay? Okay?
Them: Of 2024.
Me: I was going to say that’s, like, not that long ago, but. Yeah. No, no, no. That is. That is kind of long. I thought you’re going to say, like, this past October, like, two months ago. I was like, okay, a lot’s changed.
Them: And that’s not that long ago. And I was like, who knows? No, no, no, no. It was. It was about a year ago when this document created.
Me: Okay?
Them: And no one really knew if we were still using it or not.
Me: Okay? So we can find out.
Them: And that’s kind of why you see it, just kind of floating the ether right there.
Me: From. Yeah.
Them: Yeah, it’s. It’s unclear if. Anyone’s using it, but we did have that as a shop app that was installed.
Me: Okay? So we’ll. I’ll find out.
Them: Yeah.
Me: And then how about G? So GA is all like you’re is. There’s teams using GA for all web analytics.
Them: We still use Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics for conversion. Some conversion data that we have.
Me: Okay?
Them: As well as just some pipeline analysis. That’s there.
Me: Great. Okay, perfect. Are you using any. Is there. Are there any. Is there. Are you guys using any reforms or surveys? Typically we see like form, stack or jot form or type form.
Them: We do use jotform. We do use Typeform as well. I’m trying to think.
Me: And is that for, like, post purchase? Is that for, like, user surveys? Is it like, is that for.
Them: It’s not, actually. So. So we’ve got three types of forms. Also an issue that we’re trying consolidating, and we’re actually trying to get off a jotform and Typeform. Typeform is used every now and then. Like, we’ll do like a campaign where we just need to get a quick form out there. You know, for like our lemonade stand campaign, for example, if somebody wanted to, like, submit a nomination to win a lemonade stand, we use Typeform for that. Integration went into an Excel spreadsheet and then like our 16 kind of processor from there. We also use Typeform for our wholesale application. Process. So right now, like, our wholesale application is all. I mean, base. It’s all spreadsheet driven. At this point right now. So anything that goes from Typeform goes to the spreadsheet. Same with form.
Me: Okay?
Them: I. I can’t. I honestly. I don’t know the reason why we use both Jotform anti forum. But we do. So some forms are just native to Jotform, and other forms are new to type form. But we do have an initiative that we’re trying to basically kind of get off of both those forms and make them all native. And then, yeah, makeup, all native and then just all the inputs. Then just get put into, like, a postgres, you know, setup or something like that. But that’s a design effort that we’ve only started planning. That will probably just roll into it like, as. As needed.
Me: Okay?
Them: Yeah, that’s. That’s work that we’re going to start in the first half of Q1.
Me: And that’s something you’ll just build, like, using, like, react forms and just build something, okay?
Them: Yeah. Yeah.
Me: Mainly for me. It’s just like, if we need, like, I just kind of form data as something that’s always sort of out there somewhere. So I just want to know that we’re not proposing new forms using those or. Really sweet.
Them: No, we’re not printing new forms. If, if it is going to be new form, it’s going to be a system where it’ll be all native and then as of now at least, it’ll just, it’ll just lie in like in a post crest thing. And then if we want to push that data to, like, a data lake from there. We can do that.
Me: That’s perfect. That’s fine. Okay? And then I guess I also see yo. So.
Them: Yep. We do use.
Me: We’re using. Okay, great. No problem there. Refersion. Is that what it’s called?
Them: Yeah. Refersion is a system that we use for our partner affiliation. So if somebody comes through a partner page, we’ll use a version like the refersion technology to basically, like, Identify? Yeah, identify. Like who the. Who do you refer was to do partner payouts?
Me: I see back into who it is. Yeah. Who came from. Okay? Are they? Pretty good at first. I’ve heard of them.
Them: System that I’ve not touched.
Me: Okay, okay. All right.
Them: It’s It. I would definitely. This is definitely one of those legacy systems. I don’t know enough about myself.
Me: Okay? So see Rob pull your version. Shipping data. Are we. Is that all three pl. Are we doing stuff direct with. The big shipment providers. Like our shippo or.
Them: All of our shipping all of our shipping is going to come from. From stored.
Me: Okay. Okay, great.
Them: For all of our. For all of our dtc orders. We have a separate system. That sends things to, like, our big box retailers like Walmart. And target. That’s their sps commerce.
Me: Okay? But you don’t like even for labels and stuff. It’s all done through forge. Through storage. Sorry.
Them: Give me one second. Say that one more time.
Me: For labels and things like that. It’s all done through stored.
Them: Yeah, Stored handles all that.
Me: Okay? Cool. Like you guys don’t have any direct contracts with FedEx or anything like that.
Them: No.
Me: Okay? Okay? Okay? Okay. Are you guys doing a B testing on Shopify? Like, for pricing or anything.
