Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Greg Date: 2026-03-23 Meeting participants: Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji, Greg Stoutenburg
WEBVTT
1 00:10:11.280 ⇒ 00:10:12.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Anthony!
2 00:10:21.970 ⇒ 00:10:24.050 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Oh, hello, I was on mute.
3 00:10:24.260 ⇒ 00:10:24.910 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey.
4 00:10:25.090 ⇒ 00:10:26.159 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Can you hear me?
5 00:10:26.450 ⇒ 00:10:27.899 Greg Stoutenburg: I can hear you, how are you?
6 00:10:28.060 ⇒ 00:10:29.940 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Okay, I’m doing great. How are you?
7 00:10:30.340 ⇒ 00:10:34.200 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m doing well, doing well, staying busy. Where are you located?
8 00:10:34.390 ⇒ 00:10:37.549 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Chicago Cool. How about you?
9 00:10:38.290 ⇒ 00:10:41.750 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m in York, Pennsylvania, which is near Harrisburg and Baltimore.
10 00:10:42.050 ⇒ 00:10:42.780 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Okay, okay.
11 00:10:43.230 ⇒ 00:10:43.630 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Great.
12 00:10:43.630 ⇒ 00:10:46.039 Greg Stoutenburg: Where in Chicago, exactly? I was there for a while.
13 00:10:47.170 ⇒ 00:10:49.980 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Just on the south side of Chicago, Woodlawn.
14 00:10:50.280 ⇒ 00:10:54.759 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Okay. I know it vaguely. Red line? Or orange line?
15 00:10:55.150 ⇒ 00:10:56.490 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Green Line.
16 00:10:56.720 ⇒ 00:10:57.550 Greg Stoutenburg: green.
17 00:10:57.890 ⇒ 00:11:00.469 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Correct, just right at University of Chicago.
18 00:11:00.640 ⇒ 00:11:02.040 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
19 00:11:02.310 ⇒ 00:11:03.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Right. That’s why.
20 00:11:05.690 ⇒ 00:11:09.689 Greg Stoutenburg: So I’m like, Green Line? Where did I even ride Green Line? Yeah, it’s been there a while.
21 00:11:10.810 ⇒ 00:11:13.080 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I moved down here from the north side.
22 00:11:13.590 ⇒ 00:11:14.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
23 00:11:14.080 ⇒ 00:11:22.910 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: a couple years back, you know, it is much more, spacious here compared to the north side, a whole lot expensive.
24 00:11:23.290 ⇒ 00:11:24.860 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah.
25 00:11:25.180 ⇒ 00:11:26.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I believe it.
26 00:11:27.110 ⇒ 00:11:29.150 Greg Stoutenburg: If I were to,
27 00:11:29.570 ⇒ 00:11:36.349 Greg Stoutenburg: If I were to go back to Chicago, I think I would take anything I could afford near Lincoln Park. Just anything.
28 00:11:36.930 ⇒ 00:11:39.899 Greg Stoutenburg: I just… I just loved it out there, yeah.
29 00:11:40.910 ⇒ 00:11:44.469 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I did stay around Lincoln Town one time as well.
30 00:11:44.470 ⇒ 00:11:53.739 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s nice. I miss, I miss Oak Street Beach, and I miss the… I miss Lakeshore Drive, running along there, riding a bike along there.
31 00:11:54.640 ⇒ 00:11:55.829 Greg Stoutenburg: Pretty cool. Yeah.
32 00:11:55.830 ⇒ 00:11:56.400 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Yeah.
33 00:11:56.840 ⇒ 00:12:00.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool, yeah, well, nice to meet you.
34 00:12:00.230 ⇒ 00:12:00.900 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: to meet you, so I’.
35 00:12:00.920 ⇒ 00:12:12.909 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m Greg, this is the second round interview. I understand that the first one is kind of, you know, procedural and behavioral questions and things like that. This one will be a little bit more focused on the role.
36 00:12:12.910 ⇒ 00:12:26.399 Greg Stoutenburg: I am… I don’t have hiring authority, I’m just a person who works in this role, and so, you know, they’ve asked me to talk to some candidates who come through and just, you know, share feedback after I have a conversation with you, so…
37 00:12:26.430 ⇒ 00:12:28.909 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s what we’ll do today. Sound good?
38 00:12:29.280 ⇒ 00:12:29.980 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Great.
