“Finding a way to get information to the people who need it at the time that they need it is the goal, giving them the flexibility to act on that information.”

– Steffanie Ness, VP of Global Sales at UCBOS Inc

An enterprise technology stack is like a puzzle, and everyone’s puzzle is missing a few pieces. The team at UCBOS Inc aims to use technologies like AI and machine learning to fill in the holes seamlessly, and without disrupting the business and without their customers having to write any code.

Shan Muthuvelu is the CEO and President of UCBOS Inc and Steffanie Ness is his VP of Global Sales. Their company is based on the need that complex enterprises have to connect multiple layers of systems and data in order to quickly support business decisions.

In this conversation, Shan and Steffanie discuss the following with Supply Chain Now Host Scott Luton:

· The importance of metadata to companies, their systems, and the completeness of their data resources

· The challenge associated with solving real-world needs such as components that have associated field services and integrated cloud solutions that are constantly updating but need to remain connected

· What they are seeing in the convergence of retail and eCommerce supply chains

Intro/Outro (00:05):

It’s time for supply chain. Now broadcasting live from the supply chain capital of the country. Atlanta, Georgia heard around the world. Supply chain. Now spotlights the best in all things. Supply chain, the people, the technologies, the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

Scott Luton (00:28):

Hey, good morning, Scott Luton, Jeffrey Miller here with you on supply chain. Now. Welcome to today’s show. Got a great episode in store. Jeff, how are you doing this morning? I’m doing fantastic. Scott. Glad to be with you. How are you today? Excited. I’m right down there and I’ve got my, I’ve got my big notebook. Notepad paper. Ready to go. I’ve got three pins cause I’m taking 47 pages of notes. Yep. Me too. Exciting guests. We’ve got today. Agreed. And on this episode, Jeff, we’re going to be speaking with a couple of thought leaders, uh, individual transformation space, right. And doing big things to help companies grow and succeed through this industry. 4.0 and beyond. So be prepared, stay tuned. We’ve got an exceptional, uh, two guests and story here today. We’re all gonna learn from Jeff quick program where we started them. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to find us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and you want to make sure you subscribe. So you don’t miss outstanding stories just like this. Absolutely. So Jeff, you ready to, um, release the, cracking the release, the crack and let’s go and learn something new. All right. So with no further ado, let’s welcome in our guests here today. We’re going to first welcome. And Sean Muthu Velo president CEO at UC boss. Sean, how are you doing?

Shan Muthuvelu (01:40):

I’m doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me today. I’m really excited to talk to you. Talk to Jeff and, uh, share what we have learned, uh, in the market and what we could do differently in this, uh, you know, COVID and ramen

Scott Luton (01:57):

Agreed. And it’s been a pleasure to get to know you much better over the last year or so, and, and track your thought leadership in the space. So along with you here today, Sean, uh, your colleague, Stephanie NES vice president global sales that you see boss is joining us as well. Stephanie. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having us excited to be here. Definitely. Well, and I appreciate the, uh, one-to-one one-on-one lesson. I got demystifying some things a month or two back. It’s all always very helpful. And now we get to share Stephanie and Sean with our audience, Jeff. So this is going to be a, I think a rock and roll episode. Absolutely. Yep. Interesting perspective on the market and a cool new company and I’m eager to learn more. We are too. All right. So before we get to the heavy lifting and get into the heavy thought leadership that both of you will be sharing, let’s get to know you both a little bit better. And what we’d like to do there is we like to learn more and Sean, we’ll start with you. Hey, where’d you grow up and give us an anecdote or two about your upbringing.

Shan Muthuvelu (02:55):

So my mom made me in Singapore, uh, because my were living there, but she dealt with me in a, in a small town called, called in India. Uh it’s it’s one of the four French towns. That’s where I was born, grew up in another small town called [inaudible], uh, in South India. Uh, the town had great teachers and great professors because even though it was a small town, it had a college. They helped me to learn, uh, you know, math, English, science that helped me in three things. One, they helped me to get into a Catholic high school where I can get better grades number two, get into engineering school, uh, w where I did, uh, electrical and electronics engineering back in the days when nobody wanted computers, uh, then number three, they also helped me eventually, uh, land in the U S you know, get my, uh, you know, transition to the U S to do my non supply chain job in the U S um, but, you know, I got, uh, attracted towards supply chain as soon as they landed in, in, in the U S uh, then, uh, joined, uh, Manhattan associates who are doing pretty well in supply chain, doing some great softwares in Atlanta.

Shan Muthuvelu (04:12):

I joined them. There was never a dull moment. Maybe I spend one week in Atlanta in the office. Then after that I’m on the roads, right. Uh, you know, customers like Nordstrom Williams, Noma, Excel, logistics, uh, uh, you know, you name it, shoppers drug Mart in Canada, uh, right. Uh, so many, uh, Devin and Canon and UK, uh, you know, then they made me go to Sweden, Netherlands all around the world, uh, to do projects where I could learn supply chain, help customers solve their supply chain problems. Uh, from there, I went to Steve-O systems as a VP of global services, which helped me to, you know, interact with Kellogg, Sony, black and Decker, uh, home Depot, so many other enterprise customers. And then in 2013, you know, I started, uh, [inaudible] as a global niche supply chain consulting firm. You know, that that’s where my journey started. And I’m really excited to share more details with you guys.

Scott Luton (05:12):

We are too. And, and just to clarify, uh, Octo rising and you see boss, these are your first entrepreneurial ventures after such a wealth of experience, kind of driving change in the corporate and re arena, right?

