Technology to Improve & Scale Your Business | EPISODE 10 | featuring James Brady
Going back to you know what you guys provide We couldn't have got there We did partner We do have partners today and we did partner with certain people to help us along the way and fill those knowledge gaps to get there Right And we still do We continue to partner with people and we will as we go on Right We're not experts in any of these in the upcoming software space So we're going to have to rely on vendors Our own Welcome back to the 101 Digital podcast I'm Craig Meyer CEO of 101 Digital and our guest today is actually someone who I previously worked with at RJW James Brady So first of all you know introduce yourself but also can you give us a little background about RJW and what you do there? Yeah absolutely So like I said James Brady Director of IT business systems over at RJW been there close to eight years and right now at RJW I oversee all our warehouse software over to integrations and yeah we have a team of three so it's been exciting with the growth there has been tremendous hasn't been that way all the time I actually I started an operations side and then the needs as we'll talk about has been more on the IT side So a lot of our problems will come from how do we scale this thing How do we make this you know how do we get to a point where we're satisfying our customers by meeting the the shipment needs all that So there's a lot there I'm sure we'll cover but yeah yeah I mean so I think when I started there the IT department was I don't know maybe 15 20 or so Right And I think by the time I left it was probably in like the forties So can you kind of just give a little background of you know because again you were there very early and like you said you got you kind of transitioned from operations into the IT side you know how did that kind of come about and you know where is it at today Yeah So started out as there are only business analysts right So company was was growing kind of felt like a startup There's a lot of things that need to get done and they you know they transcended just not just operations right So as we continue to to expand it was how do we how do we you know put this piece of software with this process in place and how do we tie in all of our current software that we had in our core applications together to get there And a lot of that had to be you know had to be thought out Right? We had in-house developers at the time that we were starting to invest in in those integrations and it was it honestly it was it's quite amazing where we came from being you know IT staff of let's say it was I think it was ten and 12 of us all working on different things and all of us overlapping different roles And now we're a team of 45 plus So it's actually really incredible And a it was really cool to be able to see you know how serious RJW took technology while I was there right? And you know you've been there even longer and you've really been able to see that you know what are some of those things that from say like a technology perspective that RJW is invested in that has really kind of changed the way that you're able to you know handle customers but also just be more efficient internally So the biggest piece to us in the investment we made is definitely in our dev team right? We decided early on you know Kevin CEO decided early on that he wanted you know to be a technology company right I mean he wanted to really push the envelope with being able to satisfy our customers So he decided that he needed to invest in it Right And at that time it wasn't just about implementing or creating the newest greatest application It was just about making our systems talk to each other that created us that made us more efficient It makes sense and it allowed us to excel faster than our you know anyone else Right Be able to satisfy have all the data streamline everything talking to each other Everything needs to be in sync right? If you have one application that's you know not running smooth or you know data is not being fed past it's going to it's going to create problems And he was able to see that Right And we were able to act upon that and invest in that and make sure that all of our core applications are touching and and make sure that they're all you know singing and talking to each other It really wasn't just one technology one aspect It was many different things that all came together as one You know when you talk about you know some of the other things some of the strategies in the warehouse that we've that we've implemented like RF’s obviously you know that's almost a no brainer Now But you'd be surprised that there's other companies out there that are still picking based off paper I've seen it before I was at another company previously that was paper based And even just seeing that transition from paper based to RF is incredible right? I mean again as you know you can you know double triple quadruple volume And with RF it's you're not adding more people And that's really kind of where the technology comes in right is to try to reduce that headcount as much as you can I mean again RJW even from when I was there has grown from what seem like you know 1200 employees So I think 2000 plus now So yeah I mean that's what's really enabled us to keep opening up warehouses We open up almost two warehouses every year since almost every year since I've been there It's it's it's one of those things right where you at first you're talking about saving dollars and then talk about saving quarters and stock about saving pennies Right It's the little things that pay off as you continue to grow How can we make this better? A lot of continuous improvement looking internally at your processes making sure that they're the best that they can be and if not what can we do to make them better? Right? Is it a process a simple process improvement? Is it another technology? You know some of the things that we have looked at you know we have put in print and supplies machines lately We