Them: We’ve started doing some a B testing. We? We’re trying a new tool called Convert, if you’ve heard of them. We literally just launched our first convert test, like, two weeks ago. Prior to that, our A B testing has been super light. And it’s just always kind of a sequential. We’re test version A first and then B next. But we’ve never done anything that’s been, like, too complicated. We’re trying to get more into that, but right now it’s. It’s pretty light.
Me: Yeah, we. We’ve done some work with Intelligence. That’s usually who we recommend. It’s been.
Them: Okay?
Me: They’ve been great, but. Yeah, just interesting to. To hear about. Okay. Let’s see. Okay, I see. Super metric. So you guys using supermetrics. Someone. Someone. It’s another one of, like someone’s using, okay?
Them: I don’t know if we are anymore.
Me: Still find out.
Them: Yeah.
Me: What I kind of want to do is just find any sort of output area for reporting, and then that’s like, kind of like what we’re going to surface, so. Okay, that’s helpful.
Them: Y. Eah, the main ones I know that people are using, it’s going to be the source medium stuff. G.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Carlos is going to be the right person to talk to when it comes to all, like, any additional kind of, like, acquisition reports.
Me: Y. Eah.
Them: And then what it uses out of Amazon. So he’s going to be the main resource for that. I. Unfortunately, I just don’t touch his world as much.
Me: Okay? Okay?
Them: When it comes to things like. Triple whale super metrics. Those are those legacy systems that I think at one point people use. But I, you know, when I’ve asked around for that and I asked, is anybody use this anymore? Everyone’s like, haven’t heard of it. Or the answer has been, like, I don’t know. Think we use that anymore? So everyone’s been clear about it? Yeah.
Me: Okay. Yeah. One thing we can do is probably as part of this process, help help get this updated, too, and include some of the data stuff. So where does this diagram live, by the way?
Them: Y. Eah. It’s just a.
Me: Is this in.
Them: Google Drive somewhere.
Me: Okay. Okay. If. Can I get the original image?
Them: Yeah, it was.
Me: At some point. I can. I can message you on slack for it’s not. Not urgent.
Them: Yeah. I pulled this from. Kind of a fig jam kind of thing. Where it lived, but let me get you access to that.
Me: Okay, okay. And then also like within the E commerce budget we saw like wbx, JJ Marketing, Tatari, third party. These all agencies.
Them: Those are going to be all questions for Carlos.
Me: Okay?
Them: Yep.
Me: Great. Let’s see. Okay, maybe on top in terms of infrastructure. Are we. Is it. Are we all. Are we on, like, one sort of infra, like, aws, ccp, Azure, like, or.
Them: We use DigitalOcean to host our stuff.
Me: Okay?
Them: Yeah, it’s all digitalocean.
Me: Like. Any sort of preferences or restrictions, or are we just trying to keep everything within. That ecosystem.
Them: Keep it lightweight.
Me: Okay?
Them: And I’d say, once again, legacy. And if it hasn’t breaking, if it hasn’t broke it or haven’t had a need to push it over, we haven’t done it.
Me: No, that’s. Okay? Okay? No, that’s fair. I’m just trying to get what. What your vision is, so I don’t. We don’t come with any bias, so. Like, are we doing. Do you have any, like, are you doing all backups and anything, like, within. DigitalOcean basically. Or like, I guess that there’s no like for backups or any sort of data storage.
Them: Say that. One more.
Me: Like.
Them: Good questions. I’d have to ask Steve. How. How we’ve connected to all that. He’ll have more details for that.
Me: Okay?
Them: But it is all backed up. VG2 lotion. It’s not. We don’t have any other separate system.
Me: Okay? Okay? And then thoughts on, like, security or pii. Has there been, like, motions around? Establishing, like, policies around any of those. Or, like, should we plan on taking? Okay.
Them: Not really. It’s. It’s been pretty light. We don’t have any kind of standard P right now. Policy.
Me: Okay? And then maybe talk. Maybe we can talk a little bit about, like, access. Like, are we. Is it all SSO through, like, Google Workspace? And.
Them: Mostly. Yeah. Where. Where we can. It would. It would be that otherwise it’s kind of on a system by system basis.
Me: Okay? Okay? Okay?
Them: On what access that we would have to give you.
Me: I assume that’s, like, preferred through sso.
Them: Or what? Access. Ideally, yeah.
Me: Okay?
Them: So like our, like our CX agents, for example, like, like we’ll, we’ll grant them like an email, like through our Google. Yeah, our Google workspace. And then, you know, add them accordingly if we need to.
Me: Okay? And then are you guys. I think I might have asked you guys using one password for, like, secrets and things like that or.
Them: We use LastPass right now.
Me: Okay?
Them: We’d love to get back to 1Password.
Me: What happened?
Them: No, not back to. We love to get on one. Password. Sorry, not back.
