Meeting Title: Data Integration Project Check-in Date: 2025-09-08 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Casey Isaac
WEBVTT
1 00:01:52.900 ⇒ 00:01:53.550 Robert Tseng: A.K.
2 00:01:55.700 ⇒ 00:01:56.870 Casey Isaac: What’s up, man?
3 00:01:57.860 ⇒ 00:01:58.809 Robert Tseng: How’s it going?
4 00:01:59.980 ⇒ 00:02:03.899 Casey Isaac: Pretty good. Give me one second here. Sorry, my,
5 00:02:04.550 ⇒ 00:02:06.700 Casey Isaac: Trying to get my AirPods going.
6 00:02:07.130 ⇒ 00:02:08.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, all good.
7 00:02:10.009 ⇒ 00:02:10.889 Casey Isaac: There we go.
8 00:02:11.949 ⇒ 00:02:17.079 Casey Isaac: Yeah, doing okay, doing pretty well. Back in, I’m actually back in the city.
9 00:02:17.549 ⇒ 00:02:20.179 Robert Tseng: Oh yeah, cool. Yeah, had a wedding.
10 00:02:20.479 ⇒ 00:02:23.069 Casey Isaac: yesterday on Long Island, so…
11 00:02:23.160 ⇒ 00:02:24.040 Robert Tseng: Nice.
12 00:02:24.040 ⇒ 00:02:30.030 Casey Isaac: You know, a little slow this morning, one too many martinis, but otherwise, Doing pretty well.
13 00:02:30.140 ⇒ 00:02:34.430 Robert Tseng: Great. Yeah, I got back yesterday afternoon as well, so recovery.
14 00:02:35.030 ⇒ 00:02:36.260 Casey Isaac: Okay, cool. Where’d you go?
15 00:02:36.260 ⇒ 00:02:39.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I went to Kazakhstan, actually, so…
16 00:02:39.590 ⇒ 00:02:40.530 Casey Isaac: Oh, no way!
17 00:02:40.530 ⇒ 00:02:41.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
18 00:02:41.520 ⇒ 00:02:42.160 Casey Isaac: Oh, cool.
19 00:02:42.700 ⇒ 00:02:49.099 Robert Tseng: I was… it was like a mix of, business and beer, I guess. I don’t know if I told you this, but my…
20 00:02:49.350 ⇒ 00:02:53.570 Robert Tseng: first year out of university, I lived in Catholic Stan for a year, so…
21 00:02:53.570 ⇒ 00:02:56.820 Casey Isaac: Oh, did you? I don’t… I don’t think I remember that. That’s crazy.
22 00:02:56.820 ⇒ 00:02:57.360 Robert Tseng: That’s like a…
23 00:02:57.360 ⇒ 00:03:01.409 Casey Isaac: What a cool experience. How’d you like being there?
24 00:03:02.160 ⇒ 00:03:05.630 Robert Tseng: I liked it, actually. So, I mean, they’re…
25 00:03:05.770 ⇒ 00:03:24.280 Robert Tseng: A lot of them are Asian-looking. It’s, I mean, either Russians or Asian. The main language there is Russian. But it is pretty Western-friendly, and, like, you can get around with English. They… there was, like, a high-tech park that they established in their… in their capital, and they were trying to get some, like, AI and data
26 00:03:24.420 ⇒ 00:03:36.390 Robert Tseng: experts to come in and, like, basically, like, do a workshop for them, so I did that, and yeah, it was… it was good, just to reconnect with some of my contacts. It’s different, kind of.
27 00:03:36.530 ⇒ 00:03:50.870 Robert Tseng: I was… last… when I was there, I was, like, a student, about to go enter a master’s program. Now I’m, like, a business owner, and, like, it’s a different platform, so I think it… it felt very different going back this time, in a good way, where people are, like, really eager to, kind of.
28 00:03:51.170 ⇒ 00:03:57.180 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, talk to me, I guess, and hear what’s going on, and yeah, no, it was a good experience.
29 00:03:57.400 ⇒ 00:04:06.970 Casey Isaac: That’s way cool, man. Yeah, I know Kazakhstan has, like, a beautiful landscape and stuff, right? It’s, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What, do you speak?
30 00:04:07.130 ⇒ 00:04:08.790 Casey Isaac: Russian at all? Are you able.
31 00:04:08.790 ⇒ 00:04:09.780 Robert Tseng: I, I do.
32 00:04:10.190 ⇒ 00:04:10.979 Casey Isaac: Oh, cool.
33 00:04:10.980 ⇒ 00:04:12.090 Robert Tseng: How’d you learn?
34 00:04:12.920 ⇒ 00:04:24.669 Robert Tseng: In university, I did, like, a minor in Russian studies, and then, like, I also… I mean, obviously living there helps kind of pick up some of the language.
35 00:04:24.770 ⇒ 00:04:31.659 Casey Isaac: Totally, yeah. I did kind of a similar thing, right after college, too. I moved to Costa Rica.
36 00:04:31.860 ⇒ 00:04:34.949 Robert Tseng: Okay. For, like, a year, year and a half, which was… Yeah.
37 00:04:34.950 ⇒ 00:04:39.080 Casey Isaac: Yeah, also a beautiful landscape, and yeah.
38 00:04:39.080 ⇒ 00:04:39.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
39 00:04:39.630 ⇒ 00:04:41.720 Casey Isaac: learn some Spanish that way, so…
40 00:04:41.720 ⇒ 00:04:42.040 Robert Tseng: Okay.
41 00:04:42.500 ⇒ 00:04:43.010 Robert Tseng: Nice!
42 00:04:43.010 ⇒ 00:04:59.490 Casey Isaac: Yeah, it’s, like, forgotten… I’m realizing I’m… I’m actually using more of my Spanish day-to-day now, again, for the first time, and I’m realizing I’ve forgotten some, but the last time I, like, actually went to Costa Rica and spent time… you know, I was there, what, last winter for, like, a week.