39 00:12:30.150 ⇒ 00:12:45.689 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. And sorry I had to reschedule on you last week as well. I, I got in a jam. I, I can’t remember if I said this or not, but I was supposed to fly out of Florida, and my flight was canceled during the storms on Monday. And so, ended up driving all the way back to Pennsylvania.
40 00:12:46.150 ⇒ 00:12:53.849 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, that’s fine. You said something about that, and I understood that it wasn’t possible to have the interview, you probably needed some rest.
41 00:12:53.850 ⇒ 00:12:57.369 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, a lot of stuff going on at once, so…
42 00:12:57.370 ⇒ 00:12:58.060 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Thanks.
43 00:12:58.060 ⇒ 00:13:03.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool, alright. Let me just check something real quick.
44 00:13:03.840 ⇒ 00:13:08.870 Greg Stoutenburg: nope. Alright.
45 00:13:10.540 ⇒ 00:13:19.920 Greg Stoutenburg: All right. Okay, well, let’s, let’s get to it then. So, I guess before we jump in, maybe you could just tell me a little bit, like, what brought you to be talking to Brainforge?
46 00:13:20.740 ⇒ 00:13:38.089 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, so my name is, Anthony Chukuemaker. Originally, I’m a chemical engineer, and that is where I developed my background of end-to-end process. I specialized in process instrumentation, control, and optimization.
47 00:13:38.180 ⇒ 00:13:57.639 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And then before I moved down here to the United States to further and get a business analytics master’s in science. And that was intentional because I worked as an engineer as well, worked in plant floor, worked in… across cross-functional areas between sales, marketing.
48 00:13:57.810 ⇒ 00:14:01.850 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And plant production as well, before I moved down here.
49 00:14:01.930 ⇒ 00:14:19.409 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And I wanted to move into a business perspective so that I could translate my process flow mapping into how business works. That way, it gives me an overview of how the business side and the production aspect of it works.
50 00:14:19.500 ⇒ 00:14:29.490 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: My aim is to move further towards operations research management and, and all that, but from the job description.
51 00:14:29.530 ⇒ 00:14:43.409 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: exactly what the job description says is everything that I’ve been doing for the past 8 to 9 years of my career, starting from when I left the university, coming from a chemical engineering background.
52 00:14:43.480 ⇒ 00:15:00.439 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And even working as a product development officer in the plant floor, that was basically what I’ve done, sitting, at the intersection of where the organization gets all the data from, more like the data epicenter of the organization.
53 00:15:00.470 ⇒ 00:15:15.270 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: In my recent work with CMG Global, I worked closely with the CFO, the COO, the Director of Operations, and for job delivery, because my job in that, that, company was,
54 00:15:15.360 ⇒ 00:15:27.049 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: the principal business intelligence systems. Principal Business Intelligence and Systems Analyst. So, I worked on the intersection of all the cross-functional areas.
55 00:15:27.150 ⇒ 00:15:31.570 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: The sales, the operations, project delivery.
56 00:15:31.650 ⇒ 00:15:47.970 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: As well as, marketing. And the same thing applies to my role at Aramark. The only exceptions were my earlier role in the United States, where I worked as a pricing simulation analyst, as well as a business analyst with,
57 00:15:47.990 ⇒ 00:15:55.739 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Workday, for Belk, for Workday, financial model implementation.
58 00:15:55.810 ⇒ 00:16:02.940 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: So what… what I find attractive about this role is that it aligns with everything that I’ve done.
59 00:16:03.090 ⇒ 00:16:19.429 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Being in the heart of the revenue of the organization, knowing how the organization makes money, where they make money, where to upsell, where to cross-sell, how to monitor margin thresholds, how to monitor performance metrics, how to, basically
60 00:16:19.540 ⇒ 00:16:39.330 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: you know, the entire unbroken revenue lineage of the organization, from sales, to conversion, to operations, to execution, down to margin monitoring and margin monitoring and profitability at the end of the day. So that’s what brings me to this role, because as a senior data.
61 00:16:39.450 ⇒ 00:16:47.300 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And associated inside role, and then it aligns perfectly with everything that I’ve done all through my career.
62 00:16:48.190 ⇒ 00:16:52.210 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, great. Okay, great. Yeah, how did you, how’d you find out about us?