Shan Muthuvelu (05:24):

Oh, yes, yes. I have to convince my wife, uh, you know, Hey, are you ready? I’m taking a big risk. And, uh, uh, right. He said, yes, go ahead and do it. I give you a pile of cash, not a big one, but she gave me a shot amount of time. And she gave me like three months, if nothing happens in three months, or you’re going back to the corporate world,

Scott Luton (05:47):

Hey, we can appreciate that here, for sure. A lot of entrepreneurial, uh, kindred spirits here. So, uh, and, and thanks for also giving us a taste of not only your personal upbringing, but also your professional journey. That’s really important as our listenership is trying to understand kind of your, your point of view and putting context there. Stephanie, let’s switch gears over to you, same question. And then, you know, we can spill right over into your professional journey and where are you from? And give us a fun anecdote

Steffanie Ness (06:15):

From the West coast. I’ve lived in many States, but I’m from the West coast originally in the Oregon area. And I loved growing up in Oregon. It’s beautiful. And they do something there that I think everybody should do, but, um, it’s called outdoor school. Have you ever heard of it? So the state of Oregon, um, as people might know, is very environmental friendly, uh, to put a mildly, I I’ve, I’ve been known to walk down the street and seen people point because they littered and make them pick it up. I mean, they’re, they’re really kind of, you know, at least when I was growing up, it was really, so what they do is it’s a state run program and just like you would go to summer camp, um, only it is an outdoor school it’s funded by the public schools and all fifth and sixth graders mandatory to go.

Steffanie Ness (07:07):

So you spend a week in the wilderness or mine happened to be on the beach, which I was happy with, but you know, it’s cabins and they teach you, you know, how to tell what time it is. They teach you about, you know, nature, how to start fires, you know? So I think that it, it certainly instilled in me my love for the outdoors, you know, and I think, you know, I mean, it stayed with me forever. So I think that it accomplishes what it’s supposed to because I’m a scuba diver and you know, anything I can do outside or in the water is, you know, 100% the most important thing.

Scott Luton (07:41):

I love it. I’ve been to Oregon with a, a large, uh, large chicken sandwich. Every cell, they get all their fries, I believe, or certainly the large majority from a plant in Oregon that gets fresh area potatoes. And I was able to tour this plant and it was absolutely amazing. Uh, but anyway, gorgeous, I remember flying into Oregon and seeing all the farm, which is probably one of the reasons why they’re so serious, which I love that that’s. Yeah.

Steffanie Ness (08:10):

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because most other places I’ve lived in, I’ve lived in like, you know, 10 different States, you go and buy a house and you get like a half an acre, an acre or something like that in Oregon to get postage stamps. Like you, they, they just don’t sell the land. Right. You know, so all the houses, you know, like somebody might decide that, you know, in other States, I don’t want to be on top of everybody. You have no choice. If you want to be in a neighborhood, you are on top of each other. Right. So I always found that interesting to have so much land, but nobody really has the land.

Scott Luton (08:39):

So it’s certainly a pretty part of the country. All right. Let’s kind of also just like, Sean walked us through, give us a feel of your professional journey, kind of leading up to UC boss. And then I’m gonna circle back with you both and get some Eureka moments. So Stephan, tell us about what you did prior. My and I married early

Steffanie Ness (08:56):

And, um, he got recruited to New York, so we moved to New York and I went to a recruiter and I was doing, um, um, after both of us, uh, graduated school, we moved to, uh, to New York and I was asking you, what do you want to do? And I’m like, I don’t really know. And they’re like, you belong in computer consulting sale. And I said, huh, sure. They’re like, yep. I’m sure. So I went on an interview to Coopers and Lybrand. And in fact they said, yes, I’m like, you know, I got a D in basic in school, right? The computer language, basic computer language basic, right? They’re like, no, no, no, no, this will be good. And I, it was just love. I just absolutely love technology. That’s not right. I don’t love technology. I love what technology enables us to do. Right. I’d like to see outcomes, you know, I don’t necessarily like dealing with technology and pretty much everybody at my house would tell you that, but I love what it gives us. And I’ve just been excited ever since, you know, I like being impactful with the clients. I mean, what a, what a great, you know, what a great thing to be involved with so many clients success. It makes me happy. I have a very simple theory. It’s my job to get my client promoted. Love it. And that’s how I live.

Scott Luton (10:12):

So prior to joining the UC boss team and after Cooper and librarian, I think if I got that right. What any other, uh, key role that helped shape your worldviews? Uh,

Steffanie Ness (10:23):

Yes. So Coopers and Lybrand is now PricewaterhouseCoopers. So I started off with the big, you know, in, in the big four big six, big 10 at the time, I don’t even remember anymore. And interestingly, I found that in supporting the clients, I was in such a large organization. You know, clients were asking me for certain technologies. I’m not going to even tell you the technology, because they’ll say how old I am. Hey stools. Anyway. And I came back, there you go. So I remember coming back to, to Coopers and like, you know, it, it was, um, actually allied signal, which is now Honeywell, and they want to do this project. And, you know, the whole company were looking around, nobody knew what this is. And I’m like, if my clients are telling me about the technology before me as a consulting company, something’s not quite right here.

Steffanie Ness (11:13):

You know, so what I did is I realized that I needed to be with a smaller, more nimble organization that was really staying on the cusp of the technology rather than kind of being that same glacier, that client I’m trying to help us in. So I started working for startups and have been with smaller startup organizations ever since I’ve been with at least two, the two have gone public. Every one of them have been sold. And I love it. I love the people. I love how we all kind of work together. And it’s just, it’s very close and very teamwork oriented. And I like that. Love it. And big impacts love it. I can tell, Hey, we can tell

Scott Luton (11:54):

It, it emanates from you, uh, you know, the, the, the clearly that w how boarding of a journey of your own. And, and, and I’ll tell you y’all have been on the move since we initially plugged, plugged in together a year or so ago. So looking forward to learning a lot more. All right. So before I turn it over to Jeff, uh, are eminently qualified technologist. Uh, that’s gonna help us work through this digital transformation conversation and more let’s circle back Shaw, uh, Sean, and, you know, we love talking about Eureka moments here. You know, there’s those moments, those epiphanies, we all have day in and day out at times, and there’s been no shortage this year. What’s what’s. When you look back at your journey to this point, what’s been a key Eureka moment.

Shan Muthuvelu (12:35):

If you ask me what was my, uh, key or a key moment, um, you know, the enterprises are doing great things, right? Always trying to reinvent themselves, uh, right emergent to new markets and in bringing in emerging technologies. But, but my Eureka moment was why are we still spending 90% of our resources, time and money on just keeping the lights on? Why can’t we do 90% on new things, uh, you know, disruptive things are, you know, unknowns, where are we focusing? Uh, what, why can’t it be focused on that? And we should only focus 10% on, uh, you know, keeping the lights on. That was my Ereka moment, you know, can we change the way, uh, right. Uh, whether you are a strategy team engineering team, it team solutioning team, can you, you know, get some new way of operating your business? Right. That was my Eureka moment. That’s when I thought, uh, you know, uh, one year into Ryzen, I realized, you know, there is a need, uh, you know, to, to change things, uh, for, for my enterprises, right? That was miracle moment.