43 00:04:59.720 ⇒ 00:05:02.689 Casey Isaac: Like, at the end of the week, I was like, okay, I got this, but…
44 00:05:02.690 ⇒ 00:05:03.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you pick it all back up, yeah.
45 00:05:03.940 ⇒ 00:05:05.430 Casey Isaac: Yeah, yeah.
46 00:05:05.540 ⇒ 00:05:08.039 Casey Isaac: So, that’s cool, though, that’s super cool.
47 00:05:08.040 ⇒ 00:05:08.540 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
48 00:05:08.540 ⇒ 00:05:12.040 Casey Isaac: Quite a flight, so… Yeah, months later. I’m sure you’re tired, yeah.
49 00:05:12.040 ⇒ 00:05:12.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
50 00:05:13.530 ⇒ 00:05:17.599 Casey Isaac: Cool, well, I just wanted to… I just had, like, a few questions for you.
51 00:05:17.600 ⇒ 00:05:17.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
52 00:05:18.100 ⇒ 00:05:24.929 Casey Isaac: I don’t know if you want to walk through your, your, the materials you’ve put together. It looks, looks great, like, super,
53 00:05:25.620 ⇒ 00:05:29.230 Casey Isaac: Yeah, super straightforward, and I love all your…
54 00:05:30.170 ⇒ 00:05:32.930 Casey Isaac: He did a great job with just, like, the overall…
55 00:05:33.940 ⇒ 00:05:36.130 Casey Isaac: I don’t know, branding and stuff?
56 00:05:36.130 ⇒ 00:05:36.880 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah?
57 00:05:36.880 ⇒ 00:05:43.160 Casey Isaac: Yeah, yeah, so… I’ll just comment that, too. But yeah, all looks pretty straightforward. I just, like, wanted to…
58 00:05:43.590 ⇒ 00:05:47.840 Casey Isaac: make sure I was understanding everything. I know that you kind of broke it out into…
59 00:05:47.940 ⇒ 00:05:50.470 Casey Isaac: Sort of two phases.
60 00:05:51.010 ⇒ 00:06:01.260 Casey Isaac: I don’t know if you want to just talk through each of them, I want to make sure we’re on the same page, and then… Okay, sure. Yeah, we can… we can talk about, kind of, next steps. I’d love to understand your process for getting things going, so…
61 00:06:01.260 ⇒ 00:06:02.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
62 00:06:02.670 ⇒ 00:06:05.569 Robert Tseng: Let me share a screen. Yeah, why don’t we… yeah, why don’t we go through it?
63 00:06:07.130 ⇒ 00:06:09.420 Robert Tseng: Is this the right screen? Can you see anything?
64 00:06:09.420 ⇒ 00:06:10.819 Casey Isaac: I see black. I see all black.
65 00:06:10.820 ⇒ 00:06:13.510 Robert Tseng: Okay. I don’t know why.
66 00:06:14.630 ⇒ 00:06:20.480 Robert Tseng: That’s strange.
67 00:06:27.190 ⇒ 00:06:31.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sometimes Zoom just shared, like, a black screen, I don’t really know why, but
68 00:06:33.000 ⇒ 00:06:34.709 Robert Tseng: Okay, I’ll just do that.
69 00:06:35.930 ⇒ 00:06:41.279 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay, that’s probably a bit bigger than it needs to be, but it’s fine. I think,
70 00:06:41.490 ⇒ 00:06:54.239 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, we broke it out into a few things. So, like, this was… this was more like the bonus, right? You were talking about AI enablement, but, like, as far as, like, the immediate things to do, like, one is, you know, picking your stage 100 on-prem
71 00:06:54.240 ⇒ 00:07:04.629 Robert Tseng: Making sure that we understand, like, how we’re gonna pull data out of it, so there’s a few export options that we talked about. There is API, some access there, but really, we’re gonna probably be relying on ODBC.
72 00:07:04.840 ⇒ 00:07:23.889 Robert Tseng: And then you kind of talked me through, like, one reporting workflow, where, but I’m sure maybe you have other common reports that you’re trying to take out, so it’s really just, like, making sure that we know, like, what are the four… the core, reports that you look at regularly that you want to be able to extract.
73 00:07:23.980 ⇒ 00:07:34.600 Robert Tseng: And then as far as, like, landing that into a data warehouse, there’s usually just some, we call it transformations, or some data cleaning that needs to happen,
74 00:07:34.870 ⇒ 00:07:40.679 Robert Tseng: I’m assuming that we won’t be able to pull it straight out of Sage and dump it into a warehouse, like, they’re probably…
75 00:07:40.800 ⇒ 00:07:45.330 Robert Tseng: We’ll have to be a little bit of modeling in order to get that done.
76 00:07:45.450 ⇒ 00:07:47.089 Robert Tseng: Once we have it.
77 00:07:47.210 ⇒ 00:08:05.530 Robert Tseng: We would build out some entities, so just nothing, nothing crazy here. It’s just, like, sales, so if anything’s transactions related, we have a table for that, you know, orders, like, history, so, like, change logs, I think, are probably the most important part of a data warehouse, just so you can, you know, like.
78 00:08:05.670 ⇒ 00:08:25.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah, especially if there are any, like, bad orders, there’s gaps for whatever reason, anything that needs to, you just want to have a log of any changes, that’s what the history is there for. And then, obviously, inventory. I don’t know how many SKUs you have, but some sort of… yeah, so just those basic data models, like, I am… I think, you know, we…
79 00:08:25.290 ⇒ 00:08:26.479 Robert Tseng: We’ve… we’ve built.