63 00:16:52.660 ⇒ 00:17:01.679 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, so I saw the post on LinkedIn, and it resonated with me, because I saw that it was a growing startup, and there’s a whole lot of,
64 00:17:01.780 ⇒ 00:17:20.090 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: new, modernized thinking and AI going into a whole lot of, work that is being done. And I looked at the case study, from the website, and it… it is similar to almost all the case studies that I have in my portfolio, almost similar
65 00:17:20.250 ⇒ 00:17:30.779 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: architecture, similar mindset. The idea is to create a repeatable end-to-end process where you can audit, and then you can optimize
66 00:17:30.780 ⇒ 00:17:41.139 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: as it goes, and gives you real-time data instead of pulling reports, here and there. A repeatable process every time that is auditable.
67 00:17:41.140 ⇒ 00:17:46.180 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And you can optimize, and it, you know, resonated with me really good.
68 00:17:47.610 ⇒ 00:18:11.499 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, we are big about repeatability here. That is… that is one of the things, you know, we’re working actively on playbooks for different types of engagements, so that as we… you know, when we do a project, we’re able to learn from it, and then go, okay, the next time that we do this similar kind of project, let’s, you know, let’s follow these steps. And we’ve already got them written out, because we’ve done this before, and so we’re going to iterate and improve, but basically.
69 00:18:11.500 ⇒ 00:18:19.550 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, try to redeploy, as close as we can, redeploy what we did before so that it’s a repeatable process, speeds us up, makes us more efficient, and that sort of thing.
70 00:18:20.000 ⇒ 00:18:32.510 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Just to add something, you know, there, I just wanted to give an example about the repeatable process and why documentation matters. When I worked with, Top Block and Belk,
71 00:18:32.770 ⇒ 00:18:41.870 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: for the financial… for Workday Financial Model implementation. The documentations I did, and the study ideas from those documentations.
72 00:18:41.870 ⇒ 00:18:56.430 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: It didn’t just give me a background on Workday implementation alone, it gave me a background on full ERP implementation, because Workday creates a… it creates a tool that allows for business object mapping
73 00:18:56.430 ⇒ 00:19:09.740 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: You know, and business event mapping. So when you understand when those… where those map and how it is connected, and what tags are connected to cost centers, and, categorized reports, and, you know, the hierarchies and all that.
74 00:19:09.980 ⇒ 00:19:18.260 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: it gives you the oversight when you’re working with other ERP implementations, because you understand that these are just containers and buckets.
75 00:19:19.070 ⇒ 00:19:26.750 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, containers and buckets. I think that’s a good way to put that. Yeah, that one, that one clicks with me, so I,
76 00:19:26.890 ⇒ 00:19:39.590 Greg Stoutenburg: I… I have a sort of unusual background to be in this kind of role. I was a philosophy professor, and one of the responsibilities was teaching logic, and so I’m very used to thinking of just, like, just… there’s just, like, an empty space, you know, like.
77 00:19:39.590 ⇒ 00:19:40.090 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right.
78 00:19:40.090 ⇒ 00:19:41.820 Greg Stoutenburg: arrow, and then over here.
79 00:19:41.820 ⇒ 00:19:42.450 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right.
80 00:19:42.450 ⇒ 00:19:45.130 Greg Stoutenburg: There’s this thing and that thing, but And…
81 00:19:45.130 ⇒ 00:19:59.329 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, now you mentioned it, that’s exactly how I learned Excel. I didn’t learn Excel by learning the functions from LogicGate, as I was taught as an engineer, the not, all, end gate, and all that, and just put everything together, and it helps.
82 00:19:59.330 ⇒ 00:20:03.140 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep. Yeah, it’s just algebra, in a way. Correct.
83 00:20:03.140 ⇒ 00:20:03.530 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right.
84 00:20:03.530 ⇒ 00:20:14.549 Greg Stoutenburg: it’s, you learn to think of systems in terms of structures with no content in them whatsoever, and, and then just apply it elsewhere, so yeah. Yeah, that clicks.
85 00:20:14.810 ⇒ 00:20:21.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. All right, well, I have a feeling we could talk about that all day, and I… which would be fun, but we might.
86 00:20:21.150 ⇒ 00:20:21.620 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Bye.
87 00:20:22.560 ⇒ 00:20:23.200 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: away.
88 00:20:23.370 ⇒ 00:20:38.149 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, let’s see. So, alright, so clearly you know how to do some analysis, clearly you know how to, put a system together. So let’s talk a little bit about, delivering materials for clients.
89 00:20:38.150 ⇒ 00:20:49.910 Greg Stoutenburg: Here’s a question. How do you ensure clients can operate your work without you? So, you create something, you need to deliver it to a client, you want to make it as close to self-service as possible.
90 00:20:49.910 ⇒ 00:20:51.010 Greg Stoutenburg: How do you do that?