Scott Luton (13:52):

Love it. A paradigm shift, right? The proverbial paradigm shift who hurt with, we had a nickel for every time we heard that in the last couple of years, I loved that. I love that embracing that, that story of embracing that new mindset, that can be so tough.

Shan Muthuvelu (14:04):

Yeah. Definitely. Even my people ask me, right. Are you trying to say, uh, right. You’re, you’re making good money in consulting, you know, even though it is, you know, some legacy, some new, some integration, a lot of, uh, thought leadership. Uh, but, but maybe still felt like we’ve still trying to spend all that energy, great energy on keeping the lights on. So we want to come out of that. Right.

Scott Luton (14:26):

Love it, Sean. All right. Uh, Stephanie, your Eureka moment.

Steffanie Ness (14:30):

I think my Eureka moment was I had, um, I was very long time ago, but, um, I, we were having a challenge with an application and somebody looked at me and they said the answers in the data stupid. And I’m like data stupid. That was kind of offensive. Wouldn’t you say? And they said, well, no, because it’s really the, because we walk around on a daily basis talking about applications, talking about systems, talking about operating systems, talking about all these things, but the answer’s really in the data. And my Eureka moment was realizing the answers in the data,

Scott Luton (15:06):

Uh, well said. Um, we were talking earlier this week, uh, about a political consultant and their client and what the client, the politician learned is that sometimes the consultants will come in, they’ll read through all of the noise, pick the important information and data, and then get the solutions and then take the data with them. And the politicians like, look, key lesson learned in this, in this information age, make sure the data is yours. So to your point, because that’s where, that’s where the secret sauce is solutionist.

Steffanie Ness (15:36):

It is. I mean, it crazy enough. I, I, I was in the publishing world for a while and, um, the, the printers, okay. Th the people who are actually printing the books or whatever it might be, um, they ended up being the digital asset management store for all of publishing, because it would be a last minute thing, the last copy, getting it out to print, and nobody in the company had that final version. They couldn’t find it. So eventually the printing company started charging them storage, and then they owned all their data. Right. They sold it back to them. It was interesting

Scott Luton (16:12):

Stories like that. It’s amazing that the time we live in, but in a good way too, cause this is really exciting. Uh, both of your stories and what you see Boston doing, which we’re gonna dive more into. All right. So Jeff, I want to pass the Baton to you as we dive deeper into what they’re doing and, and digital transformation and a whole lot more.

Jeffrey Miller (16:30):

Thanks, Scott. No, it’s fascinating to listen, uh, Sean, to your story and your Eureka moment and Stephanie’s. And, uh, so here we have the founder, president CEO, the VP of CRO, essentially VP of sales, building the business. And on the one hand, I hear someone who’s a technologist in a supply chain practitioner, career supply chain practices should say, you know, there’s gotta be a better way and technology should help. And then I hear the other party to this great conversation say, you know what, it’s all about the data. So let’s talk about UC boss and let’s talk about what, you know, I think we’ve got the ingredients. We’ve, we’ve tipped the cards a little bit. I think I could guess what’s coming, but, uh, Sean, talk to us about what is UC boss and, uh, your, uh, your epiphany and your Eureka moment and maybe steps as well. What is it and what does it do?

Steffanie Ness (17:20):

So I, I think it can get very complicated, you know, sometimes. So I, I think it’s easiest just to tell and to say that our whole goal is to, is to deliver technology without the complication of technology. So it’s really delivering seamless integration and functionality creation within a technology stack that already exists. So if you think of a puzzle, you know, an organization’s technology stack is like a puzzle and it misses pieces. And those pieces are either fulfilled by custom development or by extending the software each of which you have to manage over years and years and years. And so it changes and makes it a little bit more difficult. So our solution allows you to leverage that with AI ML, I’m sorry, I’m using acronyms. Uh, we’re using both machine learning. We’re using, um, artificial intelligence, we’re using metadata, okay. A hundred percent metadata. We’re storing data very differently than most systems. And so all that technology is actually delivered with a easily used we front end. We have a simple model model, the business, manage the business

Jeffrey Miller (18:44):

Again, the Genesis being part of a, uh, supply chain view from, uh, from it horizon. And Sean, this is, uh, applied toward the supply chain domain space

Shan Muthuvelu (18:56):

Dominantly. Uh, yes, because you know, you know, that that’s a red and better, that’s where we got plenty of knowledge, uh, even though the platform, uh, is, uh, uh, you know, can support any industry or even any area for that matter. But, but we want to, uh, you know, focus on supply chain because that’s where customers, uh, you know, need, need us the most. Uh, but because, you know, you know, you can always, uh, you know, get the best for your finance, get the best for your, uh, you know, HR and systems and, uh, uh, you know, um, uh, CRM system, but in jumps off your business, the, the, the one key thing is supply chain, which could be taken as a competitive advantage if you do it right. And in today’s world, all right. Uh, you know, Stephanie pointed out it’s data, but people, when they think data, they think it’s data warehouse.

Shan Muthuvelu (19:46):

No, that the data has to be not in the data warehouse, not in just an analytical engine, not just, you know, as, as, as, uh, you know, in, in, in, in between the integration layer where they’re just getting translator data means you need to be able to understand the data, right, consolidate the data and send it back to your business users and, and they should be able to orchestrate on it, collaborate on it, right. Um, instructor ERBs and instruct the supply chain solutions on it, right. For Blatt, that data cannot be just no columns. It has to be metadata. That’s what Stephanie is saying. They will take a moment for both of us, but for us to come together and, and work with, uh, in order for you to, to, uh, take to the market or take to the world is, Hey, it is meta-data and Stephanie said a hundred percent metadata, right. That, that is what we are trying to talk about.