80 00:08:26.760 ⇒ 00:08:32.190 Robert Tseng: that stuff a bunch of times, so I’m sure it’ll look something like that for you.
81 00:08:32.360 ⇒ 00:08:46.049 Robert Tseng: As far as, like, the warehouse selection, yeah, I think you mentioned Snowflake, but, you know, we actually work with DuckDB as well, which is… it’s cheaper than Snowflake, and it may be, you know, good enough for what you have to do.
82 00:08:46.110 ⇒ 00:09:06.070 Robert Tseng: So I think we could kind of help advise on, like, which one to go with. I would say DuckTB is the fastest, warehouse that… and the cheapest right now. And so, you know, for that pool… pool parts kind of company that I talked about, we actually… we migrated them from Snowflake to DuckTB, and it saved on their warehouse bill by, like, 70% or something. So…
83 00:09:06.070 ⇒ 00:09:07.210 Casey Isaac: Oh, wow, okay.
84 00:09:07.390 ⇒ 00:09:10.549 Robert Tseng: So yeah, like, I think we’re, you know, just depending on
85 00:09:10.680 ⇒ 00:09:16.359 Robert Tseng: The storage is… the storage is not the problem. Like, as far… if it’s…
86 00:09:16.360 ⇒ 00:09:32.159 Robert Tseng: a lot of data that’s at rest, and you’re not really doing that much with it, then, like, that’s where the most savings would come from, if you’re just doing, like, daily reports. Anything that isn’t… basically, if you’re not, like, a bank or, like, Netflix, and you’re, like, you know, refreshing your reports every, like.
87 00:09:32.210 ⇒ 00:09:35.510 Robert Tseng: Second, or every 10 seconds, like, you don’t really need
88 00:09:35.950 ⇒ 00:09:43.400 Robert Tseng: you may not actually… like, Snowflake may not actually be your best choice, is kind of the simple way of talking about it. Okay, yeah.
89 00:09:43.400 ⇒ 00:09:50.580 Casey Isaac: Yeah, I don’t know. You know, the only thing I can think of that would be something we might want to track is just, like, inventory.
90 00:09:50.700 ⇒ 00:10:08.230 Casey Isaac: daily or something, probably a snapshot type thing, so I, I don’t, like, we don’t see a ton of change in, you know, in SKUs and updating, you know, that, that stuff. Cool. It’s… it’s pretty minimal, so I, I don’t think we would… yeah, we have…
91 00:10:08.290 ⇒ 00:10:22.849 Casey Isaac: maybe a couple hundred SKUs, you know, not a lot of inventory positions or anything like that. But yeah, I think I… let’s see, I think I get a snapshot, you know, once a day, I don’t know if that’s how you’ve kind of set it up before, probably not gonna be…
92 00:10:23.160 ⇒ 00:10:25.120 Casey Isaac: Huge, you know.
93 00:10:25.460 ⇒ 00:10:28.070 Casey Isaac: We’re not gonna need something…
94 00:10:28.770 ⇒ 00:10:34.690 Casey Isaac: that robust. So, if Duck… if DuckTV is way cheaper, love that. Yeah. So, okay.
95 00:10:35.770 ⇒ 00:10:36.380 Robert Tseng: Great.
96 00:10:37.390 ⇒ 00:10:56.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s that. And then, yeah, the diagram would be pretty straightforward. I think I might have shown you, like, a sample one that we built before. It’s just, like, your source to warehouse to the BI tool, which I think, like I mentioned last time, BI selection, I think, can come a bit later. I think, just as far as we know.
97 00:10:56.730 ⇒ 00:11:00.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, once… yeah, once we know what,
98 00:11:01.010 ⇒ 00:11:09.139 Robert Tseng: like, what set of reports you want, I think then we can make the decision on the VI tool. I think there’s just a lot of good options out there, so not super urgent to decide.
99 00:11:09.260 ⇒ 00:11:25.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then as far as Phase 2, yeah, you know, I think we talked about Reel. If you like… if you like spreadsheets, and you like looking at stuff like that, I think Reel’s a good option. They’re basically, like, a super-powered, spreadsheet that sits on top of a warehouse, so, you know, a lot of,
100 00:11:25.530 ⇒ 00:11:29.719 Robert Tseng: Yeah, a lot of our former finance or, you know.
101 00:11:30.800 ⇒ 00:11:49.279 Robert Tseng: for a lot, yeah, like, people who are used bankers, who are used to seeing information that way, like the real tool, they don’t really care about the premium for fancy visualizations, they just want to make sure that they can slice and dice their data, by every grade possible, and then, like, be able to view trends and stuff, so…
102 00:11:49.280 ⇒ 00:12:02.039 Robert Tseng: Like, the visualization is pretty simple, but then it’s, like, it’s pretty robust in terms of, like, how you could do drill downs and… and do your… and filter by, what… what… all the filters that we set up in the warehouse.
103 00:12:02.040 ⇒ 00:12:15.860 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think that’s, you know, we can… we can decide on that once we land your data. Like, it’d be really easy to throw a couple different options on top of the data in the warehouse, and then you can pick the one that you like.
104 00:12:16.130 ⇒ 00:12:19.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then…
105 00:12:20.230 ⇒ 00:12:32.669 Robert Tseng: Yeah, as far as, like, a couple of the dashboards that we talked about, I’m sure this is not exhaustive, but just, like, very, you know, boilerplate stuff. You know, sales by clients, I’m sure you have multiple
106 00:12:32.670 ⇒ 00:12:43.870 Robert Tseng: you know, it’s a B2B, kind of company, so you’re selling mostly wholesale, and so being able to at least look at all of your, like, sales data over time by your
107 00:12:44.010 ⇒ 00:13:00.640 Robert Tseng: by… by your customer, having SKU level, reporting as well, and then, like, yeah, obviously being able to compare, like, this quarter versus, you know, Q3 of last year, and… and any sort of, like, period-over-period type of analysis.