91 00:20:51.780 ⇒ 00:21:07.020 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, this is an adoption issue, and this is one of the things that I tried to perfect when I implemented Workday with Belk. The idea is to involve the stakeholders from the very beginning. When I
92 00:21:07.150 ⇒ 00:21:16.450 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: tried to… elicit with stakeholders, I always create this proposition that I want them to take an active part.
93 00:21:16.450 ⇒ 00:21:31.890 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: In the requirements gathering and everything. Because I realize that sometimes stakeholders might know that there’s a problem, but they do not know what the problem is and where the problem is coming from. And a normal reporting doesn’t just solve that.
94 00:21:31.890 ⇒ 00:21:45.650 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: So what I try to do during the elicitation, I try to explain to them that we are going to have a workshop to re-engineer this business event, so that we can identify together the business problem.
95 00:21:45.740 ⇒ 00:21:52.849 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: When we identify the business problem, then we can together identify the business solution.
96 00:21:53.180 ⇒ 00:21:59.179 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Now, then when I do that, the next thing is to gather the requirements based on what we have.
97 00:21:59.210 ⇒ 00:22:14.720 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: after the requirements gathering, that, of course, the business process would have been evaluated, the assessments would have been done, I’d do a current state analysis, and then I propose a future state to the stakeholders, so they also were involved.
98 00:22:14.720 ⇒ 00:22:26.520 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And they know exactly what we’re getting when we build. Then when we build, I always, as much as possible, like to go with documentations, like data dictionaries.
99 00:22:26.520 ⇒ 00:22:36.800 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: KPI definitions. I try to put swimming diagrams, MD diagrams, RACI matrix, depending on what kind of,
100 00:22:36.810 ⇒ 00:22:44.869 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: system we’re trying to build, like my contract to cash. One of the things I built was the RACI, and even in the implementation for Belk.
101 00:22:44.900 ⇒ 00:22:47.430 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: One of the things I built was the racing.
102 00:22:47.540 ⇒ 00:22:55.410 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: That way, it gives… and another thing is a job aids, yeah, very important, job aids in SOPs and user guides.
103 00:22:55.490 ⇒ 00:23:12.490 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Now, those documentations, and with the adoption steps, it gives the stakeholders the ability to easily, you know, get into these platforms and use them, because they know how they have been defined from the onset. They were there when the business
104 00:23:12.490 ⇒ 00:23:24.320 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Events was engineered, they were there when the current state analysis was created. Now, it helps adoption. Another thing I try to do when creating, implementing solutions.
105 00:23:25.300 ⇒ 00:23:34.300 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Another thing I try to do when implementing solutions is to try as much as possible to start with the simplest, easiest, adaptable
106 00:23:34.830 ⇒ 00:23:45.420 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Two, like, I give the quickest win, and the easiest explainable win. I like to break my implementation into phases, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3.
107 00:23:45.510 ⇒ 00:23:59.070 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: After the first phase with a simpler setup, giving us the same, outputs, then we have requirements, further, workshops with stakeholders.
108 00:23:59.080 ⇒ 00:24:08.930 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: who then give us requirements to scale further. So that is how I approach adoption, making sure that everybody is a part of the implementation.
109 00:24:10.550 ⇒ 00:24:14.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I like it. So, I mean, so I guess I’m hearing a lot of, like,
110 00:24:15.190 ⇒ 00:24:28.380 Greg Stoutenburg: document everything, do a simple piece first, and introduce the client to it, like, on a live call. And lots of documentation. Is that, I mean, sort of, like, broadly speaking, right?
111 00:24:28.850 ⇒ 00:24:44.370 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Correct. It’s lots of documentation and collaboration. Engineer the process with them, document the process with them, create the simplest quick wins, show as a proof of concept, or an MVP, and then scale further from there.
112 00:24:45.760 ⇒ 00:24:50.379 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. The MVP concept is,
113 00:24:50.530 ⇒ 00:24:56.339 Greg Stoutenburg: I think that’s vital for thinking about what we do in this kind of business, because,
114 00:24:56.340 ⇒ 00:25:14.070 Greg Stoutenburg: we have a lot of different stakeholders, they have a lot of different needs, and often, just the quickest way to get going on anything is to create a small version of it, and then get feedback, see what the client says, you know, and kind of move forward from there. So I think that sort of concept is something that you’d see a lot of.
115 00:25:14.140 ⇒ 00:25:16.310 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, here at Brainforge.