Jeffrey Miller (20:39):

Yeah. So let’s take a step back. As we tee up the discussion into digital transformation and supply chain. Let’s, let’s make sure all, I want to get grounded in this. And I think our listeners as well, there’s some terms out in the marketplace today, if you watch Gartner and IDC and others, there’s a lot of talk about no code, low code metadatabase composable enterprise slash platforms. Like I’m getting the sense that you see boss’s a platform product, a more than a solution. It’s not like an ERP or a PLM system, but it is talk a little more about, um, where this fits in that kind of fabric, where we seem to be headed toward this idea of low-code no-code metadata driven. Sounds like you’re, you’re, you’re part of that.

Steffanie Ness (21:22):

Yeah, absolutely. We are certainly a part of that in, and again, I think that if we kind of look at, look at history, um, so if you had a house and you need, and it stayed in your, in your family for generations, that house has been through many, many modifications, many, many changes. Um, they’re changing the plumbing, they’re adding electricity, all those lovely things that we like, well, as you add each of those features or new technologies, um, to the house, which I kind of think of the house as the, as the technology, um, uh, ecosystem within an organization, finding a way to do things quicker, to do things efficiently is the whole reason that we’re adding features on your own. Yeah. We hire very expensive contractors. Yes. Yes. I mean, just think about, you know, even a decade ago, I mean, would we have been managing our own wifi?

Steffanie Ness (22:21):

I don’t think so. Somebody would have said wifi and we, we went, uh, what, how, how do we ha, and everybody’s got wifi in their house, they had mesh nets, they got all kinds of things. Right? So it’s all about being able to incrementally add that value back in and having that low code, no code, which we are no code, which is a huge difference from low code, because we generate zero code, right. What we’re doing is we’re managing metadata. And a lot of people talk about metadata and very similar to digital transformation or any other acronym. Many people have their own definition of what metadata is. And I like to think of metadata so that people really think about is if you take a look at your laptop today, and you look at your file system, every one of your documents has a naming convention, right.

Steffanie Ness (23:08):

You’re trying to describe what’s inside that document with your 10 characters, 20 characters, it’s not efficient. And it certainly doesn’t give you the depth of information. You know, I mean, I could, you know, I don’t know. I, I can have, um, you know, a QA quality assurance procedure as a document. It doesn’t give me enough. Information will make I say, this is QA 1590, whatever. So metadata is really about decorating or enhancing or enriching the information that describes the information within. So when Sean was talking about, uh, was talking about metadata and talking about the it’s all in the data, it is on the data in the metadata he’s right, right. Because it’s contextual data doesn’t mean anything. Unless you add context to the data, which then gives you information and is really what we seek. So finding a way to get that information to the people who need it at the time that they need it is the goal, giving them the flexibility to act on the information that we give them at the time that they need.

Steffanie Ness (24:16):

It is the ultimate goal because that’s, what’s going to give us the ability to manage our business better is not having interpretations in multiple layers, from business analysts to developers, to enterprises, to, you know, we have, we have a very complicated technology stack today. I just heard somebody tell me this the other day, Gartner. I’m sure everybody’s aware of Gartner quadrants. The question is how many quadrants do you think that Gartner manages? Come on guys. Yes. For me, how many, how many quadrants does Gartner cover? Okay. I’m not talking software, I’m just talking they’re quadrant. So sections entire industry, Oh, Oh, is close to a hundred different charts that are produced more than a hundred, 109 quadrants. Now, if we have an organization like Gartner who has to manage 109 quadrants, and you multiply that by thousands of vendors, it’s a complicated environment. We’re trying to simplify that environment because we can’t progress when it takes us six months, eight months, 12 months to reacts. So this helps us react.

Shan Muthuvelu (25:34):

No, there was a question about even the composable enterprise, right? As Stephanie pointed out, you know, we’re talking about completely Norco, not local, a hundred percent, uh, you know, no code for any enterprise, right. Uh, you know, in, in today’s world, uh, that the way businesses are operating is they have it. Let’s say the business has 1000 business attributes that runs their business. 50% of them will be already solved in, in, in their legacy applications are best of breed or, uh, any enterprise applications or packaged solutions they have. And 50% will not be there under that 30% will be ever-changing right. You recover. It. It’s something different due to a hurricane. It’s something different climate change. It’s something different. So how do you manage those 50%, which really drives your business, right? And that’s, that’s where the metadata comes into play. What Stephanie’s talking about that is learning your business attributes without creating them, meaning without coding for it, designing for it, right.

Shan Muthuvelu (26:36):

That’s where the metadata comes in, in today’s enterprise, right? Uh, all they want to do is, um, Hey, I I’ve done so much on my business, but I want to transform for that to happen. I need to re-engineer redesign reintegrate, redeploy, all these for, you know, redesign reintegrate, redeploy all the way back to, you know, uh, re engineering. This is, you’re talking about two years, right? Or more than two years. Sometimes my, my, my enterprise journeys, uh, do some transformation. So seven years I, we get money for that consulting and development work. But Stephanie says, you know, seven yards come on. We should be able to do that in less than one year. Anything that we touch should be two weeks to four weeks, two weeks to four weeks. That’s what Stephanie talks about, right?

Jeffrey Miller (27:26):

Yeah. This is where it gets interesting in the context of digital transformation, especially in supply chain where, um, COVID has demonstrated to us that we were far less flexible and less agile than we thought we were. And a lot of that has to do with the difficulties of integrating information, converging information, sharing, information, data, and information, I should say, among the traditional functional silos of the supply chain, from planning to food, sourcing, procurement and manufacturing, distribution, and so on. And what I’m hearing is you’re touching on ways to make those connections more, more efficient, the act of a digit and the act of the digital transformation, invariably involves rethinking processes and how data flows. And that’s where the wheels often, often don’t necessarily come off, but it gets very complicated. So talk to us, talk to us about the role of the UC boss platform in that kind of situation, where we’re dealing with complex processes, fraught with lots of data, legacy, data, uh, or systems that don’t necessarily speak with one another particularly well, and now we want to rearchitect portions of our supply chain. So how do you, how do you address that?

