Technology and Innovation – Digital CxO Podcast EP60

Hello and welcome to our new and improved digital CXO podcast. This is our second episode since we revamped the show. I'm Amanda Ani and I'm here today with Mike Baard.

How are you doing today? I'm doing great. How are you?

Doing well, thank you. So we're here to discuss all sorts of things in the digital world from products that are really awesome and harnessing technology to virtual reality and cloud computing. So let's get started.

Uh, recently we have been seeing more and more in the cloud computing era as more things go to the cloud. So what is your opinion on this in the enterprise? Alright, Well, this kind of touches on a pet peeve of mine, but, um, wound up doing an interview with the president of an outfit called Cloud Blue.

Uh, and they help organizations not just put workloads in the cloud, but help to figure out maybe what their optimal business processes are. And here's my pet peeve. We've been at this cloud computing thing for 10 years and two things happen.

One is people lift and shift their existing applications and then the cloud. And essentially they're just moving their existing mess into the cloud and then they open it up and turn it loose to developers who just kind of start building software. Sometimes it's modern software and a cloud native kind of way.

And other times it's just a another instance of a monolithic application and that's all well and fine, but I don't feel like organizations are sitting down and saying, Hey, what is the right business model that we should have in place if we're gonna be in the cloud? And as a result, more things can be digitized. So much of what we've done is just the same old stuff we've always done, and organizations aren't sitting down and saying, Hey, how do I re-engineer this stuff?

Or how do I do something completely different that transforms my business? I think the, somehow or other they got it in their heads that the cloud was the destination. And I guess I'm arguing that it's a means to an end and we lost sight of what that end is.

I don't know. What's your, am I being too persnickety or what do you think? No, I hear this from a lot of business leaders when it comes to these, um, uh, change management plans and progressively, progressively moving everything into the cloud.

They're not taking time to, um, formulate the reason behind moving everything to the cloud and what that end goal and return on investment needs to look like, uh, once it happens. So without a clear direction as to why they're moving to the cloud, it's like you said, if if it's the same, the same system, the same program, and nothing's really different only now it's on the cloud. What was the point of that?

I agree. And it just seems like we're stuck. Are, are we kind of in a rut?

Are we in a cloud rut somewhere or somehow or other, or what happened to all the exciting ideas that people were supposed to be rolling out into these new environments? Because I mean, I saw an interview that you did recently with somebody talking about the merging of the physical and digital worlds, but I just don't see enough of it. I mean, what did you take from that interview?

Yeah, so, um, yeah, that was with, uh, voxel sensors and I know, um, you know, all these different tools, they're, they're finding ways to blend them together. So ar vr, um, the virtual reality and how can we blend that, um, with AI to give a new environment, especially when it comes to, um, the remote world that we're in. So how can we make things feel, um, more real even though we're all far away from each other?

Um, so there, so I'm seeing more companies that are utilizing all these technologies together to give that more real world feel even though everybody's separate. Um, and there's a lot of great ideas out there with the, um, I know we we're even still not past the whole metaverse thing. Uh, that was a big thing, um, several months ago and it kind of fizzled out a little bit, but it's still there and there's still a lot of great ideas with how to harness the metaverse, um, amongst many others.

I think part of the issue too is, um, we experiment far too much and we just kind of throw stuff out there and we kind of hope for the best without a real plan or understanding of how it's gonna impact people. And I put a post up on digital CXO talking about this, but there's a huge difference between quantitative and qualitative analytics. And we're so heavily on that quantitative side that we can't see what's going on through the spreadsheets.

And the people that we're inflicting some of the software on are looking at us like, you know, we have two heads and maybe rightfully so because we're not really spending enough time looking at how, whether it's an employee or a a consumer is actually engaging with a piece of software or a process. We kind of throw it out there and uh, we have a change mandate and we think we're gonna change the world and we're surprised when there's pushback. Um, and our, and our first inclination is always the same, right?

It can't be the software, so it must be the end user. So then we sit there and we go, well, we'll either retrain the employees or we'll just condition the consumers to, um, adjust because, well, that's the thing that's best for us as a company. It's not the best thing that's good for them is end users or employees.

They, and they have choices. They go somewhere else, they get a different job, they, uh, decide to do business with somebody else. And if we don't have the qualitative side of this stuff where we're actually have some ability to analyze how the software's being used, we're never gonna get all that far.

I think one of the reasons we're stuck a little bit on our digital transformation journeys is we're not quite spending the right amount of time on the, on the human side of the equation. I mean, what do you think? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, uh, you can't keep those too siloed. So the customer experience, if that, if, you know on that end, if in the back end the people, um, the staff don't understand what's going on and they're not able to, uh, receive the data and have a good flow between the two, then there's that disconnect and that's gonna show for the customer, which, um, is not the result that the company's probably looking for. And it's gonna show with the staff being disgruntled and, um, you know, not understanding what's going on and potentially leaving it and going elsewhere.

And then you have a whole bunch of turnover and, uh, people that don't know anything about what's going on, you have to retrain and it's very costly to do so. All right. Well, on a more positive note, we have an article up on digital CXO talking about how somebody's figured out how to use an optical scanner to tell if food is gonna spoil.

