Okay, it looks like Twitter is connecting. There we go. Okay.
Well, hey, good afternoon, everybody. Scott Luton and Greg White with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today's live stream. What a show we've got lined up today.
Supply Chain Front and Center with DC Man's Safregola with Akili Incorporated. Pretty darn good. Well, hey, a lot of practice, you know, but hey, stay tuned for a great conversation. lot of things, especially related to transformation and change. Got a great conversation teed up.
And, you know, we're going to be working hard to improve your supply chain IQ for sure. Hey, quick programming note before we get started here today. If you enjoy our live stream episodes, and this is going to be a special one, be sure to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcast from.
Today, we published an outstanding, uplifting episode with our partners, Vector Global Logistics and Books for Africa, which is a great nonprofit. doing big things, giving forward in today's environment where, hey, in this challenging environment, these nonprofits and the folks they serve need your help more than ever before. So check that episode out wherever you get your podcast from. I want to welcome in my fearless, esteemed co-host, Greg White, Serious Supply Chain Tech Entrepreneur and Trusted Advisor. Greg, how are you doing?
I'm doing well. Look at that. We have really stepped up the tech here. The dog is behind us making stuff happen.
I love the new backdrop. I love the introductions. Doing well.
This is great. This whole give forward thing. Can I pitch this a little bit? Sure. So the concept, a lot of companies and a lot of companies talk about giving back, right?
Because as part of their part of what they do, they want to give back to the community or whatever. But Enrique and Vector and our logistics with purpose. series is really about companies who give forward.
Giving is first what they do. And then if they seek a profit, the profit is meant to enhance their giving. So I think that's a really interesting way to tackle things. And I don't know, we were on another show and we kind of coined that during the show, right? Hey, I love it.
And give from what you have. So we'll talk a lot more about that. But I'm really excited for today's conversation.
We're going to be talking about a couple of things that we haven't had as much of in recent shows, especially transformation. And we want to welcome in our featured guests here today, Dc Manns, Safregola, and a planned consultant with Akili Incorporated. Hey, Dc, how you doing?
I am great. I am super excited to be here. I'm super excited for our conversation. I'm interested to also hear what anyone. Out in the live stream world, thinks about the conversation, maybe take it offline, continue it.
So I'm ready to go. Well, you know, there's so much we can talk about. This might be a six hour long show. I don't know.
Yeah. Cut me off if I get, you know, long winded. It's going to be dinner time before we get to six hours.
We can talk about stuff you're passionate about, you know, you just keep going forever and everyone else is like. Well, hey, you know. I wish our audience could tune into the pre-show conversation we had with you and your husband and your beautiful son, Alessandro, and your husband, Joseph. Really enjoyed that. And who knows?
We may be able to showcase Joseph's talents at one of our upcoming live streams, Greg. We're trying for the trivia show if he's open. We're checking his calendar. We're going through with his agent.
Okay. I'll check. I'll check.
All right. So, DC, let's dive into. for starters, your background and kind of your backstory before we start talking change and transformation and talent and leadership.
Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? I, um, we moved to Atlanta when I was eight.
So I claim Atlanta. Um, I was born in Detroit and we spent some time down in Alabama, but, um, like I said, from eight until I was an adult, I lived in Atlanta. I went to UGA for my first degree, go dog, right. Yeah.
So I definitely claimed Georgia. Right after college, I actually moved over to Europe and I spent some time in Italy, which is where I met my husband. But before I ventured into supply chain, I was in digital and experiential marketing for a while. So I was in industry over in Italy. I did PR for a sports marketing agency, actually.
And then once I moved back stateside. I transitioned into just independent consulting before going back to school right up the street at Kennesaw State. I did some coursework in industrial engineering and then got a master's in engineering management.
And that is where I fell into supply chain. Wow. No kidding. I'd like to take an hour to walk through that journey.
A lot of folks don't have that. I'm definitely one of those people when I have conversations. I've done. A lot of things.
And I think that what that has given me is a great perspective of people and communication. I speak four languages. I've traveled extensively. And the communication piece of supply chain is just very near and dear to me.