we our volume of labels that we were pushing through has just quadrupled So we obviously look to invest in an automated print and apply That was a pretty much a no brainer Like yes of course this makes sense Let's do this We're also now looking at different things like mobile hip printers you know to make you know not everything needs to go through a printing machine It just takes too much time But there's other things too that is simple imaging and can be even more complex like AMR’s right? I mean this just this is a different avenue of picking But since I got imagine a lot of people aren't going to know what that is Can you explain? AMR Yeah autonomous mobile robot You know they come pretty much where the industry is going is just robots as a service you pay you know per month for a robot that follows you around and you pick to it and it you know goes on its way The the real big thing there is you know the big win there is the integration is pretty seamless right? The stand up time for them to turn around a robot to you know follow you down an aisle is it's within weeks And again since you know I got to imagine a lot of people that are going to listen to this Some will be in the logistics space some won't and some may not even be to that technological level yet where they would understand where these robots come in But again just in your experience you know you've got as you mentioned the ones that are kind of there They go to like a picking lane You may be doing like faster kind of pick like for parcel picking You know you can have robots follow you or go to location you put it in there it then takes that bin over to the packing station to then be shipped out Right But I remember we also were exploring like put away robots right? You know you can almost utilize that as like a third shift So I think it is interesting just because I remember a lot of people especially say on the trucking side which I don't know if we're get to today but people are saying that you know we're not going to have enough truck drivers or you know robots are going to take the place of people But I think as you've seen and I think a lot of people especially recently have realized that there's actually not enough people for some of these jobs Right So again this is where technology comes in and kind of supplement that Right Not to always replace sometimes it's going to be to supplement have that third shift so that your facility can continue to operate when you don't have the personnel to be there Right? Yeah That's I mean and that's where the industry is moving right? I mean if you went to Pro Mat this past year in Chicago like everyone everyone there all the vendors they're selling robots right? That's the next biggest thing is they want to with obviously you know coming out of COVID you know there's being a labor shortage People you know are that's the biggest thing everyone talks about is labor issues problems with that And if you can directly replace some of that with a robot Right That can help you or like you said supplement total You know autonomy doesn't need to be you know just replacing heads They can just like you said it could be as little as point to point connections with robots Right I put this piece of paper on this robot take it to the other side of the warehouse and they process and do what they need to And on that side it doesn't need to be hey the robots you know self-guided down the aisles go in and help you pick It could be as simple as that Yeah And in that situation you're also kind of reducing the burden of the employee And from a health perspective that's good right? Like I've actually read a lot of studies where instead of having that person make that long trip to say the packing station they're just again picking to these aisles and then the robots making the long trip Right And you know some people may say that sounds lazy but I mean again if you're looking out for your employee that is something that could be beneficial to them So you kind of mentioned it on the integration side And I just want to kind of go into that a little bit further So you obviously have the internal integrations right that make you guys really efficient but also help get data to your customers faster Right You know if you've got the warehouse management system talking to the transportation management system you've got tracking numbers you know all these different things that are important but then you have that then being sent off to say the customers via EDI ASN’s those types of things Can you just kind of go into you know high level of just you know how RJW you know sees that you know what's your guy's philosophies on it And you know how does that help save potential customers? Because I know again while I worked there that was like one of the big selling points is that you know you guys have this data and you can get it to customers extremely quickly Yeah that's I mean that's that's extremely important to our customer and especially our customer base They want their data right? If our systems aren’t talking to each other and they're not in sync then what are we going to share them right? We provide a service right? We provide warehousing we provide you know transportation services logistics services If our systems aren't talking to each other than how how are we going to be able to provide them any sort of update? Right We want to be able to give them hey your orders picked right now Your orders is loaded and now your order has left It's on this carrier right? It has arrived at this time It has met your MABD right MABD must arrived by date Right Which is a big big term in the industry Right It has met that right We go by you know one of the big scores in the industry right now is OTIF on time and full You know we're happy to say that we are above 98% which is excellent And we continue to strive that right We push those numbers And the reason we do that reason we have that is because all of our systems and data are aligned right We are able to tell it where in