108 00:13:01.260 ⇒ 00:13:10.280 Casey Isaac: Totally, I just add, kind of, financial stuff in there, like, you know, monthly income statements, stuff like that. Right. But yeah, this is… yeah.
109 00:13:11.320 ⇒ 00:13:13.460 Casey Isaac: I guess going back to…
110 00:13:14.530 ⇒ 00:13:17.589 Casey Isaac: Well, I’ll let you get through, and then I had a couple questions for you.
111 00:13:18.200 ⇒ 00:13:26.700 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much it. As far as, like, dashboard templates, screenshots type of queries, yeah, I mean…
112 00:13:26.980 ⇒ 00:13:42.329 Robert Tseng: I think this is kind of like a… you know, we’re just trying to pick, like, a couple things to, like, really go end-to-end with really quickly. So I think that’s kind of, you know, the point of this. So if, like, the finances that… the financial data that you’re talking about, those…
113 00:13:42.330 ⇒ 00:13:53.000 Robert Tseng: That, that core, like, you know, monthly closing report or whatever, like, stuff that you would see on the accounting side, and then maybe one operational report, like, we can just define really clearly, like, which
114 00:13:53.000 ⇒ 00:14:01.029 Robert Tseng: which ones we want to go after, and then we can… we can… that’ll… that’ll be the deliverable. And maybe there will be more reports that we add over time.
115 00:14:01.440 ⇒ 00:14:07.909 Casey Isaac: Okay, cool. So the deliverable is… is there a cap of two, then? Like, dashboards, or… and same, I guess, goes for…
116 00:14:08.080 ⇒ 00:14:16.320 Casey Isaac: What you had… Well, I guess, yeah, your first, sort of, auditing…
117 00:14:17.440 ⇒ 00:14:21.380 Casey Isaac: I’m wondering, I guess, same question, is there, like, a cap as far as how many
118 00:14:21.560 ⇒ 00:14:22.969 Casey Isaac: Reports we go through.
119 00:14:23.820 ⇒ 00:14:25.929 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, no, so I think we go throughout…
120 00:14:25.930 ⇒ 00:14:34.260 Casey Isaac: We can go through all of the reports, yeah, I mean, this is just one data source, so I just… I think it’d be good to get a full inventory of all the reports that you want to see.
121 00:14:35.140 ⇒ 00:14:40.180 Robert Tseng: as far as, like, being able to build out reporting for all of them, like, I think I’m not…
122 00:14:40.500 ⇒ 00:14:54.099 Robert Tseng: I don’t… yeah, I’m not… not entirely sure, so I think it’d be easier to just say we can definitely do two, and then, like, if there’s more complicated stuff, like, we can… we have to… we may have to extend it, but otherwise, we’ll just…
123 00:14:54.250 ⇒ 00:15:00.700 Robert Tseng: Like, you know, we can… we can adjust how many we go after as well.
124 00:15:00.700 ⇒ 00:15:01.050 Casey Isaac: Okay.
125 00:15:01.050 ⇒ 00:15:11.280 Robert Tseng: So, like, I would say, like, sales… like, all this stuff is just, like, features of, like, a sales report, in my opinion. Like, this is all part of, like, one, so I would like.
126 00:15:11.280 ⇒ 00:15:12.919 Casey Isaac: Yeah, it’s all this.
127 00:15:13.570 ⇒ 00:15:29.629 Casey Isaac: I’m less concerned about, like, the dashboards. You know, it’d be nice, yeah, one dashboard, maybe two, you know, one more sales, and then one that’s more, kind of accounting, but… but yeah, I’d say I’m more concerned just, I want to make sure that I have access to all the reports that I have.
128 00:15:30.050 ⇒ 00:15:35.729 Casey Isaac: today, basically, you know, that I use regularly in Sage. Like, as long as that’s…
129 00:15:35.940 ⇒ 00:15:40.849 Casey Isaac: you know, part of, kind of, the initial scope. I feel fine about that. Dashboards are less important.
130 00:15:41.440 ⇒ 00:15:46.420 Robert Tseng: Okay, that makes sense. Do you have, like, a kind of estimate of, like, how many reports that is? Like…
131 00:15:50.860 ⇒ 00:15:52.749 Casey Isaac: Maybe, like, 10 reports.
132 00:15:53.040 ⇒ 00:15:54.010 Robert Tseng: 10 reports? Okay.
133 00:15:54.010 ⇒ 00:15:54.450 Casey Isaac: They’re on the road.
134 00:15:54.450 ⇒ 00:15:57.949 Robert Tseng: I’ll make some adjustments to this, yeah. I think we can do that.
135 00:15:58.440 ⇒ 00:15:59.250 Casey Isaac: Okay.
136 00:15:59.370 ⇒ 00:16:00.350 Casey Isaac: Yeah.
137 00:16:01.800 ⇒ 00:16:03.230 Casey Isaac: I think that’s…
138 00:16:04.780 ⇒ 00:16:18.689 Casey Isaac: conservative, you know, I don’t think we’re gonna go over 10, so… Okay. You can use that, I think, as a ballpark. I can go through and pull the actual reports, too, and, like, send them over to you if you want to just, like, have a look at how we get them today.
139 00:16:19.090 ⇒ 00:16:21.029 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that would be helpful, yeah.
140 00:16:21.030 ⇒ 00:16:24.849 Casey Isaac: It’s a good exercise for me, too, just to, yeah, to have the right…
141 00:16:25.030 ⇒ 00:16:38.110 Casey Isaac: Yeah, make sure we have the right number in the… in the scope, so I haven’t… I haven’t actually done that. Let me… let me take that as an action item. I’ll go through, just, like, pull the reports I’m pulling all the time, and send them over to you. Okay. At least as, like, a template.