And I think that that is definitely influenced by my previous studies in liberal arts, my travels, like I mentioned. And. And then the marketing piece, I was in logistics sales for a little bit while I was in school. So supply chain has definitely been a good career transition for me. I was looking for something to where I could marry all of my experiences.
And that's what supply chain is. I also love how things change so quickly. I love having to relearn things. and learn about new topics.
There's so much in supply chain that, you know, you can stay in supply chain and I feel like never learn everything, you know, warehouse automation and logistics and transportation and procurement and the S and O P process. I mean, there's just so much stuff and that's why I really love supply chain. It touches all business, all global business.
We were on a call earlier today and, um, And that point came up and especially, you know, the silver lining and all of this. We've talked about this on a lot of shows here recently is the industry is getting a lot of visibility. And we'll touch on the talent pipeline coming into earlier.
But there's so much more interest and so much more understanding, seemingly, and curiosity about how global supply chain works. So, all right. There's people that know what it is.
That's right. Real quick, I want to give a shout out to someone that joins us quite often for these live streams, Patricia Kelly. who mentions he's got a call with a food bank coming up.
He's doing a lot of good work in the food industry and especially the produce industry, which is going through some hurdles for sure. So hello, Patricia Kelly. Okay, so DC, you told us a little about yourself and walked us through your journey. Let's talk now about Achille Incorporated and what you do as an Anaplan consultant.
So talk about the company first and the problems it's helping its customers solve. Yeah, absolutely. So at Akili, we help clients improve business performance, and that would be through business planning, change management, support services and data integration analytics.
So as an Anaplan implementation partner on the supply chain side, what I do is to help clients understand what that business improving business performance looks like for them from a supply chain perspective. And even taking that further to a connected planning perspective. So really aligning your supply chain with your finance, with your sales organization, with your marketing team.
So that's what we do at Akili on the supply chain side. In addition to the implementation, I help with process improvement. So I'm not sure if you would be surprised.
I'm never surprised at how many. customers just don't have their processes mapped out. They haven't realized where there is, you know, there are non-value add activities happening, where there are redundant processes. So really, you know, mapping out that process current state to ideal future state. And then under...
So Beastie, real quick, if I can interject, you shared a lot there that I bet a lot of folks that are slow thinkers like me may not understand. So when you say non-value added... And when you talk about mapping and probably value stream mapping, can you shed a little more light on that for some folks that maybe they're still in school or maybe they're new to industry? Yes, absolutely.
So what we see a lot of is that people do their jobs. You come in, you do your job. And I know that my co-worker is doing their job because there is an outcome.
Something is happening. But if we all sit down at a table together, we just kind of have this tribal knowledge of. this is what DC does.
This is what Scott does. This is what Greg does. If someone else then comes in, we have to sit with them at a table and kind of just hope that eventually they'll pick it up.
There's no real layout of step one is this, step two is this, and then a decision point. If this happens, what happens next? So we really start with, you know, that day-to-day and getting clients to dumb it down, you know, for lack of a term. better term for us, because it's almost like if you're writing, if you're writing something, you know what you want to say, and then someone else will read it. And it's like, well, what does this mean?
This is kind of ambiguous and helps you realize, oh, well, you don't know what I'm talking about. You don't know what I intended to say. So I really do need to go into those details a little bit further.
So when you go into those details, you know, what, what I will come in as a consultant and say, well, well, why is Scott doing? this step when Greg just did this step. Isn't that the same thing? Right.
Yeah, it is. You know, we can figure that out. That's not value add.
Right. Redundancy. In addition to the business, it's really just wasting time when time is, you know, of the essence.
So real quick, value stream mapping, when you're really trying to visibly show how processes, especially enterprise-wide processes and the flows, how all that works. Has it been your experience, DC, that, you know, folks in one department, which may be literally, which I'm saying that for my 10-year-old, next door, right, in the same building next door to another department, they may not be aware of what they do day in and day out. Is that, have you seen a lot of that? It's not even next door.
It's literally if we have two desks right next to each other. You know, if you share, if two different departments share the same floor. Right. You know, because what we what we then ask is, you know, your your psych, your your inputs or outputs, who's going to be using this data or who's who is the next step in this process? They take this piece and then, you know, give it to the next person.