Me: Okay?
Them: Just. It’s. It’s a tech preference, but it’s also one of those if it’s not broken, why I fix it kind of thing. Well, like. Well, it’s kind of one of those.
Me: Yeah. Yeah. This is a very, like, nice. It is, like, a annoying thing.
Them: An annoying thing, but it’s also. You know Blastpass has had breaches. One password hasn’t. You know, but it, it, it, it’s a. It’s an ongoing conversation on when we’ll be the pass people over. To1Password.
Me: Okay?
Them: You know, if it. If it happens, we don’t see that as being until, like, second half of the year.
Me: The product’s gotten a lot better in the last two years.
Them: As we know.
Me: Yeah. So.
Them: Yeah. I know. I know. It was evaluated ahead of my time. And I think. I think at the time when they chose LastPass, it had.
Me: Five years ago or four years ago, LastPass was like,
Them: It was the only one in town, right? Yeah.
Me: It was like, yeah, and one pass was there. But it’s super consumer now. They’ve just, like, really. And I watched, like, how much they’re pushing out and they’re getting. And they have, like, you can store CLI credentials in there, too, and use it within cli.
Them: Yeah.
Me: So a lot of, like, just got a lot nicer in the last, like. Two years since we’ve been using it.
Them: Yeah. My understanding was LastPass was selected because of how. Because of their abilities. Like what the what features they offer to share, like group folders. You know. You know, for things like. But again, 1Password is kind of, like, caught up for all that stuff already, right? So it’s worth a reevaluation. But, you know, that that’s kind of a hill that we have to kind of march up to to kind of, like walk through, like, the simplicity. Of transitioning over.
Me: Yeah.
Them: If we can. You know, we have a leadership team that.
Me: Y. Eah.
Them: Is less tech savvy sometimes, you know? So it’s like, let’s push over.
Me: Now it is. Yeah. It’s hard one to be like. And we’re also considering this. Like, what’s the point? I mean, I don’t know. Last class has been breaches, but. Yeah, I hear you. So I mean, well, on our side, as we develop anything, we would store it in one pass and. Happy to just move those over.
Them: Yeah.
Me: As. As whatever. So that’s. Yeah, we can totally work within whatever. I guess. Can you talk to me about, like, sort of how, like, tool procurement works? Like, is it sort of, you know. I know. Coming from our earlier conversation about, like, getting involved in, like, does it all go through you? Like, is. Are you kind of the. The. Yeah. Like, how does it work typically?
Them: Yeah. It’s pretty lightweight.
Me: Okay?
Them: You know, if. If people remember to bring the tech team in, they do. Sometimes they don’t until it’s too late. It’s usually driven first by the business on a tool that they’d like to review. And then they kind of get our buy in on, like, You know, like, is, is this worth it, you know, or not? You know, but when it comes to procuring our own tools, though, for example, like, you know, we don’t necessarily have a procurement process here. You know, it’s the recommendation. Here’s the price. Here’s what we here’s what we’ve reviewed. You know, and. And why this one wins. You know, for example, and we just move ahead forward with it. You know, we. We don’t necessarily. I mean, we’re too small to have, like, our own, like, secured reviews and things like that. You know, we just kind of get it done, you know, as part of kind of our general recommendation.
Me: Yeah. Do you, like, how are the contracts to be structured? Like, are you. Are you trying to sign certain pricing agreements? Like, what do you guys typically try to push for?
Them: Yeah, Good question. Typically, we don’t. We try not to push or anything long term until we feel good that this is going to be like a product that we’re going to stick with.
Me: Okay?
Them: So, you know, a lot. Like, so, for example, like we’re about to implement like Asano for cookie management on our site. You know, they’re pushing a three year contract and I said no.
Me: Damn.
Them: Give me the same price for three years on a one year contract instead. And they budged. But basically it’s like, ideally we go one year.
Me: Y. Eah.
Them: Or even like, if, if the month to month is favorable, we’ll do that just as a way of being able to be more flexible and adaptive so we don’t have to, like, take, take too much to it once we start feeling more comfortable.
Me: Y. Eah. Okay?
Them: With someone, though, we’ll. We’ll think about longer contracts. But ideally, we try these shorter contracts just to make sure we got a good out clause.
Me: Okay? Great. I guess out of maybe this kind of question for the rest of the tech team, too. Anyone have experience with, like, specific data platforms? You know, or any, like, past relationships or, like, yeah.
Them: We’ve got familiarity with Snowflake.
Me: Okay?
Them: And by familiarity, I mean just, like, more as a user base, you know, but the team’s harder to figure out, like, what we need to do.
Me: Yeah.
Them: If we want to maintain that. I would say the same level. Familiar with bigquery.
Me: Okay?