116 00:25:17.030 ⇒ 00:25:28.089 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Correct. I have a business analysis background as well, so I understand requirement elicitations and requirement gatherings and documentations during implementations.
117 00:25:31.340 ⇒ 00:25:32.610 Greg Stoutenburg: One second, please.
118 00:25:47.640 ⇒ 00:25:59.350 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Tell me about a time that you avoided over-engineering. So, in other words, like, you know, there might have been some sort of maximal
119 00:25:59.350 ⇒ 00:26:13.960 Greg Stoutenburg: approach you could have taken to really engineering every little bit of human work or further oversight out of some project, but you didn’t do that. And, tell me about that time and what the situation was there.
120 00:26:14.640 ⇒ 00:26:19.840 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: But, when I, when I moved into the role,
121 00:26:20.170 ⇒ 00:26:24.109 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: With CMG Global. The ask was to…
122 00:26:24.270 ⇒ 00:26:28.450 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: move directly into an ARP system.
123 00:26:28.620 ⇒ 00:26:32.700 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And when I had done the current state assessment.
124 00:26:33.380 ⇒ 00:26:40.069 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I had understood the business ecosystem and their type of talent and technicalities.
125 00:26:40.170 ⇒ 00:26:49.550 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: technical abilities they had. I knew it wasn’t the right move to automatically move into a full-blown ARP.
126 00:26:49.600 ⇒ 00:26:58.520 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And I believe that would have been over-engineering at that time, even if it was, a concept that we were going to achieve.
127 00:26:58.520 ⇒ 00:27:09.849 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: At the end. When I got to the position, data was spread across different places, and the business problem that was brought to me at that time, we needed a centralized system.
128 00:27:09.910 ⇒ 00:27:19.130 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: to create, you know, like, create… we need someone to create an ERP in Microsoft 365, so that we can have a centralized system.
129 00:27:19.220 ⇒ 00:27:29.760 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: But what I first did was to, facilitate with the stakeholders so that they can understand the importance of starting small.
130 00:27:29.980 ⇒ 00:27:46.100 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And scaling small, so that you can get an MVP that captures the entire business data from the entire business solution. And then using that model, you can scale to the next phase. So what I did was, to start with Excel.
131 00:27:46.160 ⇒ 00:28:02.930 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: as a centralized source of truth, using Excel workbooks, connecting Power Query and ODBC and API solutions, REST APIs to all the business solution tools. We basically used Monday.com, BQE Call, and Hotspot at that time.
132 00:28:03.080 ⇒ 00:28:19.060 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Together with Smartsheet, so I used, Power Query, made an Excel workbook, and that was the first reporting structure. Created the workbook, put some security into them, and then put the metrics as created in the strategic objective meeting.
133 00:28:19.080 ⇒ 00:28:25.960 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Now, that helped because it pushed the stakeholders towards a reporting
134 00:28:25.990 ⇒ 00:28:38.600 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: towards the behavior of using reports, because that wasn’t a behavior or an idea that was in the organization before. Now, it created a platform where they could…
135 00:28:38.700 ⇒ 00:28:53.970 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: they could see, oh, we can see the EVM metric, we could see CPI, we could see SPI. I could just hit refresh, and I could see these values, and we didn’t need to over-engineer, but we now have this. So that is giving a little, a simple solution
136 00:28:54.220 ⇒ 00:29:12.579 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: quick win, and then it would support adoption, enable stakeholder to buy in and request for more. Then after that, when we did that, the next step was, oh, we still need to do this, we need to create the ERP because there’s a little fragmentation. The next phase was moving to Dataverse.
137 00:29:12.580 ⇒ 00:29:23.220 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: before we finally moved to Microsoft 365. And TMG right now still uses Microsoft 365 and Dynamic 365 as created, but we had to start small.
138 00:29:23.230 ⇒ 00:29:29.059 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Refuse the over-engineering to the ERP, start small, and scale from face to face.
139 00:29:31.110 ⇒ 00:29:44.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like that. So basically, you’re… if I’m hearing this right, you’re engineering to the point that the problem actually requires, but not beyond it, right? You know, you build the solution, you know what the next step could be, but you kind of…
140 00:29:44.950 ⇒ 00:29:48.450 Greg Stoutenburg: feel out where the client is at along the way. Is that basically right?
141 00:29:48.770 ⇒ 00:29:54.160 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Correct, because I understood that that was the organization’s immediate need.
142 00:29:54.380 ⇒ 00:29:59.889 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: To have visibility of the project health, the project profitability.