What we see a lot of is once my job is done and I pass it to the next person, I have no idea what happens after that. Or once I once I get something, I have no idea where it came from or what happened for it to get to me. So. And we'll talk about this later in the business transformation piece.
We really want that to stop happening. We want to break down silos. And a lot of companies are going toward this technology piece. And especially now, I've been seeing so much in the last couple of weeks of cloud-based technology and adopt technology to help you plan your scenarios and to go forward. You need to adopt technology.
But no one's talking about... the foundations before you actually do that because the technology isn't going to solve the problem you know so you know we'll talk about it technology on top of a bad practice all you get is a bad result that much faster right i think people need to recognize that i think a lot of times people feel like a technology actually solves the problem but you do have to integrate it with people and process to make sure that it's successful yep hey real quick I want to recognize Dusan, who is tuned in with us via Facebook. Hey, Dusan, we're going to be talking about business transformation, digital transformation, and then we're going to segue over into the talent pipeline coming into supply chain, especially how we can make sure we're providing volunteers for opportunities for everybody. So thanks for tuning in there. All right, so one last question, and then I'm going to turn over to Greg, and we're going to be talking about the exciting world of transformation and change management.
Dc, where do you see it? spend your time and all the good work that Akili is doing out in industry? I spend my time with a little bit of everything.
So when we have companies contact us that are interested in an Anaplan implementation, I'll help with those initial discovery conversations to identify pain points, to identify where the value will be added for Anaplan. to be able to have a candid conversation about their readiness and maturity for, you know, a technology implementation. And then depending on my availability, I will actually do a lot of the value stream mapping that you mentioned that we talked about.
I'll do a lot of that myself alongside my colleagues. And then I like to get my hands dirty. Also, I do some plan actual configuration of the software and model building uh is what calls it yeah so i um i i again my liberal arts background and the communication the marketing piece i has given me this skill to you know be able to talk to people and have conversations and you know pull information out of them uh but then having the technical education background with the industrial engineering and engineering management, I also have that, you know, kind of engineering brain that works.
And I can also plug in the numbers and then translate that to the business requirements. So that has definitely made a very exciting career for me because I can, you know, flip-flop between the business and the technical. Love it.
I love how, just how you described that. I could picture how your brain works so so differently than mine and probably than Greg's. And, you know, when you get different takes on solving problems and driving through change and innovating new products, I mean, that's what it's all about, right? Getting different folks that see the challenges differently, that see the opportunities or the art of the possible differently.
I mean, that's where some beautiful things come out of that. All right, so real quick, Greg, before I turn it over to you until we talk transformation, I want to say hello. to Benjaminjamin Goldklang, who happened to be one of DC's competitors on Supply Chain Trivia Night just last week.
Benjaminjamin is part of the Chick-fil-A team, so great company there. And he enjoyed playing in that Kahoot platform that made it so easy. We just got, as we all already have acknowledged, we've got to make sure these technologies are playing nicely together in the sandbox in round two, which is coming up May 13th. We'll talk more about that in a moment.
I think we need to figure out what it is that Point Malone used. when he did hit a live stream of Nirvana songs because everyone was playing live and they were all in sync. We need to know what that is.
Well, you know what? Let's call them up. All right. So on that note, never a Point Malone segue.
Who would have thunk it? Greg, let's dive into one of our favorite topics, which is transformation and change and making things for the better and helping organizations thrive. I know we've got some great questions for DC and her expertise there. Yeah, I'd like to go back a step first real quick before we do that, just to give us an idea of this helps me a lot and maybe it'll help our audience. If I'm if I am walking down the hall in my business or probably in my house now thinking about issues that my business is facing, what are the kind of key words or the problems, the pains that I'm feeling?
That that I would then go, oh, I better call Anaplan. Help our audience understand what that is. Right.
So so what I see on the supply chain side and Akili also does a lot of finance implementations of Anaplan. But being on the supply chain side, what I hear a lot of pain points is, you know, we have a demand plan, but it's very difficult for us to execute on that. It's very difficult to scenario plan.