Shan Muthuvelu (28:30):

Great, great question. Let’s start with the, you know what you said, convergence, right? Let’s start with supply chain convergence, right? Uh, in today’s world, right. Enterprises one that convergence, it could be because, uh, you know, I have, the East coast is running on a different stack of ERP and supply chain systems. My West coast is standing on different systems. Why? Because my, my mergers and acquisitions, uh, you know, uh, you know, ask me, uh, my force forced it on me that I need to have two systems. Eventually I will come up with one stack, but that’s going to take five to seven years, but then you’re going to continuously buy more. So, uh, so what is needed, uh, for the hour today is how can you convert, uh, meaning stitch together, uh, what you said, established systems, right? It could be the, the articles and SATs and Manhattans, and really unders how do you stitch them together so that you get a business data, metadata layer in front of you for your business people so that they have access to the data.

Shan Muthuvelu (29:30):

They can view the data they can orchestrate on the data. They can also create data and also find a, you know, what what’s working, what’s not working analysis, you know, uh, all kinds of planning. Then on top of it, going back and instructing the complex ecosystem, meaning going back and then helping Oracle, helping Manhattan, helping bull yonder, uh, you know, to do, you know, what is ARCA state and in, in, in the silo system to do our, maybe a collaborative or per station. And this is where, you know, you see buses becoming not just a no-code platform to integrate to house data, but to present it the way you want to see business to arc a state, you want to do the business, then also go instruct other systems as well. So we are solving, you know, bringing data, presenting it, ARCA stating on it, and also pushing data out to the systems.

Jeffrey Miller (30:24):

Yeah. So usually there’s actually, I think there’s a new paradigm that’s kind of emerging area. We, we all recognize for a long time, how, how necessary it was to connect, for example, spare parts planning systems to field service. So then within a field service technician out to look at a crane or a fleet of vehicles, and they say, well, here’s what we need for predictive maintenance purposes. And they have a hard time getting those part requirements back into the systems. And what they’ll do is they’ll create a hardwired integration. Now, those two systems, the dispatching and spare parts managing system and procurement system are forever tied. And it’s usually in flexibly and what I’m starting to hear customers or my clients talk about is, well, geez, you know, I’ve solved the problem, but it’s only as good as until somebody comes up with a new revision of some enterprise software. Is there some way that you can help address that by making these connections more durable, um, and, uh, and not so codependent between systems

Shan Muthuvelu (31:17):

In today’s world, you know, as you said, if you’re rigidly connecting, right, number one, you’re creating that connection and you have to maintain that connection forever. And in the cloud world, if some of your cloud modules are coming out every, every three months, you’ve got a new cloud version coming in, who’s going to sit and maintain this connection. So, you know, in the modern world, in the composable enterprise world, you are connection should be self-learning meaning you shouldn’t, it should not be coding. Number two, it should be self adapting. Meaning if you take out one WMS and put another WMS are, it could be the same vendors, 2020 version, but I want to now take the 2021 version. Different technology does not matter. You know, I wasn’t in a Java, uh, you know, on-premise technology yesterday, tomorrow, I’m going to a Java, uh, you know, cloud technology does not matter.

Shan Muthuvelu (32:10):

We should be able to just let them play, right? These kinds of integrations, self-learning self adapting is where the composable enterprise is going. And that is one thing just on integration. But, but you, you brought up a great point, right? You have spare parts as an issue. Then also have field services. If, if in today’s world, the customers will be asking me, you know, manage it in a better way. Meaning when I’m dealing with the parts, don’t look at it just as a part. Then we have been leading with field service. Don’t look at it as such as a people doing a service. Can you bring it together? Meaning it is, it is a service which has people. Then it also has inventory. That means it has a package, a palette, some lot tracking, then some customer experience, as on top of it, can you connect them together? Instead of just dealing with us, I got package independently. In some system, I have a person in another cm system. Then I got a task to be done in a field service system in sub that can they look at it holistically? That is a person that is a product that is a service. Then there’s tracking. Then there is customer experience all connected together. So that I, you know, I get the full view. And also I can orchestrate on the full view.

Jeffrey Miller (33:23):

That sounds like instead of hard wiring, you’re, you’re dealing more with what the artifacts are than what their particular names are within a given solution. And I’ve started to hear, it’s like, this is really helpful because I’ve started to hear companies, vendors, and solutions, talk about pin for pin compatibility, that they think they have the best solution, but they are collaborative with other solutions. So the one you build a business process model, and you enable it with technology, you can unplug one set of technologies and plug another set in, and all of the structure you built will still be functional. I guess, if that, what metadata is about, sounds like it.

Shan Muthuvelu (33:59):

Exactly. And your journey of, uh, you know, in, in your transformation journey, people think the transformation journey is going from point a to point B. Yes, correct. Right. Sometimes it looks like yes. Point a to point B, but not to your point. B is not daily B it could be B today, see tomorrow, D day after next day. And in that journey who is going to have all these, uh, you know, ARCA stations and integrations managed because every point that you stop at needs a different way to integrate different way to do business with. So that means you need to not only learn new ways to do business within your organization, you also have to learn new ways. You have to integrate with all your complex ecosystems. So that entire journey has to be managed who can manage this continuous change of disruptions in your business and continuous change in talking to you or, uh, you know, other applications or people are even IOT, uh, you know, our artificial intelligence or virtual reality devices and other things, right?

Shan Muthuvelu (35:05):

So you need a platform which is completely compostable. And if you use, because they’re certain code, if you’re coding, you’ll be maintaining. The anybody says I am generating code or coding. Even if it’s low code, you have to maintain for the world is going towards a right where I don’t have to code. I don’t have to maintain, it has to be completely composable, meaning no code a person metadata. So for that, my, my focus is on, you know, inventing new things and plug and play. As you said, the platinum play does not have to be just plugging out a transportation system and putting a new system. Let’s say, somebody comes up and says, I have a package which does a better containerization inside of our house, which is packaging are inside a truck. Can you just take that one piece and plug it into my orchestration of creating an order inside the WMS or creating an order for transportation. That is where the world is going to go, right? Commoditized, uh, you know, package to, uh, you know, app obligations and stuff. You know, I’m buying a large ERP and a large supply chain application. You’re going to be dealing with either you are going to be creating something cool, something disruptive and something useful in, in internally in your it, or you’re going to be buying up the shell from marketplace on which platform is going to do that orchestration and management. And that’s what,

Scott Luton (36:25):