143 00:30:00.190 ⇒ 00:30:15.940 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: click conversions, pipeline and following analytics, and also to do some attribution and cohort segmentation analysis. They wanted to see that, and that was a quick win, and that was what moved them to actually buy in towards buying more tools.
144 00:30:15.940 ⇒ 00:30:26.340 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: to get dataverse and the dynamic. If we had just moved into the EARP implementation, and it was a failure, the project would have been dead from the beginning.
145 00:30:26.870 ⇒ 00:30:29.879 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good way to put that.
146 00:30:30.270 ⇒ 00:30:36.020 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s a good way to put that, yeah. Okay, I’ll just pick one more,
147 00:30:37.780 ⇒ 00:30:45.570 Greg Stoutenburg: No, not that one. Describe how you explain technical findings to a non-technical executive.
148 00:30:48.220 ⇒ 00:30:58.830 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: But I… in my experience, I have… this was one of the most difficult aspects of my career when I first started my career, but I have been trying as much as possible to…
149 00:30:58.830 ⇒ 00:31:12.219 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: learn and learn, and with the experiences with the CFOs and COOs, I think it shapes you towards exactly what they need. And I realize that they do not want to hear about how you wrangle the data in Python.
150 00:31:12.220 ⇒ 00:31:26.790 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: They want to understand from the business perspective and the numbers. For instance, what is the… what is the cost efficiency for this project at this time? If we run another two resources to this project.
151 00:31:26.890 ⇒ 00:31:42.500 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Would we have a margin erosion before Friday? What would be our profitability? If we add two more resources, would our plant value, be at par? So those are the things that stakeholders want to hear. They want to
152 00:31:42.500 ⇒ 00:31:56.360 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: See how you can translate those technicalities into the business problems, and prefer the solutions, rather than… So the best way to approach this is to speak in numbers, with stakeholders.
153 00:31:56.360 ⇒ 00:32:05.280 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: This is the current state, this is what you get, when you do not have visibility. And this is what you get after you have visibility.
154 00:32:05.350 ⇒ 00:32:10.070 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: So, they understand, and they are motivated to buy into the solution.
155 00:32:10.810 ⇒ 00:32:13.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good.
156 00:32:13.920 ⇒ 00:32:33.139 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, I’ll just… okay, I’ll ask one more. I know I said that before, I’m gonna ask one more. What have you automated to improve leverage? So we were just talking about repeatability a minute ago. What’s something that you have made that’s repeatable? Or if you haven’t made anything that’s repeatable, what would you like to make that’s repeatable?
157 00:32:33.450 ⇒ 00:32:35.710 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I have made a whole… I have…
158 00:32:35.710 ⇒ 00:32:36.050 Greg Stoutenburg: But…
159 00:32:36.050 ⇒ 00:32:51.869 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: seven case studies of things that I’ve built. I’m a builder, and I always like to build, and I’m a thinkerman. I like to, you know, put my hands into things and build. I’ve spoken a whole lot about contract to cash, contract-to-cash. It is one of the biggest achievements
160 00:32:51.870 ⇒ 00:33:01.159 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: that I’ve made, with CMG, but that has always been the position of my thinking, the end-to-end mapping. So the business problem was.
161 00:33:01.220 ⇒ 00:33:07.420 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: we were even getting conversion. For a startup, conversion and fulfillment is a big issue.
162 00:33:07.500 ⇒ 00:33:14.030 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: When you do not get, especially for consulting firms, when you’re not converting.
163 00:33:14.180 ⇒ 00:33:29.710 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: and the clients are not fulfilling, you don’t have working capital to run the organization. So, the business problem was clients were stalling to make payments, we were not seeing where the project documents were.
164 00:33:29.850 ⇒ 00:33:35.050 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And we didn’t have a whole… a grasp of the entire revenue life cycle.
165 00:33:35.300 ⇒ 00:33:50.990 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: management. And that is a problem, because a whole lot of companies, they monitor from deal to conversion, especially if it’s a SaaS product, where it’s just a click to conversion. But there are companies that are service delivery companies, where executions
166 00:33:50.990 ⇒ 00:34:07.220 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: have to be made, and those executions, they are usually governed by statement of work that are governed by milestones and invoice payments. Now, you have to track all those, and when you don’t have them, you’re gonna have backlog of aging invoice and no fulfillment.
167 00:34:07.250 ⇒ 00:34:13.600 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And when I assessed the issue, I realized that it wasn’t just from the company.