So especially in today's world where we're not using historical data to inform what our new forecasts are going to look like. We're not using even like a 10 week moving average, a six week moving average, because every day we're getting new information. And it's not necessarily our traditional market data of POS data and things like that. It is, you know, outside market data.
So. politically, geopolitically, health wise. Like those are the types of the types of information and insights that have to be considered now when doing these scenario plans.
So our technology doesn't always have that. And if you're trying to scenario plan right now, what you're probably looking at is a couple of days to do that. A lot of our clients are using Excel. And in order for you to. scenario plan at various levels of your product hierarchy and to scenario plan at various production facilities at different warehouses with your different suppliers that can take you days and days at a time.
So what we are able to do with Anaplan is to allow you to get multiple outputs in literally the amount of time it takes you to change the numbers and type it into the platform. So just that execution and being able to have those actionable insights. So data is great, but you don't need all of the data.
Too much data can cause information overload. It's just as bad. Too much data is just as bad as not enough, right? Not enough data.
You don't have actionable insights to actually execute upon. So Anaplan allows us to choose what we actually need and to do those calculations and those forecasts and then helps to actually execute and integrate with other systems so that you can. execute much faster in the supply chain.
It's like the sixth grade in algebra problems where they want you to tell you how fast the train's going to arrive somewhere, but they give you everything, including the color of the trains and what the menu is. Yeah, it's a solver, basically. It's, you throw all the data at it and it figures out what, how to solve the business issue.
So interesting. You mentioned something earlier that makes me wonder. How close to data science you get?
How much, how involved do you get with the data in your day-to-day job? And how much data science do you use techniques and that sort of thing in your day-to-day? Just out of curiosity.
I, and this might be because I actually have worked with people that I consider data scientists. So I would say I don't get. very much into the data scientist world. I don't use R or Python or anything like that. But I do help clients kind of clean up data and get data ready to be consumed by a system like Anaplan.
So a lot more of what I do in my day-to-day is identifying the data that is needed to get the output that the clients are looking for. So if you want... to, if you want to calculate certain KPIs or certain metrics, you need certain data in order to, you know, put into those formulas.
But I, I would not claim to spend much time in data science, though. I have, I have not been as fortunate as a lot of people to have the time during this quarantine period to catch up on reading and, you know, personal development and things like that. When I do have the time, I do want to look more into like. machine learning and AI and just better understand how that really affects our supply chain. Well, so one of the best resources in the world is right at Kennesaw State, Dr. Jennifer Priestley.
I don't know if you ever happened across. but there is an entire data science program at Kennesaw State, and she's a world-renowned data scientist. So maybe, I mean, you're not so far away.
Maybe just buy her a fucking copy. Right up the street. Yeah, I'm definitely.
When we all get back together, it would be interesting. Hey, real quick. You're going to get me in trouble. I told my husband no more school.
Let's say hello real quick. Memory, who is dialed in. from, I believe, South Africa, and Fatima, who's been on the show, soon to be graduate from Morgan State University. So hello, Fatima, who's also going to be joining us next week. All right, so Greg, let's talk transformation and change.
Yeah, I heard a word that gives so many people in supply chain shivers down their spine, and that is spreadsheet, Excel, right? So I wouldn't consider... Excel or a spreadsheet part of a digital transformation, right?
But considering the way, you know, everything that's happened with this pandemic and this seismic societal disruption and how we have transformed virtually overnight, the dynamics of supply chain, the dynamics of society, the dynamics of commerce, and how those will gradually come back. And they may come back in different measure or a different structure, different. on different timelines. I think one of the things that we've talked about a lot is how important digital transformation is.
You said you've heard some of that, and a lot of companies are recognizing that they need to get off of paper, manual, and spreadsheet processes in order to probably just to survive this situation, but certainly to be ahead of the curve if such a... disruption or even something lesser, which will almost always be the case for the rest of our lifetimes, by the way, something lesser but still significant happens. Clearly, this has been a pivotal moment for companies and people to start to recognize that a real technology platform is necessary to do that. So as you think about that, and as you've experienced it in helping companies deploy digital solutions, automated solutions, scientific solutions, even though I know you didn't do the science, that's okay. Tell us about some of the struggles that you're seeing companies have as they try to go through a digital transformation.