All right. So let’s, we’re about to take the conversation much more broadly, but for, I want to get Stephanie weigh in. However, first what I’m hearing from you both, and from, from Sean in particular, my kids loved the series, the Mandalorian. I’m not sure if y’all have seen it, it’s on Disney plus. And on every episode, several times, the Mandalorians when they see each other, they say, this is the way, so what I’m hearing with code, this is the way this is the way forward. It is that that grand equalizer, which is a beautiful thing in this rapidly ever grow, ever, uh, speeding along era of change ran. So Stephanie weigh in on that, and we’re going to go,

Steffanie Ness (37:06):

I, I think that we can say, uh, my just joined the, uh, Gartner it symposium a few weeks ago, and the keynote was actually about a composable enterprise. And one of the statistics that they quoted there is that 65% of organizations by 2024 will be using low. And no-code, so this isn’t new per se, this is heavily adopted necessity, heavily adopted that we can’t build the custom apps that we used to. We need to move more quickly. And, you know, one of the things that I, I’m not sure that Sean highlighted is when we talked about that you normally have to create managing and deliver the, the applications. Well, the other whole half of that is you have to document, you have to train, you have to run, usually could current systems for your users who love you when you do that. Love when you do that. And have I mentioned how much they love new systems and new functionality, they get very excited about that trading. So you get to avoid a lot of that as well. So it kind of, um, it really makes everybody pretty happy to be able to do things faster, quicker, and not have to test and worry about whether you’re breaking any other part of your very complicated ecosystem, because we’re working with metadata.

Scott Luton (38:25):

Think about the folks that you talk to every week on supply chain now. And if there’s one theme that runs through all of the conversations you have, it’s of change, doesn’t matter whether it’s a logistics company, pallet company, software operations, the rate of change. Again, it’s a top of mind topic because of COVID. That seems to be a theme that runs through everybody that we talk to who appears on supply chain now, and it characterizes the industry. So, uh, this, this to me, it’s, it’s pretty cool to learn about, um, a platform called UC boss, right? It’s written by folks who come out of the logistics and supply chain arena. That’s, that’s kind of talking about providing technology. That’s going to, uh, match the business need, which is all about speed of adaptability, his other challenging about, and that’s talent acquisition. And, and everybody’s fighting for that top talent and, and from a technologist standpoint, right?

Scott Luton (39:17):

So when I hear about a, um, an equalizing resource that allows your team to do more with, with, you know, not having to figure out the code, this no code, I mean, this is, uh, it’s, it’s fascinating to me because, cause we all know the challenges associated with, uh, the global talent landscape right now from a variety of perspective, right? And that’s even pre pandemic, it’s only gotten more challenging. So this is fascinating to me. So if you are good with it, I like to go broad because despite all the really neat and exciting things that you and the UC boss’ team are up to, there’s also no shortage of exciting things that take it that are taking place global supply chain global business. So, um, Stephanie, let’s stay with you for a second. When you, when you survey the global landscape, when it comes to supply chain beyond what’s, what’s an item or two that you’re tracking right now,

Steffanie Ness (40:08):

Really predictive analysis, demand strategy. Uh, I, you know, I, I can’t imagine being in a position where I’m having to predict demand with an entire rug pulled out from under me, you know, I mean, I, I have nothing to go by. I mean, you know, what, what does air, right? I mean, honestly, you know, so I think that that is to me the most important, because it’s the beginning, right. You know, it’s the beginning of that planning, how much, where where’s it going to be needed, all those things and finding ways to, to do predictive analysis and do that demand generation in a more, what if analysis, you know, kind of thing where you’re, you know, I mean, it’s one thing to say, I’m getting the, you know, I don’t know a box of toilet paper, shocking that I would come up with that one.

Steffanie Ness (41:01):

I’m sure. But another thing when you’re, you’re actually laying out the entire thing right. You know, from your vendor all the way through what’s that really gay pig, and you really have to be able to do that in a technological way so that you’re not missing anything right. When you have nothing to work with and you got the whole thing out from under you, that to me is extremely important. And so that’s one, and then the second one is e-commerce, you know, most of our, um, are dealing with where, you know, 70, 80% of their business was, you know, through retail channels, you know, wholesaling, um, then they had, you know, 20% of econ. Well now obviously those are flipped, right. So how does that affect that supply chain? Because you really had two supply chains, you had your e-commerce supply chain and you had your vendor supply chain and the convergence, or the inability of these two supply chains in a converged manner to be able to do that planning and logistics. Those to me are the two most challenging that I’m seeing today. Yeah.

Scott Luton (42:08):

We’ll put it back on the analytics piece, even before you, uh, organizations are embracing better, uh, technological forecasting, wherewithal, just the old-fashioned enhancing and optimizing communication between the different silos everyone has been speaking to here today. You know, the Clorox company comes to mind, you know, th th in their published interviews, of course, they’ve been appeared here a couple of times, one of their best practices in getting through this historic demand for all of that, for gotchas about all their products across all lines has been to go back and really communicate and understand all the various supply chain partners better understand the constraints, share information that they’ve gathered about, not just COVID-19, but how to protect the workforce. Right. That type of information is, you know, oftentimes doesn’t go upstream and downstream, you know, that, that just old fashioned communication. And then you look within the four walls, you know, proverbially sales and operations.

Scott Luton (43:05):

We can all get along. Let’s sit down and have a zoom. Yeah. Have yet our may at the zoom call the week. But that exchange of information, you know, just from an old fashioned standpoint, you know, that we see a lot of companies doing a lot more, getting more serious about that, for sure. All right, Sean, let’s, let’s talk when you’re surveying the grand landscape. And look, we try to find the good news, try to focus on the good news because there’s so many lessons learned, right. That are the silver lining from this historically challenging year. Sure. A lot of people are, you know, it’s been a horrible year for so many people, but we’re going to be better off as we fight together through it, the industry is gonna be stronger. Uh, you name it, we’re gonna learn so much about supply chain business. And for that matter, each other. So, Sean, what are you tracking more than others here right now?