Them: But mostly as just like a. We understand how it works and, like, you know, you know, why it might be, like, a good thing, you know, for a company our size. I would say less with the other apps that I’ve seen kind of on. On. On the slides that. That Shivani has showed with me.
Me: Sure.
Them: But help me also understand, like, you know, like, what would be something that we’d want to kind of consider.
Me: No, I mean for this is where like I would love as part of all any of our vendor decisions, I totally want to present to you and get your understanding of like the purpose, pricing everything, you know, core, Core, Core Essential Pieces is going to be something to manage data movement, whether that is a mix of a managed ETL tool. Common names here are like five Tran Matildian. You know, out of data warehouse. Right. So this is Snowflake, bigquery, redshift, mother duck. There’s a couple of options. And then some way to display information to business stakeholders. Bi tool. Those three are like, you know, really the most important. We have probably at least five options within each. But like, there’s a, you know, with, with a variety of price ranges, but those are at least the three. All of them we can totally do. Like, there’s, there’s totally options for month to month. Like, we. This is, these are the tools that we negotiate all the time so nobody will sort of. It. Should all be pretty fair. Where this sort of goes beyond that is like if we need a tool to assist with orchestration. For example, kicking off data jobs that move, that call an API move things. These are like Airflow or Dagster. We can. If we need to own that, we can run that in in digitalocean. There’s some hosted platforms for that, certainly. Like, I guess another question is going to ask for GitHub. Like I. If you guys are on GitHub and one thing I mentioned in Slack is that we could just get, get a repo created for like the data platform team.
Them: Yep.
Me: And we can start centralizing stuff there. And then there’s a data modeling framework called dbt. Basically, it’s like template tithing SQL. Where you’re just creating dbt. Dbt SQL models. This is like when you’re creating data tables. DBBT is a framework. They have a cloud hosted version of it. That. That is another, like, sort of nice to have. We’ll put in all the cost outlays and also like the technical risks or cost with self hosting or building on your own. Or buying. And but those three are the really the most crucial that I mentioned in the beginning.
Them: Okay? Yep. I think when I think that’s probably a media. That’s going to have to happen very soon. As far as, like, here’s what we’re thinking.
Me: Okay?
Them: And then when that happens, that’s when I would pull in Stephen Andy to be part of that.
Me: Okay?
Them: They? They’ve got more of the technical chops than I do.
Me: Okay?
Them: And. And they’ll. They’ll be the ones to help evaluate kind of some of those things or just ask questions about, like.
Me: Yeah, I mean, I would love to. Like, basically what I told Shivani is right now we’re getting an understanding of all the sources. The most before I can sort of start to look at what are options for data ingestion and movement. It’s like looking at what are the P0P1 sources.
Them: Yep.
Me: But I would love, like, we can totally host that conversation and just give everybody an overview of, like, what are the options here. And sort of what we’re looking at for the most common things.
Them: Yep.
Me: Like, all the ad platforms and stuff, there’s a lot of support. Main things I’ll be looking at in a way just for us to look at like who supports stored we need to look at if triple weigh on a few of these ones. Are being used. You know, we need to look at, like, SPS commerce, a couple of these ones that we saw that are a little bit on the edge. I want to see who can support.
Them: Okay?
Me: The other thing is, like, we. We work with some of these vendors where they. They will build this for us.
Them: Okay?
Me: And so we’ll look at to see, like, what is our coverage if we go with one of these managed platforms. And then I’ll talk to your team about, like, hey, if we’re just pulling, like, one endpoint from one place to another,
Them: Okay? Yep.
Me: Maybe we should just write the, like, sort of rest API thing to move it. And is that something that we, that we can do in DigitalOcean? Do you guys have the capacity where we can write that? Those are the kind of things that we have other clients where they’re like, oh, just buy every, like, we don’t need. Don’t even talk to our tech team. We’re never going to get it done. This is where I’m like, look, if we’re moving like one for calling like one endpoint once a day.
Them: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Me: I’d rather like we should just not. I mean, there’s a. There’s a point to be made to not do that, but versus, I don’t want to write the Shopify connector because there’s, like, there. There’s like, 90 tables that come with that. And so that’s the. Sort of trade off, but I’m happ more than happy to explain to each part.
Them: Yeah. Okay?
Me: And then this, this is all sort of like, evolves. So after you sort of land data, you model it, we produce some reporting tables. Really? This now goes to like, okay, what is the cadence at which we can start to understand if like, basically errors and alerting? So there’s some opportunities for like, anomaly detection things. Like that. So to monitor reporting, there’s also some interesting options that are coming out in a. Right. So how do you allow for more people to chat with data? Instead of having to get blocked by a dashboard, which I think one of the things that I’m starting to see across our client base is a lot of people are, are asking for, like, hey, we have a lot of users that may not be familiar with dashboards. We can totally ask a question. And so the chat interfaces could be a good way to improve usage, so. But that’s all, like, down a line, but, yeah. We want to loop you guys into any of those decisions. So. And then there will be things like we, we. We will still have to support probably some Google sheet sources, some random sftp, like, random stuff. So that’s where we’ll. We’ll have a conversation. So we’re mapping out. We’ll. Map out all those sources as we meet with everybody this week and at least create a priority list.