The struggles are, if I had to kind of categorize them, I would categorize it under data and people. So we talked about data and having clean data. So A lot of times what we see is that companies say, oh, yes, we have that data. OK, yes, you have it.
We know it exists somewhere. But if your customer or your supplier or your production facility, et cetera, if you have that data in your system, metadata, for example, so your data that describes your data, if the location for that facility in your system. is sometimes coded as capital G, lowercase A, or capital G, capital A, or you spell it out, Georgia, your data is not right. Because a system like Anaplan has to be able to understand in a quick matter, you know, okay, I need to go to Georgia, which is this code. And the system has to be able to look through your master data and decipher what item is being described by that metadata.
So we see a lot of holdup with data in terms of cleansing it and making sure that it's uniform. And we see a big barrier in data as well to where it can't be pulled out of the system and put into Anaplan the same way every time. So there hasn't been either companies are lacking a data warehouse. or they're lacking an ERP system, they're lacking a place where all of the data is pulled together in, you know, like SQL tables or whatever it might be, in a way to where it can then be pulled the exact same way, have the exact same information in the same format every time to feed into a system like Anaplan.
So whether it's Anaplan or another cloud-based tool, you do have to have the data in formats and... have the data uniformed in a way that the system can then read it. I think that what I find as it relates to data and technology in general, and this is personal life and professional.
Life people who don't work in technology tend to have much higher expectations of technology. So they expect that the technology will just do it all. You know, I'll give the technology what I can give it and it will have to know and it will be that good to just give me the outcome that I'm looking for.
And and I think that that is where a lot of us are getting having the disconnect of. Well, technology is going to take over my job because the technology is only as good as the person that is managing it or configuring it. You always going to need that human input. So that's the data piece of it. The other barrier to the transformation is your people piece.
And that falls into a couple of different scenarios. So I'm taking notes, Stacey, by the way, I might owe you a consulting invoice at the end of this. I'm on my eighth page.
It's okay. This one's free. This one's on the house. Okay.
This one's on the house, but you can call me for the next one. All right. Good stuff. So as it relates to the people, what we see a lot of times is that, you know, when we're going through the process of timelining and roadmapping our implementation, I don't think clients really understand how much of their resources time is going to be required.
for the implementation to remain on schedule. And what we see a lot of, what I have seen a lot of personally just in the last year and a half or so is that Scott has his day job that he is dedicated to 40 hours. And then they expect Scott to also be able to translate the business needs to me for the implementation. We use agile and we use the agile methodology so we don't go away for three months and then come back with the system complete.
We do iterations or sprints of two or three weeks, but we need client resources every two or three weeks to go through the demo to get feedback to say, oh, yeah, this isn't what I was thinking or, you know, this is great. But those people are doing their day jobs. So I really would like for a takeaway from that. to be for companies to support people. As you're starting to really understand that you need these digital tools and you want to implement them, either hire more resources that can help or be very flexible with the dedicated resource that you are going to give to your implementation partner to make sure that they're not overwhelmed because you can't...
Do 40 hours of your regular job and then 15 to 20 hours of this project implementation. It's just not sustainable. Yep. All right. Two quick points from our audience.
First up, Jeff Roy, president of the Savannah chapter of Apex. Actually, he was also president of the Providence chapter of Apex. He's a great guy, very sharp individual. He was going back to what you were saying earlier, DC, about the right data at the right time.
And he says. Interesting, my company services the petrochemical industry, and we've been getting real-time data and forecast changes. We simplified by focusing on constrained product families, allowing us to increase our sales in the short to midterm. The key there for him and his team was the right data at the right level, which is what you were saying, DC. One other comment from Memory, and Memory states, The biggest barrier to...
digital transformation is management who lack the know-how and sound understanding of the benefits of data analytics. For example, mentioning analytics is the quickest way to get your agenda pushed to the bottom, memory says. It is very hard to strike a balance of pushing an innovative idea and following proper communication channels.