Shan Muthuvelu (43:50):

I’m glad they know Stephanie tests on predictive analysis. And she also touched on e-commerce, which, which goes back to your, you know, your omni-channel fulfillment enterprises are trying to solve, uh, but they don’t have the speed to market that they would like to see that, right. That that’s something I’m tracking. Let’s take even something that came up last two weeks ago, right. That I started talking to my folks is the Pfizer, uh, COVID vaccine distribution, the reason they said I’m going to manage it myself is mainly because there is no time for them to go integrate our, our, you know, collaborate with other businesses, whether they are, uh, right, uh, distribution companies, carriers, or parcel companies around the world, or right. They don’t have the time. And also they don’t have the technology to do that. Quick connection, quick learning, quick integration. That that’s why they say they are saying, I will manage it myself, but this is not something that is going to go away after a few months, right.

Shan Muthuvelu (44:47):

For the, what is needed is something where can I bring from the manufacturing to the distribution, to my end, B2B customer, to my consumer, then also also the returns and doctors and nurses. You name it, their entire ecosystem of, you know, uh, you know, source to consumption. Is there a way that you can track it down to the level needed by the business, not telling them, you know what, currently they may say, you know, what, if I’m distributing something, I can only tell you at the level of, uh, you know, steel or either, I cannot tell you what the package is. I cannot tell you what is the special package, uh, you know, I have made for this COVID vaccine because you know, this should be, you know, temperature control, but at the same time, you know, you don’t have to put it in a freezer, all these special needs and requirements and tracking whether it is IOT tracked, whether it is a, you know, just systemic tracking, uh, you don’t have a way to, uh, you know, track it.

Shan Muthuvelu (45:46):

It’s almost like the blockchain as are needed, but it’s not mentioned, but can you create a blockchain of all these companies with all the necessary information in an ecosystem? That’s what this metadata linkage can do in a platform. That’s what I’m tracking. And that’s not just needed for vaccine distribution. This is going to be needed because you’re hearing every three months, a new disruption, but at the destruction is due to, uh, you know, something like COVID or something like better climate change. Uh, it’s not going to go away. And we can’t just, you know, close our, uh, you know, years and knives and just keep sitting around it, right. We need to attack it and solve it. And you need, uh, that is what I’m tracking right now. How do you connect, uh, the, the, the new inventions in IOT, new disruptions, and also the existing solutions and the new solutions that you want. We have to connect stitch them together, stitch them together for the supply chain.

Scott Luton (46:46):

We going sit in on our hands is certainly an option. That’s not going to make too many, too many organizations happy, but, but great point getting aside great point. Disruption’s only going to get, you know, St just like the rate of change, right? The rate of disruption is going to, there’s a ratio there for sure. The other thing, going back to the vaccine, such a great bonus,

Shan Muthuvelu (47:05):

You know, cloud is already a legacy now, right? People thought cloud is new. And now we’re talking about cloud is a legacy thing. We had to go past the cloud now,

Scott Luton (47:14):

But you know about the vaccine. And I think it’s Pfizer that is doing everything internally because they are, they’re one of the, one beyond what you shared. One of the biggest concerns they had is, uh, you know, the, the, the cold chain requirements, right. And those exchanges provide the opportunities to, to for spoilage, right? And it really, even though it’s not the, the magic wand solution, that, that we’re not gonna have to deal with the pandemic anymore. However, trying to, you know, a lot of vaccines have a 25 thing at 25 to 30% spoilage rate, which acid they’re trying to keep it at 10, but there’s a greater analogy here that all of you are speaking to. And that’s those exchange points, those linkages, your so global supply chain or your glow, your global technology enterprise is only as strong as your weakest link. And both of y’all have spoken a lot to that. So it’s a fascinating time, not just to be in supply chain, but certainly to be in business. This becomes kind of the test case cold chain is usually the test limiting case for supply chain, resiliency and durability, right? We all we’ll all know that, and this is sort of a pardon, the pun, but it’s sort of like cold channel on steroids because of the value. They, the fact you’ve got layers of things like authentication chain of custody, temperature control. So it’s a, it’s testing,

Steffanie Ness (48:28):

Not to mention, we need vaccines for every person. I mean, that doubles the difficulty

Scott Luton (48:36):

That access for, for all right. There’s so many different issues, but you know what global supply chain is up to the task and, and the it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be overnight, but, uh, you know, this is, this is a mission that the industry is, is built for and warts and all. And, uh, we’re going to get this thing done. And while we do so, uh, we’re gonna, we’re going to be better. We’re learning so much of how to operate in a pandemic environment. And, and, you know, we can all think back to 2018 and all those pre pandemic areas and how, how easy your life was. But Hey, you know, this is not gonna be the first major global disruption. And, and it it’s just training us to be much more resilient as a profession and as a people.

Scott Luton (49:19):

So, you know, a lot bigger news, better news is coming the months ahead, any, it takes great technology and innovative ground cutting edge. Sean, great point about the clouds now at legacy, you know, some folks still talk about the cloud, like, Hey, it’s a coming technology. No, it’s been here forever. It’s just, you got slow adopters. And that’s such a, I think that’s a key lesson learned from this conversation here, because I’ve never really thought about that, like that, Jeff. So Sean, you get one of the hot takes here. We’re gonna have to put it on a t-shirt, but let’s make sure Jeff, we’ve got to make sure folks know how to connect with Stephanie and Sean. So Stephanie, let’s start with you. How can folks connect with you? And of course,

Steffanie Ness (49:59):

Very simply you see boss.com. You can reach out just that easy. You can click, you know, contact us. You can click demo, which that’s my preference demo. So we’re very easy to get ahold of it. My email through LinkedIn, you’re more than welcome to reach out and connect with me, Stephanie ness at UC boss.

Scott Luton (50:22):

All right, Sean, same question. I bet both of y’all do a bunch of keynotes and you, uh, hope your inbox is going to flood with a lot new virtual requests, but Sean, how can folks connect with you

Shan Muthuvelu (50:32):

The same way? As, as Stephanie said, uh, you know, we are very, uh, active on LinkedIn. Uh, then we are also, uh, you know, UC bos.com, uh, Eusebio s.com. Uh, they can go there and under RHS, but LinkedIn is today is, uh, you know, one and only professor, I shouldn’t say one-on-one lead, but at least in terms of communicating, right, uh, at a professional level, not at a sales communication, an email communication or our distribution of marketing and material leaders is purely from a personal level, connecting I’m thoroughly enjoying LinkedIn. Uh, so that’s a great way to connect with us. And I’m glad Stephanie mentioned demos, uh, right. And since this is all compostable, meaning they’re not coding, that’s why she’s not afraid of telling our vendors. We will do your proof of concept, right? We’re not even ready to do their proof of concept and production itself, right?