168 00:34:13.850 ⇒ 00:34:19.170 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: It wasn’t just from the client, it was also from the company, and it was a quality control
169 00:34:19.219 ⇒ 00:34:38.409 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: issue as well. So what I did was to create a centralized source of truth in Smartsheet, connecting Salesforce and BQE. BQE is the ERP bringing the financials for, budget and account, for spend and, budgeted. And then, the Salesforce.
170 00:34:38.530 ⇒ 00:34:41.590 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And, the CRM bringing information.
171 00:34:41.620 ⇒ 00:34:50.959 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: opportunity change… I mean, sales changes to opportunity. So, monitoring the entire pipeline funnel, from when a deal converts to when it
172 00:34:50.960 ⇒ 00:35:02.340 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: From a… when a deal is identified, to when it is… when it’s generated, to when it’s identified, to when the seesaw, the sale, to when it becomes an opportunity, to when it is moved into
173 00:35:02.500 ⇒ 00:35:12.960 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: the, the ERP. So, what I omitted was a stage-gated stakeholder, involved.
174 00:35:13.080 ⇒ 00:35:19.739 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: platform. One rule for every project. Once a project is won.
175 00:35:19.970 ⇒ 00:35:24.089 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: in Salesforce, an automation kicks it into
176 00:35:24.210 ⇒ 00:35:29.280 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Smartsheet, because of the connection between Salesforce Bridge and Smartsheet.
177 00:35:29.530 ⇒ 00:35:38.039 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I also connected an API, a REST API, that moved Salesforce into BQ Core, so based on the trigger.
178 00:35:38.180 ⇒ 00:35:45.819 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Now, the stages were the sale created, the PO received, and then we had different invoicing based on
179 00:35:46.010 ⇒ 00:36:00.670 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: the statement of work. Now, I created a VC document that gave… that assigned, the stakeholder… the roles to the stakeholders, so that each of these gates will be validated before we move to the next stage.
180 00:36:01.070 ⇒ 00:36:14.630 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Each of those statements of work had payment terms. Net 30, net 45, net 5, they were all built into the logic of the automation. So Smartsheet had that automation.
181 00:36:14.780 ⇒ 00:36:19.899 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: So, the process goes like this. An opportunity is identified, it goes into Smartsheet.
182 00:36:20.090 ⇒ 00:36:29.740 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: the assigned stakeholder is notified, the assigned stakeholder looks at the opportunity, clicks on it, puts on a date, it moves to the next step, which is the PO,
183 00:36:29.790 ⇒ 00:36:41.980 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: The PO is received, the controller gets the automated notification, clicks on it, that’s okay, puts in the date, the date triggers the next step, and then it does the same thing until
184 00:36:42.600 ⇒ 00:36:44.850 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: All payments are remitted.
185 00:36:45.190 ⇒ 00:36:47.409 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Managers are also in the loop.
186 00:36:47.540 ⇒ 00:36:50.060 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: The director of PMO is in the loop.
187 00:36:50.230 ⇒ 00:36:58.860 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And the stage gates just keep moving, and then the payment is permitted. Now, we created reports where we could check DSO,
188 00:36:59.020 ⇒ 00:37:15.010 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: aging buckets, and then we could compare the aging by clients and see which clients, were not responding, to time based on the net, terms as fixed in the statement of work. And it helped us get about 500,000
189 00:37:15.050 ⇒ 00:37:31.320 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: back in our backlog, because we had POs sitting in SharePoint that we did not know we had to bill or invoice. We had projects that had gone past the delivery milestone, and project managers had not been alerting us that we needed to invoice.
190 00:37:31.350 ⇒ 00:37:43.079 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: So, in the first week, we had about 500,000 of backlog that we cleared, and so the process was repeatable because it was fully automated. And that was why one of my biggest
191 00:37:43.120 ⇒ 00:37:48.760 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: wins and achievements, and I’ve kept working on optimizing that process up until this morning.
192 00:37:49.620 ⇒ 00:37:57.949 Greg Stoutenburg: I like it, yeah, I like it. So no matter what’s coming in, that’s the process, and you can just follow that and apply it for whatever data’s coming in, whoever the client is.
193 00:37:58.380 ⇒ 00:37:59.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Wherever it needs to be sent.
194 00:38:00.180 ⇒ 00:38:03.560 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Gorgeous. Yeah, I love it. It just goes all through.