Two great comments from two to our listeners, Jeff and memory. Appreciate you sharing Greg back to you. Yeah, I think, you know, I think it's interesting that those are the two those two issues, data and and human beings are, I was thinking about that as you were saying that DC, because I did consulting over two decades ago. That's.
That's my limit. I never say more than that. And I found myself as I was listening to what you were saying, thinking, I can't believe we haven't solved that yet. I mean, that you have to face that same condition with a constraint of human capital during a transformation like this.
And that data in so many cases is still such a mess. And in some cases, much more of a mess than I actually thought it was. More than two decades ago. Probably so because there's more data. There's more data.
More data and more consolidation. And what happens when you consolidate companies is... You call it a jar and I call it a jug, right? Absolutely. And, or as you said, it's GA here and Georgia there, you know, whatever, but those kinds of things will continue to plague us for a long, long while.
So, you know, as you said, human beings and data, business process also needs to be considered as well. And I think you kind of rolled that into what you were talking about. User adoption as well. That's a barrier. Say that again?
User adoption is a barrier. Yeah. And I am, I last, last.
Psychological experiment. Last week, the global women procurement professional GWPP had a virtual event around resiliency. And it was something that I had never really thought of.
And one of their speakers talked about how our brain processes. ambiguity and change and how these, you know, these neuron pathways, we do the same thing all the time and we become comfortable with doing that. And what we see a lot of at Achille, what I've also seen, you know, just in previous years in consulting is the project team, kind of the steering committee's ability to minimize the impact of the change.
So Excel is very similar to Anaplan. Anaplan can do more. What is this Excel that you speak of? It's an Excel-based, I mean, it's a cloud-based platform, but it's very similar.
And what we see a lot of is people saying, oh, we don't need training. We don't really need change management. The job's not changing that much. You know, instead of putting it in Excel, you put it in Anaplan.
And they minimize the change that's happening. And, you know, what what the speaker was saying at GWPP is that when a change happens, we as humans go through this process of grieving. So what we see a lot of with Anaplans, since it's such a, it's an easy tool to implement in comparison to other tools.
It's not like a, does it take you years? You can have a use case up and running in a couple of months and people, you know, want to get their users in it. So they can get that time to value without giving them the opportunity to really accept.
that the old way is dying, it's ending, and the new way is happening. So, you know, when it's one or two people, it's fine. When you get into large teams, 20, 40, 60 people, you have, you know, that jarring, like, okay, well, people have said, you know, my Excel system worked fine. I don't know why we're in Anaplan.
Your Excel system was horrible, but you don't, but your grief, you know, The only way that you can communicate that you are having trouble with change is saying, why does this new system suck so bad? So you have to give people that chance to accept the new system and start to use it. So user adoption is definitely a huge barrier. Hey, real quick, two comments from the audience. And Greg, I know we're going to be diving into business transformation versus digital transformation and move right along.
Patricia says that DC is super on point. Data governance. Plus people readiness, plus management understanding and maturity will make or compromise your transformation.
Good stuff there from Patricia. And then from Doug McMaster, a good friend of the show. He ran into this exact problem.
I think they're talking more about the data analytics and what you call certain things and how things get pushed down. As his team worked to stand up Salesforce over the last three years. Lots of hard work with much more needed.
must keep resources available to change the culture or it will fail. So good stuff. Greg and DC, keep driving. Okay.
So we were going somewhere. Well, we're going to transformation, business transformation versus digital transformation. And DC, you've got some strong thoughts and expertise around this. Of course, it comes from your. firsthand experience about their drive and change.
So tell us more about where companies get this wrong business versus digital transformation. Well, they, I don't want to say they get it wrong. Wrong is a strong word. But it's, there's room for improvement.
Hang on. Let me make sure Amanda heard you say that. Wrong is a bad word, Amanda. Wrong is a bad word. I'll make sure my husband heard me also.
So he can throw it back in my face. But what happens when companies embark on this digital transformation journey, and just for the past couple of years, digital transformation has been thrown around so much, is that they forget that the business transformation is underlying to that digital transformation. So they just forget about the business aspect of it. And I mean, we've talked about it. It's really making sure that your processes are good processes, especially with a tool like Anaplan.