Them: Okay? Yep. Okay? Perfect. Yeah. And then, I mean, as far as our team, like, we’ve got the capacity and the resources to do that.
Me: Okay?
Them: Or let me call it this way, the technical know how to do it.
Me: Great. Okay?
Them: Or the timing about. About when it can be done. But, yeah, our team can do something like that.
Me: O. Kay.
Them: You know, when we. When we sign up with Soligo. It was kind of a need, you know, based on kind of the sage stuff at that time. But we. We are looking at that as, like, a potential, like, platform. To help with some of that, like, orchestration as well.
Me: Great.
Them: But again, it’s more of a tell me what you’re thinking. To the broader team. With Stephen, Andy included. And then I think it’ll just be a healthy conversation saying, oh, yeah, this sounds like it’s just a quick script, right? Or it’s like there’s. There’s something else that we could be doing, Sid.
Me: Okay? Yeah. I don’t know. Awaish. What do you think? That’s. That’s kind of like most of what I think is important to chat about right now.
Them: Yeah. Like, we. We talked about, like, almost all the parts of the. Flow.
Me: Yeah. Anything else?
Them: The other thing that we want to consider. Yeah, it kind of depends, because I. I was thinking, like, it depends on, like, what the end. Like Dashboard is going to look like. But we do have another system. It’s an internal system called Distributed Samples. And what distributed samples is. Is an internal way for people to push orders. Through to our three pl. So this is if we went to send something like, you know, a sample to a partner. A replacement order. In certain cases, it’s a way that we send product to ourselves.
Me: So it doesn’t end up in Shopify.
Them: Yeah. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t end up in Shopify. It does end up in on the 3 PL side, though. Right. So as far as, like, anything gets shipped out, it’s there.
Me: Okay? Okay?
Them: But. So I’m trying to think if there’s a need to kind of, like, access that.
Me: I guess it depends. Is the volume, like, high enough where, like, someone would.
Them: Already getting. It.
Me: Where it’s like someone cares about.
Them: So I think, I think what we think about the data sources that you’re focused on connecting right now in the commercial, the revenue side of the business, To me, it feels like more of like a call center. And it’s like, we will want data around. Like. Like, I’ll do a quick primer. And, Jason, you check me on this, because, like, in my last monthly report, Q and A thing. I was like, should we be giving as much samples of the sparkling beverages as we are? Because it’s, like, an expensive thing to ship, and, like, nobody talked to me about it. But I also know that’s like. Like anything I read about Element. It’s like, sampling is, like, a major part of, like, how we are successful. And so, like, questioning the cost side of it is not really what people want to be doing, because it’s like. It’s also how we end up generating revenue. So if we leave it generosity. Yeah. So it’s like. It’s like an act of generosity, but then. Like, I was, like, this line item in the P and L for, like, how much we’re spending on shipping. Sparkling seems like a lot. So when we actually get into incorporating netsuite and incorporating different things, like, maybe there’s a day where we’re like, like, are there times of fear? We should try to sample a little bit less because shipping costs are higher or, like, who knows? Like, Right. Like, if there’s something in the future when we’re being a little bit more. Meticulous and buttoned up about about cost monitoring, but in this moment in time, it’s like, not like a super. It’s helpful for you to know that it exists in the.
Me: There. As long as it ends up in netsuite eventually. That’s really the main requirement here. Because that’ll be the tie in between. Sales and inventory. So that’s, that’s helpful, but it’s certainly not something that’s on my mind. For revenue reporting or click commercial side.
Them: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It is tying for inventory and for cost of. So that. That’s exactly right.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Do we have any other broad questions? Because it’s like we have Jason for a few more minutes before he picks up his kid, and I’m just thinking, like,
Me: I was going to ask. There’s I also saw recharge we’re using for subscriptions. Klaviyo. Is that like broad CRM or where are we just using it for for email or.
Them: Yeah. So Recharge is. Is our subscription engine, but any recharge data would then go into Shopify.
Me: Shop. Ify. Yeah.
Them: So from an order perspective. So, like, I think as long as you got access to the Shopify, that’s fine.
Me: Yeah.
Them: And then those orders are tagged a subscription orders anyway, so, like, that would be fine there. Klaviyo is our email marketing. It’s really not meant as a CRM. It’s really just. It’s mostly transactional.
Me: Okay?