142 00:16:38.630 ⇒ 00:16:44.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’ll help me to refine this, this section. So, but yeah, I think phase one is, like, that’s pretty straightforward.
143 00:16:44.920 ⇒ 00:16:45.250 Casey Isaac: Okay.
144 00:16:45.250 ⇒ 00:16:59.559 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then as far as, like, the AI stuff related, yeah, I mean, I know you mentioned wanting to be able to use natural language to basically, like, speak to your data directly, so yeah, once it’s all structured and inside a warehouse, like, I think that’s… that should be pretty easy.
145 00:16:59.560 ⇒ 00:17:14.160 Robert Tseng: And especially if it’s just like, hey, limit your, limit the way that you’re answering my questions to these 10 reports, or, like, we have some additional constraints that’ll make the accuracy of the reporting better, or the, of the, of the AI response.
146 00:17:14.160 ⇒ 00:17:14.530 Casey Isaac: Oh, that’s.
147 00:17:15.030 ⇒ 00:17:19.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, because, yeah, sometimes, like.
148 00:17:19.470 ⇒ 00:17:23.300 Robert Tseng: You know, on bigger teams, marketing may describe,
149 00:17:24.470 ⇒ 00:17:44.330 Robert Tseng: one metric differently from finance, especially when we’re talking about, like, LTV or something like that. And so, you know, this is, like, you run into those types of, like, department kind of, like, tensions if there’s too many reports floating around, but if we know what the course set is, and there’s pretty standardized definitions, then I think this is a pretty easy unlock, and that would definitely be able to
150 00:17:44.600 ⇒ 00:17:53.669 Robert Tseng: you know, yeah, take… go… go one step further than Dashboard, where you actually get, like, just… you can just chat with your data on those specific reports.
151 00:17:54.250 ⇒ 00:17:58.959 Casey Isaac: Cool, yeah, and I know that we kind of talked about, what is it, Cortex from Snowflake?
152 00:17:59.250 ⇒ 00:18:05.779 Casey Isaac: And it sounded like that was something that you were familiar with. If we were to go the DuckDB route, is there a different tool?
153 00:18:06.120 ⇒ 00:18:16.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, they have something like Vortex on it already, so as well, but it, you know, even if not, then it’s, even if that’s not… it’s basic… because Snowflake Vortex is basically, like,
154 00:18:16.530 ⇒ 00:18:28.270 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t know how many models you can select in there, but they’re basically just plugging in L11 into their data as well, so being able to set that up is not hard, and yeah, so we can… we can… we can do that for DuckDee.
155 00:18:28.270 ⇒ 00:18:28.700 Casey Isaac: Okay.
156 00:18:28.700 ⇒ 00:18:30.019 Robert Tseng: Sorry about Wix, yeah.
157 00:18:30.020 ⇒ 00:18:38.629 Casey Isaac: Cool, yeah, I spoke with a friend about, I thought I saw you had N8N in here somewhere, for more of the workflow.
158 00:18:38.980 ⇒ 00:18:39.320 Robert Tseng: Yep.
159 00:18:40.980 ⇒ 00:18:59.290 Casey Isaac: automation, he had… he had, like… I actually took a bunch of notes, so I can maybe even share with you if you wanted to have a look, but he took me through how he set it up, and we talked through a couple of the workflows that… that we have, and he was like, yeah, that seems like a really good option for you, so… I can’t remember where I saw that in here, but…
160 00:18:59.580 ⇒ 00:19:00.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, any ideas.
161 00:19:00.280 ⇒ 00:19:11.249 Casey Isaac: I saw it somewhere, there it is. So… so yeah, I guess that’s… that’s a tool that you would basically, that would sit on top of DuckData… Duck, Duck Database.
162 00:19:11.800 ⇒ 00:19:18.159 Robert Tseng: So you basically, NA is even more than that. So, like, it’s basically Zapier, but, like, more powerful.
163 00:19:18.270 ⇒ 00:19:33.380 Robert Tseng: So if you… I don’t know if you remember Zapier, but it’s like a no-code, inter… it can just integrate with a bunch of different tools. So, like, yeah, if you receive an incoming email, then it can, like, trigger you to set up something in HubSpot, and then, you know, whatever, all these other things. Yeah.
164 00:19:35.580 ⇒ 00:19:38.290 Casey Isaac: Yeah, it’s… go on, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there.
165 00:19:38.290 ⇒ 00:19:57.400 Robert Tseng: Oh, no, all good. Yeah, I was just gonna say, NAN is basically… is basically that, but it has way more integrations than Zapier does, and it works with LLM workflows as well. So, yeah, I think it just, you know, that’s… that’s our go-to kind of orchestration platform for any sort of automation these days.
166 00:19:57.890 ⇒ 00:20:14.219 Casey Isaac: Cool, yeah, that’s… it sounds great. I’ve used Zapier, we’ve… we set up some automations, like, super early at Flowspace, actually, and I remember it was a pretty cool, kind of, I don’t know, point-and-click sort of thing. If, yeah, if NADN, if we can get that set up, and then, you know.
167 00:20:15.250 ⇒ 00:20:17.060 Casey Isaac: streamlined enough to where I can
168 00:20:17.300 ⇒ 00:20:22.209 Casey Isaac: you know, to do… you know, create some of the workflows sort of on the fly. I don’t know if that.
169 00:20:22.210 ⇒ 00:20:22.710 Robert Tseng: Yes. Yeah.
170 00:20:22.710 ⇒ 00:20:28.840 Casey Isaac: Possible, but it seemed like, in talking to my friend, that he thought, you know, once we kind of have things,
171 00:20:29.080 ⇒ 00:20:36.530 Casey Isaac: implemented adding… adding additional workflows, you know, in the future is, like, pretty straightforward.