195 00:38:03.730 ⇒ 00:38:23.039 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, well, we’re just about at time, with just one minute here, so thank you so much for this. I will give you, I guess, one question if you have it. I’m, you know, I don’t have hiring authority, I just give my feedback to the team, and, you know, it goes from there, but, is there anything that you’d like to ask that I could answer very quickly?
196 00:38:23.040 ⇒ 00:38:24.650 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: But I do want to ask…
197 00:38:24.800 ⇒ 00:38:43.399 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: the question about fulfillment. I understand that Brainforge is also, a startup and a growing company, and the same consulting model with TMG is what I believe Brainforge also does, because it’s an IT service and consulting firm as well. I wanted to ask,
198 00:38:44.120 ⇒ 00:38:56.579 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: how… how does Brainforge approach fulfillment with respect to their customers? I understand that it is a utilization and realization. It may be, outfit.
199 00:38:56.710 ⇒ 00:39:02.019 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Right, but how does Bainforge handle… Those conversion and fulfillment.
200 00:39:03.080 ⇒ 00:39:07.860 Greg Stoutenburg: What do you mean? Like, how… like, what does the model look like that we give work to customers?
201 00:39:08.210 ⇒ 00:39:08.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Glance?
202 00:39:08.880 ⇒ 00:39:13.639 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Like, right, like, what I explained with the TMG, we had.
203 00:39:13.740 ⇒ 00:39:26.919 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: We have time and materials, fixed fee contracts, and we struggle sometimes with clients remitting payments. I’m believing that with the Brainforge model, it’s gonna be based on utilization.
204 00:39:26.920 ⇒ 00:39:36.010 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: And realization, that is how many hours you put in for client engagement, and how many hours the clients approve as what they, approve.
205 00:39:36.010 ⇒ 00:39:54.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Yes, understood, yeah. Yep. So, like, I mean, like many people at Brainforge, I’m paid based on hours that I bill clients, and, plus work that I’m able to bill at Brainforge directly, depending on if there’s a project that’s internal. And on the other end, some people have the role of
206 00:39:54.020 ⇒ 00:40:18.959 Greg Stoutenburg: working with clients to understand what projects they would want, scoping them out, and then settling on payment terms and a project plan. So, sometimes that means, you know, the project that you want to do, you know, it’s like, hey, you know, green light, go for it, just run with it. Other times, it means things like, well, you know, the client has said that they want to limit the scope on this particular line of work, and so, you know, you’re limited to a certain number of hours a week on it.
207 00:40:19.170 ⇒ 00:40:22.369 Greg Stoutenburg: So it kind of varies, but that is generally the structure.
208 00:40:22.810 ⇒ 00:40:26.079 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Like, can you permit me to ask one more question? No.
209 00:40:26.080 ⇒ 00:40:26.430 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure.
210 00:40:26.430 ⇒ 00:40:45.040 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: I just have one more question. I wanted to understand what, you know, since Vintforge is a, you know, an AI data company, highly data-intensive, with a whole lot of innovations coming in, I want to understand if Vintforge has a change management department, and what is the organization’s attitude towards change and innovation?
211 00:40:45.280 ⇒ 00:41:02.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. There isn’t a change management department as such, but we do have folks who are responsible for, you know, coming up with our policies, coming up with AI tools that we use internally to speed along our client work, and also just promote visibility and coordination inside of the organization.
212 00:41:02.880 ⇒ 00:41:27.869 Greg Stoutenburg: So I would say, like, you know, as startups can be, I think it’s, you know, there’s a lot that’s changing often, and there’s a lot of growing that’s happening. You know, so the upside is that, there’s just, like, a lot of opportunity, and the, you know, what someone might think is possibly a downside is some things are less organized than you might hope that they’d be, and so there can be some
213 00:41:27.870 ⇒ 00:41:33.670 Greg Stoutenburg: ambiguity. But, you know, some people thrive in those conditions, so that’s worth mentioning.
214 00:41:34.270 ⇒ 00:41:42.379 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Yeah, right. Thank you for answering those questions, I just wanted to know those, and I really appreciate the time to interview for this position.
215 00:41:42.510 ⇒ 00:41:42.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
216 00:41:42.880 ⇒ 00:41:45.580 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: What to the next steps in the hiring process?
217 00:41:45.580 ⇒ 00:41:48.530 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sounds good. Alright, nice to meet you, Anthony. Thanks. Have a good one.
218 00:41:48.530 ⇒ 00:41:49.790 Anthony Chukwuemeka Orji: Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
219 00:41:49.790 ⇒ 00:41:50.420 Greg Stoutenburg: Bye.