Them: When it comes to marketing emails. And then, yeah, just sort of initiative, broader email that we send out.
Me: Okay?
Them: Actually, I shouldn’t say transaction. We still send transactional emails out through, like, Shopify. As far as like your order has been shipped. And, you know, receive things like that. But no, we don’t use any of like Klaviyo’s like.
Me: CRM stuff. Yeah.
Them: Due to a CRM or cdp capabilities at this point.
Me: And then. Are you using sms? I see SMS on there, but is there any sms?
Them: We’re not right now. It’s something that we’ve been, like, playing with originally. We’re gonna, you know, try some SMS stuff with recharge, but it was. It didn’t go to plan, you know, and didn’t kind of meet our expectations, so we stopped that.
Me: Okay?
Them: So. So right now we don’t do anything else in sms, nor do we offer any support through SMS at the point.
Me: Okay? And I see blue onion labs and stitch floating.
Them: Yes, it’s floating because no one knew what it was about. But they were two apps identified that were installed in Shopify that no one knew anything about.
Me: Okay? Okay?
Them: Blue Onion Labs was a former finance reporting app, if I remember actually not thinking about it.
Me: I know what Stitch. I know what Stitch is. Yeah, so.
Them: Yeah, Blue onion. I’m pretty sure they said don’t worry about. Already. So when this doc was created, but. I could even do a quick search, but, yeah, I think Finance confirmed that they no longer used it. They’re using it at one point to get some. Some reporting numbers, but they no longer use it.
Me: Okay? I think that’s kind of like all. Yeah, go ahead.
Them: I misspelling prb like you mentioned. Sage 100 is, like, paused. Are we using any erp? Software right now. Yeah, we use QuickBooks right now. Is that what you’re was your question? Like, what do we have right now? Yeah, so like, also Internet speed from quick 100. Like.
Me: So you’re using N right now?
Them: No, we’re using QuickBooks right now. Tune 2 Netsuite.
Me: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
Them: Yes.
Me: So you can quickbooks for accounting on erp.
Them: Say one more time.
Me: You’re using QuickBooks for, like, I guess, right now? What you said, you mentioned that you’re doing Sage. But then it kind of like.
Them: No, we’re not using Sage. Sage was what we were. What we were working to transition to from QuickBooks.
Me: Okay? Okay?
Them: Yeah, but. But as of now, all of our ledger finances are all on QuickBooks.
Me: So all the inventory await is going to be shoe shopify. Or like is. Is it a ma?
Them: No. Inventory? No, we don’t track inventory using Shopify. That’s going to be mostly through stored.
Me: Ster.
Them: We do still use supermetrics. Carl will have more information on it. But look at my old notes.
Me: Okay?
Them: He uses super metrics every day to help pull revenue. For paid ads.
Me: Okay?
Them: Try to.
Me: I think that’s. It. I mean, we’ll. I’ll probably summarize a couple things that we need access to and go take a look at what we have access to. I don’t.
Them: You feel like you got your questions answered, Utam. About. About source medium.
Me: What I don’t know is, like, how the users feel about it. I get, like, I kind of heard Jason’s perspective on, like, look, they didn’t really work directly with the tech team on, like, building it out. I get the. I get what sort of house source medium works. We worked with a couple of these guys. They’re basically managed platform, managed data platform. Like, kind of, like, need to talk to the folks to see, like, it seems like there’s, like, stuff in there, and people are doing stuff on their own. So I’m like, did they just ask for it and they didn’t get used? It’s probably that there’s. There’s some adoption p. So I. I’m kind of waiting to go ask Carlos in some of those folks. But was there anything else on the tech side?
Them: Are you talking to Blake? Also from partnerships. He’s on the docket for us to talk to him. I think, like, Carlos is the first one. And what I would say, Utam, just for context for you, is like. We don’t have, like. Not that this is relevant, but we don’t have, like, a VP in that, a VP of E. Commerce. Right. Who would maybe be like, we have our Chief Commercial Officer, and then we’ve got Carlos. And in terms of, like, leveling, like, you might be able to, like, give you. Like, insight into, like, here’s what I pull. And Jason, like, let me know if this. No, you’re right. Yeah. It’s like. Like he might be the one to say, like, this is what I pull from this, and this is what I gleaned from this. But, like, when you think about strategic hat, of somebody saying, here’s what I think we really need to be watching, and here’s the questions I need to be asking.
Me: I see. I hear you. Strategy. Yeah.
Them: I don’t know if that, like, totally exists. And so, like, the example that I shared, like, from pre rest and assess week was like, okay, like, we had a dip in conversion rate on the website. So Carlos is like trying to figure that out, but then it will our chief commercial officer to say, well, like, why did Sessions spike.
Me: Yeah. Yeah.