the process there are inefficiencies Hey it's taking way too long to pick these sets of orders Why? Okay here's what here's what we're seeing Right If you don't have those integrations it's hard to tell where in the lifecycle of an order that things end up failing right Or where things are falling apart It's kind of the what you don't measure You can't manage Right? That's yeah it is nice because there's a couple of things with the data right? Like it's the management side of it of where are you potentially falling behind where can you become more efficient? But there's also probably some compliance side too right? Like you said with some of your people that you're shipping to they have these specific dates set and if you don't have that data you don't even know if you're meeting it Right So you know having that data is extremely beneficial And again I feel like that's something that RJW really strived for I think you know you heard this thing with like data you know everyone was trying to get you know the data warehouses you know just more and more data And really that's that's been the driver right? The data tells a story You look at it you know like here here are some numbers that are off And that's where we we tend to focus on that That leads to continuous improvement opportunities anything more efficiency you name it right? Cost savings the data by having everything in sync us being able to look at the data is tells us what we need to work out on that I just thought about as we were talking through that is I think one of the key things to probably mention in this too just you know because of you know I when while I was at RJW I was so impressed by it But you know can you kind of just give an example of you know what is it that like most of your customers come to you for Right Like I while I was there consolidation seems to be like your guys big thing And again all that data really helps in that So now for people that are listening that haven't either heard of RJW or want to know more about RJW but you know like what is it that like really differentiates you guys Because again as we talk about this it's a lot is it a lot? Is technology data and things that like you know customers would want but you know like can you kind of give just some examples of like the consolidation the shipping like those services? It's all about the service level right? I mean they they come to us for that and like they can go to any other 3PL and do what you know they need to do But it's the service that we provide and at the level that we provide it by having all this setup we are able to provide that right They come to us because they we have the insights to the data we can provide that with They love that they can act upon it and thus make themselves more efficient Yeah I was gonna actually say as you said that I mean it seemed like some of the customers even used your data to make their forecasts right? Like sometimes your data might actually be more accurate than what they kind of had themselves Right I mean you know it's it's almost becoming like almost a 4PL Right You're you're you're giving them their insights to their data themselves Right Where it's you know in the past other companies couldn't provide that And it's been a strong opportunity for us A lot of customers that come to us are you know aren't the the big Fortune 500 companies Right They're mom and pop shops trying to get in in these retailers and they need help Right They're looking for a partner a true partner that's going to help them grow and grow with them Right And that's really what RJW does is they they were not just a service provider You know we try to be more of a partner to you I like that you said that because that's kind of our sales pitch as well here at 101 Digital right? I mean we are 100% service based and like you mentioned we want to partner with our customers because their needs we need to understand them Right That's the first part We need to understand like what they're trying to do with technology and then how we can make them better utilizing technology so you can only really do that if you partner with them You know if you're an IT provider that all you're trying to do is just keep them up and running but you're not building efficiencies for them That's not really a partner that is truly kind of like a commoditized you know keep the lights on type of thing right? Like electricity But you know we try to take it a step further so the next thing I want to kind of talk to you about is we've talked about the technology but you know how do you personally see that really helping RJW? And where do you think it's going to go kind of in the future? Right Like we kind of talked on the AMR side but logistics as I've seen it because I you know I actually now had about 12 years of experience in logistics I always saw that technology was important You know I mean my background is technology so I guess I'm a little biased but you know if you want to have better efficiencies having systems right having processes having RF having wireless all of those different things what do you kind of see as like the the next thing but also like what is it that you guys are building upon today to make you guys more efficient? That's really I mean it's tough right? I mean like I mentioned at Pro Mat there there's everyone pushing an autonomous stuff But again that's you have to have good processes in order to get there If you don't have good processes and then you just put in technology on bad processes it's just going to make it worse Definitely That's that's one step that we found that is definitely something that we that's that's what makes us great right? We sit there we evaluate we continuously improve and we measure We make sure that this is pushing the needle Right Does this change work? Did that change work? If you're not doing that and you're just looking for one big bag of like Hey I'm going to implement this and it's going to change my life It's probably not going to happen right? Because