172 00:20:36.530 ⇒ 00:20:37.040 Robert Tseng: Yes.
173 00:20:37.040 ⇒ 00:20:39.909 Casey Isaac: How, yeah, how do you typically work with, I guess, both
174 00:20:40.300 ⇒ 00:20:50.180 Casey Isaac: on that point, you know, when it comes to, like, NADA and some of the AI automations you’re doing, but then also, you know, additional reporting or whatever, how are you typically, kind of, supporting
175 00:20:50.520 ⇒ 00:21:04.220 Casey Isaac: Is it… is it the type of thing that, you know, with your clients, it’s like, you set it up, and then they run with it, and they don’t really need a lot of ongoing support, or are you… are you getting involved? Hey, we need this new workflow set up, we love, you know.
176 00:21:04.880 ⇒ 00:21:06.500 Casey Isaac: Okay, could you, could you help?
177 00:21:06.880 ⇒ 00:21:11.320 Casey Isaac: You know, can you… Yeah, can you do that for us? Like, what.
178 00:21:11.320 ⇒ 00:21:11.650 Robert Tseng: But yeah.
179 00:21:11.650 ⇒ 00:21:14.810 Casey Isaac: What’s a typical customer, kind of, engagement look like?
180 00:21:15.460 ⇒ 00:21:29.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we could do both. So, for, like, that pool parts company, for example, they’re a pretty lean team, so, like, they don’t really have anyone internal that we can hand it off to. They just want us to just… if they want to make changes and stuff, so we just continue to keep them around on retainer for maintenance.
181 00:21:29.990 ⇒ 00:21:39.089 Robert Tseng: So if there are any, like, workflow adjustments, they wanna, they’re adding a new integration, or a new set of reports, like, we’re just doing that, kind of ad hoc.
182 00:21:39.230 ⇒ 00:21:58.410 Robert Tseng: But if it’s, like, a bigger team, or, like, maybe it’s not… maybe you just have someone internal that you want us to train, then we can also… we can just hand it off to them as well. So, every step of this process will… especially on the N8-end setup and everything, like, we will… we’ll have, like, recordings of us walking through everything, so I think it is pretty…
183 00:21:58.620 ⇒ 00:22:10.859 Robert Tseng: You know, we do make an effort to try to not always transfer everything that we’re building, so once you do have that person, whether it’s you or someone else on your team that wants to take that over, we can hand it over.
184 00:22:11.440 ⇒ 00:22:12.180 Casey Isaac: Okay.
185 00:22:12.470 ⇒ 00:22:16.359 Robert Tseng: Does it require… does NA then, like, does it require somebody technical to…
186 00:22:16.880 ⇒ 00:22:20.489 Casey Isaac: To add a workflow, typically, or… what do you think about…
187 00:22:21.450 ⇒ 00:22:23.939 Robert Tseng: Nope, nope, I don’t think you need anything. I know we’re technical.
188 00:22:24.250 ⇒ 00:22:25.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah. You would be able to do it, yeah.
189 00:22:26.630 ⇒ 00:22:27.680 Casey Isaac: Cool. Okay.
190 00:22:29.400 ⇒ 00:22:38.049 Casey Isaac: And so the deliverable here is one POC for a single workflow, and kind of the documentation to go along with that.
191 00:22:38.290 ⇒ 00:22:39.340 Casey Isaac: Is that…
192 00:22:39.900 ⇒ 00:22:49.130 Casey Isaac: And then, obviously, setting up to add additional workflows, in the future, but you’ll… we’ll choose one. Like, I think I shared the…
193 00:22:49.500 ⇒ 00:22:58.650 Casey Isaac: we have a guy in customer service, he, like, signs into these portals, like, you know, Ace Hardware portal or whatever, to, you know, the…
194 00:22:58.850 ⇒ 00:23:02.890 Casey Isaac: We have a distributor called Lancaster. They, like, sign… he signs in, he, like.
195 00:23:03.290 ⇒ 00:23:08.889 Casey Isaac: basically downloads all the orders, and he prints them out, and then he, like, enters them into Sage. They’re from, like.
196 00:23:09.230 ⇒ 00:23:16.549 Casey Isaac: pieces of paper. So, I was thinking we could just dump all those orders, basically, you know, have N8N,
197 00:23:16.720 ⇒ 00:23:20.379 Casey Isaac: do the… You know, the work that he’s doing, signing the portal.
198 00:23:20.740 ⇒ 00:23:25.199 Casey Isaac: Download those… those orders, just automatically push them to…
199 00:23:25.320 ⇒ 00:23:27.830 Casey Isaac: Like, a spreadsheet, and then upload that spreadsheet.
200 00:23:28.390 ⇒ 00:23:32.170 Casey Isaac: as… as orders into our Sage system,
201 00:23:32.170 ⇒ 00:23:32.730 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
202 00:23:33.390 ⇒ 00:23:39.960 Casey Isaac: that’s… that’s kind of the idea. I figured one of the… probably… kind of highest ROI.
203 00:23:40.230 ⇒ 00:23:50.400 Casey Isaac: it takes him, like, all day to do this stuff. Like, it’s like a… you know, if we can automate that, I mean, it’d free up a lot of time, for him to work on other stuff, so…
204 00:23:50.590 ⇒ 00:23:55.849 Casey Isaac: That’s kind of what I was thinking. Cool. Is that… would that sound like a reasonable POC to include that?
205 00:23:55.850 ⇒ 00:23:56.699 Robert Tseng: I think so.
206 00:23:57.170 ⇒ 00:23:58.760 Casey Isaac: Okay. Cool.