Them: And it’s like he’s up here, and he’s kind of like, do I. Do I have full trust that the people who are meant to be chasing this down understand the denominator and numerator question to start off to be asking. So I just want to give that context around, like, if Carlos is the main stakeholder with source medium. It’s probably, like, not like, there’s a ton of people at the business who, like, really know how effective for us Medium, and that’s not to do a knock on them. I’m like, I tried asking a couple other people.
Me: I hear you. Yeah. No, no, no. Totally. They just probably got it for whatever could. Yeah.
Them: I tried asking a couple other people and it’s. It’s like maybe they could have been the ones to build our data stack, right? Like, maybe they could have been perfectly sufficient being able to do that. But it’s like. Like, I think if I’m like, what’s up with source medium? People are like, oh, I don’t really know.
Me: Yeah. So for me, for me, I want to basically fill that in, get that knowledge of, like, what is up with it.
Them: Well, I mean.
Me: And then that way, when I come to you and Phil, I’m like, okay, here’s how much it costs. Here’s how much you’re using it. Here’s what it can do, here’s what I can’t do, and sort of, like, give you guys our recommendation on, like, look, short term, there’s some things we should maybe continue to rely on it for. Maybe we should move and, like, sort of get that context on, but I hear you on that. Carlos is not like the on this. Yeah.
Them: The person to pick their brain about that. Jason. Go ahead. It’s going to be Will. I mean, Will, in the end, owns that relationship.
Me: Okay?
Them: With. With force medium. I mean, the context that I. I’m familiar with is they really were brought in to help, like, put together, like, dashboards for acquisition reporting. You know, and that’s really kind of their bread and butter. Okay, you know. Safe space here. You know, it’s like, yeah, you know, we. We evaluated to say, hey, would this be the right partner to kind of say, you know, on a more broader sense? And the thought was, is that their bread and butter really is about acquisition. And if we’re looking for someone that can speak more broadly to just, like, the needs of, like, all of our data, that that might be a little bit more of a stretch for them. You know, so let them play, you know, where. Where they need to from an acquisition perspective. So that’s why, like, Carlos and Blake, you know, they might be kind of like the two bigger users of the system.
Me: Yeah. O. Kay.
Them: You know, in terms of, like, its effectiveness and, like, how it works. Other than those two, I’d have to look to kind of see who else really uses them.
Me: So we’re asking them for the usage data, by the way.
Them: Yeah. Okay, perfect. They have created a separate, like, looker dashboard for Esther on the CX side.
Me: Yeah, we saw that today. Too.
Them: Yeah. You know, so Esther would also be kind of a user for it as well. But again, it’s been really. There isn’t. Yeah, there isn’t like, a true, like, kind of, like, functional owner of it right now, right?
Me: Well, it’s very hard. Like, this is what these guys do. I mean, we have another client where we have a similar company, the Source Medium. What’s it called? Awaish. Like. Who are we using? Remember Robert mentioned them. I don’t know. Who? Yeah, we’re this where we have one. One part of our client, like one team is using them mainly, I think, for marketing and acquisition data. And they still, they still do fine, but the rest of the business is on and owned platform. And it’s actually been okay, so I’ll keep that in mind. That, like, look, I mean, what’s. What they’re gonna have a problem with is anything around adoption? You can’t. Some of this stuff is too complicated to do as an outside party. Like especially is a. Basically a managed platform.
Them: Yeah.
Me: I could tell that they’re like, yeah, we can respond, and we have X amount of hours. But again, that’s the business model of, like, sort of a managed service. I think it, like, for me, what I want to arrive at Shivani for, like, you and Phil is like, wait. Other parts of this that, like, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for us to go, like, do a bunch of stuff on acquisition when maybe we should just keep this in just that area and then move. Consider moving everybody something else. So I want to sort of understand where people are getting value today. I totally hear you on like, Carlos is probably not the best to ask about the strategy of choosing source, medium or other, but really, as part of that conversion problem, what I’m gonna ask Carlos is like, walk me through how you’re, like, solving this. Like you have a mix of tools.
Them: And again, he might not even be the best. I wouldn’t even like, act like you know that there’s a conversion problem you had. We got to start like with you very high level. What are the metrics you care about? What’s top of mind for you? That kind of thing versus I hear there’s a conversion problem.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Which I don’t think you would do, but I’m just, like, framing it as, like.
Me: More. I’m like, you have a problem. Well, how do you solve it?
Them: Yeah.
Me: Like, walk me through the tools. Like, what’s in your tool belt?
Them: Or if you have a question about your data, like, what’s your, what’s your technique? Right, like, keep it high level. And he’ll probably go to the conversion rate example.
Me: Yeah.
Them: But I think. I think that he’s, like, definitely a big user of data, but again, like, not maybe the highest strategic hat to be like, okay, if I wanted a clean set of rows for me to better understand this problem, here’s what I would want.