there's so many things out there I wouldn't say there's one thing that changes everything I would say to get to that autonomy level you need to once you have the good processes then it's talking about just the max efficiency that you can you can provide right in the reduction of cost or whatever And that's where you get to automated sortation right of some sort You get to AMR’s you get to automated put away Right Once you get to that level that's where once you get to that level with your processes that's when you could implement that stuff And there's so much out there I mean those are just the few that I've mentioned But you know even people have these now they have these drones you know that go I actually saw some of that What that will do essentially your cycle counts for you Yeah they're amazing they got automated palletization you know software now you know how to pick a perfect pallet if you will and they get so much out there there really is no just I'll call it just magic button that's going to do it for you It's all these pieces right But it's also understanding where you're at like you're you're what you produce out of your warehouse and finding what's going to be the most efficient bang for your buck Right Whether that's tackling you know replenishment of replenishment are your thing hey we're spending way too much time on replenishment okay? Or how do we reduce replenishment? Is that our process? Can we have a technology that does that? Right? You know there's slotting software out there that helps with that It's it's really about what is driving your highest cost and your highest efficiency and finding ways to improve upon that The one thing I remember and liked again at RJW is that you guys also didn't kind of steer away from making those investments that might not work out right? I mean that's part of it right? You try something you see if it like you said you measure it see if it helps If it doesn't And you know there were times that we would scrap something right So it you can't be afraid to at least try You know I feel like it's the you know if you like the indecision of it if you just don't make no decision it's probably worse than at least going through that process because then the next thing might actually get you to where you want to go Yeah we definitely have some of those right? The fail fast method right? We know this isn't working out and you decided to scrap it but to your point it's about trying And that really is you know that tells you a lot about RJW You know Kevin is very you know he's adamant about pushing the you know the needle and making sure we're doing better Right And he understands that you know sometimes things don't work out the way that you expect it to But that's okay We've tried it We've learned from it We've grown from it We know what RJW can provide because of that And that's that's what's really made us better So the last thing I wanted to get into is you know how this kind of all happens right? You know And that's again the team right? So a lot of our customers are small and medium businesses I would consider you guys you know really now kind of at that large business Right Again 2000 plus employees A lot of our customers are kind of in that you know 50 to 200 range But as we kind of also mentioned that you know some of these whether it's a logistics company manufacturing you know anything to do with either warehousing or you know we support all different industries nonprofits professional services So some of this won't apply But you know for some of them it will because in any industry there's companies that have big teams and then there's companies that have smaller teams Some again don't have the resources to have a bigger team but you know you guys do right? So I kind of want to talk about how that structured but also how 101 Digital essentially can kind of mimic that to some extent Right? I'm not going to sit here and say like 101 Digital can do everything RJW can do because again I was there I know what you guys can do You guys are at a different kind of tier than most would would be at So what does that look like? You know the IT team and you know again like just to kind of walk you into a little bit is like we provide say CIO services will be the helpdesk the infrastructure team you know all those things And I know over at RJW you guys have something similar So can you kind of just walk us through like what that team looks like and you know how robust it is and how important it is to everything we just talked about Right And I think to play off like what you guys do here I mean we have vendors that partner with us that we're not experts in right? We're not experts in certain software or certain processes or certain knowledge bases And we rely on them and they are a partner to us And we realize hey this is a gap and our current knowledge base here and we need someone to fill that So we've partnered with our vendors right? We've even partnered with you right with uncertainty a little bit on RF side And until you got that knowledge and that's that's a big part of it Right? Exactly You fill that gap right? We needed we needed the help We needed the assistance You provided that And you know now we were able to build upon that So it depends on where you want to focus right? You can't be experts in everything That's something that you know you need to have outside resources to help But it certainly didn't start where we're at right now Right And I mentioned that 40 45 plus employees that we have and it space over here it's when it started off as ten it was everyone's doing everything and no one's an expert in anything So it was you know I was a business guru I was this I was working with integrations I was working with the business analysts and really how we grew was we knew we needed to start somewhere right? We built out a team to help gain experts in each areas of focus in parts of the business logistics transportation warehouse And once we built those people out we had those as SMEs Then we