Anaplan is not, there's no out of the box solution. If you open up Anaplan, it's a complete blank slate. It's like a Word document. There is nothing there.
You have to make it do what you want it to do, which is good and bad. So on the good side, it can be very flexible. On the bad side, if you have a really broken process, you can very easily build that into Anaplan.
And what we see happen is we sit down in what we call like a foundations process at Akili. Other companies might call it something else. But it's essentially the couple of weeks that you spend before you actually start developing the software and before you actually start implementing. And you sit down with your users.
You sit down with all of your stakeholders and you. you go through the process that's current state, you outline the ideal future state. And honestly, what we see a lot of is that everyone is like ready to go.
They're gung ho in the beginning. We're going to align these processes across business units. We're going to, you know, align nomenclature. We're not going to have a jug in a jar and the implementation, the implementation starts happening. Right.
Users get into it and it's like, Oh, well, now actually just do it the way that we've been doing it. And, you know, as on, from my end, I remind them, will you remember that we wanted to change it because we're aligning these new processes. We fall back into comfortable habits, right?
Yes. You fall back into your old, you know, comfortable business process. And, uh, and you, you don't really push people to accept this new, better way of working.
because you don't want to ruffle too many feathers. Again, thinking about the political side of the user adoption, you want people to actually use it. So you trade off, you know, the business process and that can all be mitigated and even eliminated if you are ensuring, if you are implementing really good change management practices. So that's the whole point of this video.
All of the users and all of the stakeholders, and I actually worked with a client who had a very good communication plan. Okay. We're communicating, you know, why we're doing this.
What is it going to mean for you? So it allows everyone to start to understand long before the implementation happens, you know, what this new project is going to be, how it's going to change my life, how it's going to change my day to day. So I didn't. on the 28th, get an email, say starting May 1st, we're going to use Anaplan.
You know, I've been hearing about Anaplan for the last six months. I've been hearing that this training is coming up. I have been able to ask questions to my direct supervisor or there's like a general anonymous email that I can send questions to. And the more you communicate, and I think we've seen that a lot you know, even now with our current situation with COVID and people being at home, you know, going back to that ambiguity, we don't know what to do with it.
Well, what's going to happen? We don't know. So the more you know, the more you communicate with people, they're able to absorb that information and just be able to be better prepared to move forward.
All right. So on the- The briefing process a little bit earlier. So they're over it, right?
They're past- Yeah. They're past the grief. They've gone through grief.
Whatever it is else that they do. Greg, I want to ask you, the last few minutes here, we've spent on two big themes, change management, which I know you've got plenty of experience and results around. And also communication, which clearly DC greatly values. I know you greatly value really good, accurate communication.
Before we segue, for the sake of time. We're going to move into that last segment around talent here momentarily. But, Greg, speak to those two things based on what DC shared. Well, I've done over 2,000.
implementations like what DC is doing, and they sound virtually identical to what she's described. Every single time, there's an element of every one of those aspects in every implementation. And when I've seen people be really, really successful, it is, as you described, DC, it is letting the team know what's coming.
And why? And as importantly, and this is important, and I'm not sure this isn't something you do already, but this isn't something I've heard said, and I think our listeners need to hear it. You need to let people know how much better their life is going to be.
The users in particular. What's in it for them? Adoption.
They don't care. I mean, I don't mean it harshly, but they don't care about the company and the benefits of the company. And that's usually what.
management communicates is this is going to be so good for company X. But the truth is, as you said, early, early on, most people just want to show up and do their jobs. And what they want is some light at the end of the tunnel for them. This is going to make your job more secure, more efficient, more satisfying, right? More effective.
And everyone wants to be effective in their job. They want to be appreciated and they want to do good work. Great point. So if you can reinforce those.
points, then that is very helpful. That aspect of communication is particularly important. I think that is the biggest thing in any project. Yeah, that's a very good point.