And turns out that this is a multi-billion dollar problem because well, by the time that banana gets picked in some place in South America and find its way over to Europe, it can perish and it frequently does. And part of the reason you get it home, and um, I don't know about you, but when I go to the store, my wife, we spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out which of these fruits are gonna last longer. 'cause we're not going to eat it immediately.

And probably even in my own house, half the fruit wines of getting spoiled because nobody got to it in time. Do you think, um, you know, we can be better and smarter about how we grow food because it has implications for everything and not just the cost of shipping it, but how much, uh, energy was consumed that created and the farming equipment and even the carbon emissions that went into the whole process. So I know it's a little tiny optical scanner, but is this the thing that might, you know, make a huge difference?

Yeah, absolutely. And, um, the company you're talking about is, uh, Hitachi, I believe, and I love that companies are trying to harness AI for, um, environmentally friendly reasons such as this to reduce food waste. I mean, I know I have the same issue with throwing away so much produce and I just, I don't remember when I got it and then I forget it, it's in a drawer.

Um, and I hate that I hate wasting food, especially when we have, um, hunger problems around the world, uh, that makes me feel even worse. So, um, yeah, I think that this is a great move forward in reducing the food waste and, you know, taking some of that strain off of the farmers and the ranchers who are trying to produce, um, enough product for the population. And if we're not throwing it all away and actually using it, that'll over time reduce a little of that strain on those individuals.

Yeah, and then to me, this is a big idea because it not only has an impact on the average individual, but it changes the business models and the business workflows that will ultimately ensue. And that I think is what we're looking for from a, any kind of digital transformation is something that, um, makes either organizations much more efficient or, um, change is the financial model because now we're gonna have, in this case, um, maybe we're shipping less food or we're shipping it smarter or growing it in different places based on where it needs to go. But I feel like so much of what we do today in that industry is just based on the same old models that in place 50, 60 years ago, heck, maybe even a thousand years ago.

Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, I, I've seen a few other great environmentally friendly initiatives, um, harnessing AI such as, you know, in the forestry sector. Um, and so I think we'll continue to see, uh, AI being used for environmentally friendly initiatives and, and that's a great thing.

All right. Speaking of emerging technologies that were once kinda similar to AI in terms of how cool they were, but then kinda waned a little bit, blockchain, I noticed that we have a story on digital CXO about blockchain and, um, what is your sense of what's going on with this platform? Because I always like the idea that something should be, shall we say, immutable in terms of our ability to understand what happened when and where and who didn't it for what reasons, but, uh, for some reason blockchain seems to be struggling in adoption.

What's your sense of what's going on? Mm-Hmm. Yeah, so blockchain for smart contracts is definitely one great tool.

Um, you know, once that contract's there and it can't be changed, you can always, um, go back to the source. So, um, that's one really great tool from blockchain. It also, um, just helps, um, as far as, um, uh, and you know, I know cryptocurrency is also one of the, one of the technologies that we still haven't really been able to figure out or harness on at scale, but, um, looking at it from the cryptocurrency, it's, it would really help streamline a lot of the financial processes between countries when it comes to travel.

Um, so there's a solution there. Um, as far as, um, you know, not having to trade out currencies if you went on a crypto with the blockchain, um, and um, and then with data, uh, data analytics and, um, transferring of data through the blockchain, um, keeping it safe and secure and it can't, um, can't get lost, um, you can always trace it back. So there's a lot of good use cases for blockchain if we can just figure out how to better harness it.

And I think even a good use case for cryptocurrency, if we can get a little bit more regulation and figure out how to harness that better. I think part of the problem is it takes a lot of skill and expertise to implement these blockchain systems. They're networks and they require lots of partners and people to get involved.

And a lot of it folks, and I'm not quite clear that we understood the scale of the effort required. I mean, in theory it should be a great thing to have any kind of transaction monitored using blockchain because, well, there's a lot of fraud in the world and, uh, there's a lot of like diamonds that were probably mined illegally that shouldn't be in the system. It's all negative consequences just because we don't know for sure what happened when, but um, I think maybe we just gotta find a way as a collective community to kind of sit down around this whole blockchain thing and say, Hey, is this the way to do this?

Can we simplify this? Or maybe, I don't know, is there another way to do this thing? Because if the current method is too hard, then maybe we're barking up the wrong tree, as it were.

Yeah, I think one of the, the biggest issues is the technology at its foundation is so great, um, but there are a few issues like the amount of energy that it's, um, burning and, um, and then just how difficult it is, um, for the regular person to use. And if you lose that, uh, passcode, which is pretty long code there, uh, once you'll lose your code and you can't get into your, to your contract or your wallet anymore, uh, it's all gone. So, um, so that's definitely a problem.

All right, well hopefully this will get better. That's a, a, a request from the smarter minds to get together, kind of fix this issue because well, we need it for innovation. So that's all there is to it.

Amanda, take us out. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this was a very great conversation today, some interesting technology out there.

And thank you to our audience for staying tuned. We will have an episode every week, so come on every week and listen in and hear about the latest in digital transformation. Alright, See you guys next time.