Me: Sure.
Them: Whereas, like, I think that that’s where I’m trying to do the discovery phases alongside you guys. And, like, yes, one day we’re gonna have hopefully, like, some sort of VP over that to give more leverage to Will or whatever the structure will end up being. But in the meantime, can I help us, like. Even evaluate. Are these dashboards built the way that, like, makes sense to us? And so they might make sense to Carla, they might make sense to Carlos and Blake.
Me: Yeah. I see what you mean.
Them: To, like, pull certain data points out. But if I were an executive and I’m, like, putting, like. I just want to, like, quickly understand something, is it structured in the best way?
Me: Yeah.
Them: And like what I. I’ll tell you that like my initial take on those looker tables and like this is a lot of colors like this very Shivani coded. Like how I look at data. But I’m like, you know, bar charts that don’t like, I’m like this right way I would. Want to see this, so I need to. I need to, like, have my own time.
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, this is a classic managed data platform offering where they come in, they say, hey, we have your five connectors. Let’s hook it into, like, five default dashboards. We have. And then you can. We’ll charge you for any additional customization. This is like.
Them: Yeah. Whereas I’m like, I eventually, as I get to know the business, I want to build out all of our.
Me: Yeah, it doesn’t really like. It’s. It’s a Band Aid.
Them: Like, yes, AI to be able to query things, but for, like, the most important things that James or whoever cares about, I’m like, I want that, like, really clean and codified. Yeah.
Me: Yeah, yeah. Get to know end to end. Yeah. So that’s why they’re solving for a problem, which is like, they’re solving for firms that just are not going to invest in this. And they’re like, well, let’s just get, like, 20% customization. And we’ll give you, like, all this stuff out of the box versus. So basically, what I’m trying to find out is, like, okay, what are they using for? And that way I can give you a good sense of, like, I’ve seen these definitions. Seems like nobody owned the creation of all those, like. Source medium just decided, you know, and, like, none of those are element owned. It’s clear that people owning it are using it for parts, but, like, for exact reporting, they’re using their own. So that’s like, give me, like, basically any source of reporting in the company. I’m kind of trying to just see.
Them: Yeah.
Me: And, yeah, just see how people are solving problems now.
Them: Yeah.
Me: But yeah.
Them: Seems like the right way to kick off. So we got day one.
Me: And.
Them: We’re cooking.
Me: Yeah. No, this is good. And I think, Jason, like, we’re. We’re here to partner with. With you and your team, so I will.
Them: Yep.
Me: We’re loop you in as much as you want to be looped in and tell throw us at like whatever is is annoying, especially anything that’s sounds or or feels like it’s data related. You can throw us at, you know?
Them: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. And I think just moving forward, like, I know this was kind of like the first call, you know, and, you know, but like, as. As we kind of move forward, any. Any other questions that I’ll have, I’ll make sure to bring in Steve, Andy as well. Because they just connect anyways. And we kind of all kind of work from the same hip, so it’s like, it’ll be good just for all of us going to be familiar with what’s going on.
Me: Totally. Yeah, maybe. Shivani, we could. I can. We can meet both of them next week sometime.
Them: By both of them being who? Steve and andy. Even andy. Sorry.
Me: Is it? Steven? Andy.
Them: Yes. Why don’t we do that?
Me: Just to say hi. By that point, we’ll have a little bit of an architecture diagram from, like, the data source side, and I can walk them through and just. Just say hi and sort of get their perspective on things.
Them: Okay? Jason, you want to help coordinate some scheduled times that you think would work for your team? Yep. You aggregate after this. Cool. Perfect. Is that? Or I can just, like, look at people’s calendars. I. I’m just like. Andy and steve. Like, if I look at next week, guys. Oh, if I look at next week. Like Wednesday, December 10, 11am Pacific Time is available for everybody. If it’s free for everybody.
Me: Works for me.
Them: Then I go for it. It’s like a 30 minute kind of like Brainforge, okay?
Me: Yeah. And I’ll. And. And if we can either add them into our channel Shivani, or maybe we can create a tech Brainforge channel.
Them: Yeah.
Me: I can just send them, like, we’re going to work on some architecture diagrams, and I want to send them our documentation.
Them: Sounds good.
Me: So.
Them: Okay, thank you.
Me: Okay. And then any other access. Jason, we’re going to go through stuff me in a way. And so if I need any APIs or. Or any platform access, I’ll just ping there. But again, if you’d rather me ask the team.
Them: Okay?
Me: A team channel. I can do that.
Them: Either way. If I can’t figure it out, then we’ll let other people in.
Me: Okay?
Them: That sounds good. Okay? Thanks, guys.
Me: Okay, thank you. Pump. All right, talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks, jason.