Shan Muthuvelu (51:25):

In recently, a customer said, throw it into production, right? Meaning they’re not testing in test. They said, they’re going to test it in production. And, uh, the, the reason we can afford it is because of the composable nature. If we have to code, or even if you have to apply something new, then there is a cost to it, right? And in the new world, that’s all going away. And then we want people to reach out to us and share their use cases and share the one which are the most complicated one that he could not solve. Are you think that’s going to take you 12 months to 18 months because you know, we’re committed to show that it will not take 18 months in this new journey. Uh, and, uh, and, and the lessons learned, you know, this, this may even help their internal, uh, you know, it and business, right? They may be doing a lot of POC. They may be choosing a lot of technology and our interactions may help them choose the right technology and what we have learned and what, and under six years of uninterrupted, I, you know, learning on choosing this technology stack, right then marrying that with the 20 years of supply chain knowledge, you know, we are willing to share with,

Steffanie Ness (52:32):

I have a small challenge. My small challenges is the next time that you’re wanting to fill that 20 or 30% gap, give us a call, let us try it.

Scott Luton (52:42):

And it’s not going to be a two year implementation at two to four weeks. Still is reverberating in my ears. All right. So w what I’d love to hear also really appreciate your, both of you. You’re very sector experience. You know, that that’s, that comes in really handy when it comes to solving problems and supply chain and elsewhere, all the different, you know, businesses and sectors y’all been in. All right. So we have Jeff, we put out there how to get in touch with UC boss before I get your one key thing. I got asked Stephanie, you’ve got a, a beautiful record display behind you. And I’ve been, I met ask you on the front end, what that is, but you got to tell them

Steffanie Ness (53:21):

That is well, dungeon. Roses is my husband and I favorite band. And we had a friend that worked at MTV for, you know, 20 or 30 years. He ran, um, all of their talents. So actually this is our upstairs pompous room, or whatever happens to be my office, but I have them all over the room. So he moved, he moved out of, uh, out of Connecticut and into New York. It didn’t have room for everything. So I bought, so I have like aerospace. These are all like real R I a, you know, a real deal,

Scott Luton (53:57):

The real deal. How about they see slip that in there, that could be a separate episode, a scotch Steph, walk me, walk me around the room once. And that could be, that could be like another podcast episode. Oh, that’s the MTV moon, MTV music. Maybe it’s a word,

Steffanie Ness (54:14):

Man. I got all kinds of like crazy, you know, memorabilia from, from him that, you know, I mean, moved to New York. So he didn’t, he had very small,

Scott Luton (54:24):

Well, I’m glad we asked, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, um, it, more than ever before, perhaps is to maintain a healthy, uh, work-life balance perspective and a sense of humor during a year, like 2020. So really have enjoyed, uh, both of you, Sean and Stephanie, uh, Jeff, before we sign off and thank them both. What’s been your one key takeaway, big takeaway from this conversation. It’s a big takeaway. We know supply chain for decades has driven technology. We in operations, we want something we need to capability, and we demand it from the technology that then often catches up. We solved integration with enterprise systems. We largely now in the last five years in salt connectivity to end devices, we’re on our way. So what I keep hearing now pretty frequently over the last year, because of COVID principally driven by the speed and things with COVID is flexibility, agility, resiliency, speed.

Scott Luton (55:15):

And that’s the next thing that the industry is demanding. We solving what I learned today. I mean, this is great. I, this is exactly what I was hoping to hear. It sounds like we’ve got a company here. That’s recognizing that again, in a supply chain context and is helping companies figure out how to match the modeling of the business to solutions at speeds. And the businesses require. That’s why I keep hearing. You gotta be flexible, gotta be agile. The supply chains are reforming. And what I learned today is that there is a way to do that and look, and I don’t have to go back to my old battle days of C plus plus programming, coding classes. Wow, man, it’s or MVS, or, uh, by the way, some people actually do know what case tools are steps. So this is great. I really enjoyed, and I appreciate y’all’s approach.

Scott Luton (56:00):

You were kind of able to speak to the technologies that our technologists are part of our audience and the non technologists that are part of our audience. I appreciate y’all’s approach here. We’ve been talking with Sean [inaudible] president CEO at UC boss and his colleague, Stephanie NES vice-president global sales UC boss. Thank you both have a wonderful, uh, holiday season, the race to the end of the, and I bet 2021 is gonna be transformational for the UC boss team. Thanks, Sean. Thanks Stephanie. We’re going to wrap up here, Jeff. Great episode, really enjoyed learning from on and Stephanie run stuff. And I, I appreciate your key, final takeaway. There’s so much here, 27 pages of notes. That last count on my end, but you know, I love that one big challenge because it’s got to be practical. It’s gotta be successful and it’s gotta be fast.

Scott Luton (56:50):

And that’s kind of what you’re speaking to. Well, that’s what, every, every week you got guests on the, on the, the network here on supply chain. Now they’re talking about this very, very, very topic. And for decades, we, as a, as a discipline, we’ve been pressuring technology. This is what we need operationally, bring it to us, give it to us. And, uh, it sounds like this latest challenge now about flexibility and agility technology is responding. And, uh, that was what I was hoping to hear from the folks from Sean and Stephan. I think I’ve got something there. I agree. So to our listeners, hopefully you enjoy this episode as much as we have, of course, we’re going to put those links in the show notes, make it easy, all about connecting with our guests with one click. And it’s just as easy as UC boss.com as well, but Hey, uh, hope you enjoyed this episode. You can find more episodes just like this@supplychainnow.com one a big thanks to my cohost, Jeffrey Miller, a lot, lot more intriguing content from Jeff on the rise and Jeff, thanks for your time. Thank you, Scott. Pleasure. You bet to our audience, Hey, going to challenge you. Like we challenge ourselves every single day, do good gift forward. Be the change that’s needed. And on that note, thank you.