could help build a nice infrastructure around that right? The other aspects of IT came later where we had an infrastructure team Now we have DBAs we have software devs They all came later after we had the experts that understood what the business needed and how do we how do we bridge that gap? Right? Software devs are only as good as what you're able to tell them to build right? And you got to manage them You got to manage them you got to have the people that know exactly what to build and how to build it right? Where are the inefficiencies currently in operation where the gaps are and they're able to provide that right? They're able to give the devs and the infrastructure and all those other people the insights like Hey we need to do this right This is what this is the problem that we're experiencing And by having that team of SMEs that we're you know our business analyst team that we built out we were able to obviously build these integrations out we were able to build you know all sorts of applications that we have on our side and also implement technology Right We have you know just abundance of different technologies that we have around that help us that our day to day that are all third party license software that you know we've partnered with and we've introduced and have helped us in in many different fashions But we couldn't have done that without those core people that really know the business and help drive IT into that in that space But again going back to you know what you guys provide we couldn't have got there We did partner We do have partners today and we did partner with certain people to help us along the way and fill those knowledge gaps to get there Right And we still do We continue to partner with people and we will as we go on Right We're not experts in any of these in upcoming software space So we're going to have to rely on that AMRs for example right we're going to have to rely on vendors to help us drive us in the right direction You know it's a technology that seems interesting seems like it's you know cost benefit There's a lot there But we are not experts yet in that industry We want to be right We want to get there We want to understand it So we're going to have to rely on people that are currently using it are currently experts and you know go from there Yeah Essentially it's trying to not reinvent the wheel Right Someone's already doing it at a very high level Like why would you test your dev team to do that Right So utilize what they have And then there are times again where you bring it back in-house But you know kind of as an example again while I was at RJW you know you had say some servers hosted made more sense from an integration perspective to bring that back in-house But you can't do that if you don't have the infrastructure team if you don't have the subject matter experts Like you said the business analyst And then there's some aspects of the dev right of being able to make all those connections So you know you guys have really built out that team to kind of you know foster that you know technology growth Without that team you wouldn't be able to do it And it's a commitment right? I mean it was it was a decision It was a strategic decision by RJW that hey we're going to invest in this because we want to be the best in class right? Everyone wants to be the best in class right? Everyone wants to get there And that was that was part of the investment He you know RJW understood that's where we need to get to in order to get where we want And we understand you know obviously talking here like we understand the small businesses and everyone coming up is you know they want to get there Maybe maybe they don't Maybe some people like where they're at in their space right there in their niche space wherever or they like to be in a small company That's fine And that's where you can rely on people who do have expertise like you guys or other vendors right? That could bring in that technology and help you bridge those gaps People like you and you've seen where technology can help It's able to see the processes the current gaps and you know that there's stuff out there A lot of people don't know that there's things out there that you can do in order to create those efficiencies which seems like sometimes it seems like there's not a technology need here like you can't fulfill that and people like you and your company can see that and they can see All right yeah this we can do something here And that's important right? And that's the benefit of having someone like you guys appreciate that recommendation Yes But yeah I mean I really want to thank you again for coming on I want to thank RJW for you know allowing you to come on And I really enjoyed my time there And obviously I couldn't recommend you guys enough Right Like again being in the technology space it's so refreshing seeing a company that really truly understands it and invests in it So to kind of just close out here you know what are some ways that people can find RJW? I know obviously it's rjwgroup.com what socials You guys are on Facebook Facebook LinkedIn LinkedIn’s huge I mean you can I don't even know if we’re on Twitter or anything but TikTok to talk to the marketing department make sure that you guys are on everything But yeah again truly appreciate you coming on here and hoping that you know whether you're a logistics company watching this manufacturing or just you know anyone that truly understands the benefits of technology you know it's it's nice again to have you come on and really kind of explain that Right Because sometimes people just truly don't value it But it's something that I think a lot of people will now understand that technology is the future of everything right? If you want your business to be very efficient if you want to scale and you do have good processes that you can then put technology behind that to achieve it So thank you again for coming on and we will see you guys in the next one Thank you Thanks for having me
2023-08-23 10:14