207 00:23:59.360 ⇒ 00:24:07.370 Casey Isaac: Cool. What else do you need from me, then, to… So we talked about…
208 00:24:09.190 ⇒ 00:24:18.639 Casey Isaac: I can, I’ll send you those reports on the reporting side of things. Do we need to go in more… in more depth? Like, do you need more detail on the…
209 00:24:18.960 ⇒ 00:24:22.070 Casey Isaac: on the Workday iWorkflow stuff, or…
210 00:24:22.900 ⇒ 00:24:43.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think you… you talked me through that POC before, so I think that makes sense. Yeah, I think we’re… we’re good there. I mean, obviously, once we get started, we’ll review each step more in detail of, like, exactly the sequence that we need to go through, but that definitely seems like something we can… we can, we could build, this, this workflow for.
211 00:24:43.400 ⇒ 00:24:51.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think let me just review those reports that you sent over. I don’t imagine there to be anything that, like.
212 00:24:52.110 ⇒ 00:25:08.979 Robert Tseng: crazy that jumps off the page, but, so I do think that we could probably fit it into what we’ve already scoped out. As far as, like, pricing-wise, I don’t think anything will change. I’ll just, like, tweak some of the wording here and make sure that it’s more representative of the reports that you want to see.
213 00:25:09.770 ⇒ 00:25:10.730 Casey Isaac: Okay, cool.
214 00:25:10.910 ⇒ 00:25:14.019 Casey Isaac: Yeah. And as far as, like, timing, you know, I…
215 00:25:14.560 ⇒ 00:25:16.910 Casey Isaac: So we’re doing some accounting cleanup right now.
216 00:25:17.040 ⇒ 00:25:20.790 Casey Isaac: I think by mid-month, It’s in the next week.
217 00:25:21.050 ⇒ 00:25:22.920 Casey Isaac: I’ll have a better picture of…
218 00:25:23.330 ⇒ 00:25:31.059 Casey Isaac: kind of current state of the business. We had, like, a… oh man, the last few weeks have been interesting. Had, like, an accounting error. I… I thought we were…
219 00:25:31.160 ⇒ 00:25:40.810 Casey Isaac: like, losing a ton of money, in, like, the last couple months. I was like, oh my god, are we gonna have to fucking bankrupt the business?
220 00:25:41.580 ⇒ 00:25:43.499 Casey Isaac: Things are looking a lot better.
221 00:25:44.220 ⇒ 00:25:48.520 Casey Isaac: We, like, we found basically an additional, like, $500,000 in profit.
222 00:25:48.590 ⇒ 00:25:50.230 Robert Tseng: dollars…
223 00:25:50.380 ⇒ 00:25:59.850 Casey Isaac: from a stupid accounting error, so I’m going… I’m like, we’re doing an audit right now, working with the CPA to, like, make sure we have, kind of, a really clear picture of what’s going on.
224 00:26:01.060 ⇒ 00:26:01.500 Robert Tseng: That’s good.
225 00:26:01.500 ⇒ 00:26:20.169 Casey Isaac: you know, the business is… yeah, I think it’s gonna be in an okay spot, but we’re still not… I still don’t have, like, the full picture. I will, next week, I’d say, maybe the following week, at which point, can make a decision immediately, like, whether this, you know, if this makes sense to do. I do think it does,
226 00:26:20.280 ⇒ 00:26:33.360 Casey Isaac: But… and it’s, you know, I think what you put in front of us is, like, it’s really reasonable. I’m just not entirely sure. I just want to get all the information before we… I sign off on it, basically. So, okay. Anyways…
227 00:26:35.650 ⇒ 00:26:52.959 Casey Isaac: Yeah, I can get you the reports, though. I feel like the timing is probably good. So, you know, if you can… if we have, like, a real clear picture of the final scope and cost, like, next week and the following… into the following week, I would say, I would say by the end of the month, we can probably give you the green light.
228 00:26:53.110 ⇒ 00:26:56.949 Casey Isaac: what is the… I remember… what’s the implementation timeline look like?
229 00:26:57.800 ⇒ 00:27:00.490 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we could do all this within a bunch, so… I think.
230 00:27:00.490 ⇒ 00:27:01.210 Casey Isaac: Okay.
231 00:27:01.430 ⇒ 00:27:15.789 Robert Tseng: I would say two to four weeks is typically what we expect. The delay is usually more on, like, tool access and communication of back and forth as we go through revisions, but, yeah, I feel… I feel confident that we could… we could deliver it within 2-4 weeks.
232 00:27:15.960 ⇒ 00:27:17.130 Casey Isaac: Okay, cool. That’s…
233 00:27:17.130 ⇒ 00:27:17.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
234 00:27:17.890 ⇒ 00:27:19.440 Casey Isaac: That’s awesome.
235 00:27:19.940 ⇒ 00:27:30.489 Casey Isaac: Okay, so I’ll get you the report, and then… yeah, let me know what else you need to get everything kind of finalized in the next… in the next week, week and a half, and then,
236 00:27:30.880 ⇒ 00:27:33.290 Casey Isaac: Yeah, like I said, hopefully by the end of the month, we’ll…
237 00:27:33.730 ⇒ 00:27:40.800 Casey Isaac: be ready to move forward. Great. So… Alright, well, welcome back.
238 00:27:41.570 ⇒ 00:27:49.320 Casey Isaac: I’m here… I’m here the next week, too, so, I don’t know, are you, like, remind me, are you, like, working… are you in the city, or are you…
239 00:27:49.320 ⇒ 00:27:50.170 Robert Tseng: I’m in the city.
240 00:27:51.000 ⇒ 00:27:51.909 Casey Isaac: Where at?
241 00:27:52.120 ⇒ 00:27:54.720 Robert Tseng: I, I’m in Columbus Circle.
242 00:27:55.650 ⇒ 00:27:57.300 Casey Isaac: That’s right.
243 00:27:57.490 ⇒ 00:28:04.140 Casey Isaac: I’m gonna be around, I’d love to, yeah, I’d love to… so I’m here till… I think right now it’s looking like next Monday,
244 00:28:04.810 ⇒ 00:28:14.269 Casey Isaac: this week, I have a few things, but somewhat open. I’m also gonna be back on the 26th. I’d love to grab a beer at some point.
245 00:28:14.500 ⇒ 00:28:28.150 Casey Isaac: I gotta… I gotta kind of, like, look at my schedule for this week to see if it makes sense. I’m sure you’re… you know, you may be busy, too. But, regardless, either this time or the next trip, we’d love to… to meet up. It’d be great to… yeah, to… I don’t know.
246 00:28:28.540 ⇒ 00:28:30.150 Casey Isaac: See you in person, and…
247 00:28:30.150 ⇒ 00:28:31.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
248 00:28:32.090 ⇒ 00:28:35.279 Casey Isaac: But… but yeah, let me… I have your number, right?
249 00:28:35.430 ⇒ 00:28:36.330 Casey Isaac: I can’t remember.
250 00:28:36.330 ⇒ 00:28:38.540 Robert Tseng: Yes, I think we… I think we got it last time, yeah.
251 00:28:39.080 ⇒ 00:28:39.980 Casey Isaac: Alright, cool.
252 00:28:40.440 ⇒ 00:28:43.749 Casey Isaac: Are you Well, I’ll shoot you a text.
253 00:28:44.150 ⇒ 00:28:52.529 Casey Isaac: Yeah, I’ll shoot you a text. I’m thinking maybe late… late this month is probably better, just because…
254 00:28:52.530 ⇒ 00:28:53.140 Robert Tseng: Sure.
255 00:28:53.730 ⇒ 00:28:56.960 Casey Isaac: yeah, things are…
256 00:28:58.220 ⇒ 00:29:02.240 Casey Isaac: a little crazy this week, but I think probably that if you’re around… are you around, like, the 20…
257 00:29:02.800 ⇒ 00:29:04.829 Casey Isaac: I don’t know, 24th?
258 00:29:04.830 ⇒ 00:29:05.290 Robert Tseng: I’ll be around.
259 00:29:05.290 ⇒ 00:29:07.450 Casey Isaac: What is it, the 21st week? 22nd?
260 00:29:07.820 ⇒ 00:29:08.600 Casey Isaac: Yeah.
261 00:29:08.600 ⇒ 00:29:13.969 Robert Tseng: I’m going to… I’m going to Chicago next week for Shop Talk, but after that, I’m… I’m there. Yeah.
262 00:29:14.290 ⇒ 00:29:18.569 Casey Isaac: Oh, cool. That’s awesome. I’ve been to… this is gonna be, like, the first time I’m not gonna be at Chop Talk, and…
263 00:29:19.070 ⇒ 00:29:20.700 Casey Isaac: Like, 5 years. 7 years.
264 00:29:20.700 ⇒ 00:29:24.189 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I figured that you probably used to go all the time.
265 00:29:24.540 ⇒ 00:29:27.149 Casey Isaac: Yeah, have you done a fall one before?
266 00:29:27.640 ⇒ 00:29:28.789 Robert Tseng: I’ve not, yeah.
267 00:29:29.100 ⇒ 00:29:30.480 Casey Isaac: I did it last year, it was good.
268 00:29:31.880 ⇒ 00:29:32.850 Robert Tseng: Where was it?
269 00:29:33.010 ⇒ 00:29:38.639 Casey Isaac: It’s… it was in… Vegas, right? No, it was in Chicago. It was in Chicago last year.
270 00:29:38.880 ⇒ 00:29:39.750 Robert Tseng: I was always in Chicago.
271 00:29:39.750 ⇒ 00:29:50.190 Casey Isaac: Same thing. Yeah, I think it’s always there. It was… it was honestly bigger than we expected it to be. I think it was the first time they did the fall one last year, and
272 00:29:50.520 ⇒ 00:29:52.699 Casey Isaac: Yeah, it was… it was a good shot. We…
273 00:29:53.000 ⇒ 00:29:58.190 Casey Isaac: Like, solid attendance, not as big as the spring show, but still pretty good, so…
274 00:29:58.190 ⇒ 00:29:58.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
275 00:29:58.970 ⇒ 00:30:00.230 Casey Isaac: Hope it goes well.
276 00:30:00.580 ⇒ 00:30:01.300 Robert Tseng: Thanks.
277 00:30:01.440 ⇒ 00:30:05.030 Casey Isaac: And yeah, I’ll shoot you a text. Let’s, let’s aim for maybe that.
278 00:30:05.320 ⇒ 00:30:06.870 Casey Isaac: Last week of September.
279 00:30:07.230 ⇒ 00:30:08.240 Robert Tseng: Okay, that sounds good.
280 00:30:09.610 ⇒ 00:30:12.140 Casey Isaac: Cool, man. Thanks for everything.
281 00:30:13.140 ⇒ 00:30:18.920 Casey Isaac: And, yeah, I’ll… I should have a decision in the next couple weeks, so…
282 00:30:18.920 ⇒ 00:30:21.139 Robert Tseng: Okay, appreciate it. Thanks, Casey.
283 00:30:21.140 ⇒ 00:30:21.850 Casey Isaac: Alright.
284 00:30:21.910 ⇒ 00:30:22.989 Robert Tseng: Yep, that’s great.
285 00:30:22.990 ⇒ 00:30:25.459 Casey Isaac: Alright. Thanks, Robert. Take care.
286 00:30:25.460 ⇒ 00:30:26.459 Robert Tseng: Talk soon. Bye.
287 00:30:26.460 ⇒ 00:30:27.359 Casey Isaac: Alright, bye.