And I know we have to move on, Scott, but just for the listeners, as people are going to start these transformation journeys, especially as you're getting these new tools, part of that is enabling, you know, a few, a handful of people who at least in the case of Anaplan, it's not an IT-owned tool. It is a business-owned tool. So it doesn't require a lot of coding.
It just requires, you know, a know-how and a desire to learn. But what you find is that no one really wants to take on that challenge. So being able to, like you said, Greg, you know, communicate with people and provide the messaging that this is going to be a skill from now until, you know, the next 10 to 15 years.
that you'll be able to put on your resume when it's time for, you know, a career transition or something else. You've got this new skill. So, again, like you say, making it personal for them. Why should they? What does it mean to you?
How is it going to improve your life? Yeah, that that is so important. And that that's why I said earlier, this is really it's really a psychological study. When you get into these implementations, I mean, as you have done, you have to understand where people's heads are. And.
And when you do, then you can make it more effective for the user, for the tech team, and for management. Because management, as you said, they want to rush to the end. And usually, it's more about money, my experience has been, it's more about money than it even is about time that they cut the training short.
They think, how hard could it be? That's the most famous quote. I'm sure that's what we thought about Zoom.
That's right. That's what people think about supply chain now. People think about supply chain that way.
One of my neighbors up the street said, how hard could it be to keep this stuff in stock? Well, hey, everyone's getting a great education in that regard right now, which is one of the silver linings here. All right. So I want to shift gears over to the last big topic we're going to talk with DC about.
And Clay and Amanda, if you would. If you put out there in the feeds and via the graphics that get folks weigh in on number one, how we can ensure that there's a healthy diversity of talent and the top talent coming into the supply chain industry. And then secondly, how can industry leaders meaningfully impact the gender gap? Those are two questions we want to get comments from the audience around because we're going to pose those questions to Dc And just also a fair warning, everybody, we're probably going to go a little bit over the hour because these two. To finish up with these two topics are going to be tough to do in 10 minutes or so.
So, DC, talent's been a critical topic for years in supply chain. The industry is competing arguably unlike ever before for top talent, right? Whereas financial services and professional services and technology is really, and oftentimes in the last 15, 20 years, 30 years maybe, gotten a lot of the top talent supply chain industry front and center. is going after and needs that top talent to come in.
But what's also really important as we move into the aftermath, as Gartner is calling it, you know, post-pandemic and whatever that new normal looks like. You know, we've already heard some concerns from recruiters in the front line, have a finger on the pulse, that organizations and leaders in supply chain are worried about how to recruit and go back into getting the talent they're going to need to go, you know, get into the end of the year and then beyond and into 2021. So question to you with all that, with that backdrop, how can we as an industry continue to make strides to ensure that we're not just. that we're getting a diverse, a multitude of different walks of life into the industry so that they can take advantage of the opportunity that is global supply chain. It's actually interesting that you would say that recruiters and organizations are thinking that they're going to have, you know, kind of trouble getting more people.
I see right now as a great opportunity. So- what you mentioned of having the talent shortage, that was definitely around when I was getting into supply chain. And I remember thinking, oh, wow, you know, job security.
So I know that personally, at the time, I had no idea what supply chain was. And I was working in logistics when I took my first supply chain course, I was working for 3PL. And that's when I started to think, oh, this is what you know, supply chain is.
And this is where the logistics piece falls into it. But now that there are so many, you know, from a college student perspective, or even, you know, a master's student, there are so many programs now that are providing supply chain courses and logistics coursework and things like that. But having come again, not from that background, I really encourage people to look outside of those programs.
Even outside of the typical engineering, I would see job posts. They want people with like electrical engineering, i.e. some type of background, which I get. You know, you want that technical piece of it.
But, you know, just having someone that can supply chain, what it really comes down to is like we said, it's a very big people piece. A lot of communication, a lot of managing of various teams. If you're running a really... best in class, best practice supply chain, you're collaborating across functional areas and outside of your enterprise. So you've got to have, you know, a kind of a political sense of being able to, you know, manage all of your internal customers.
You've got different internal customers needs as well as your external customers. And you don't, you don't have to have studied, you know, supply chain or engineering to have those skills. Especially now that we're global.
We have different cultural identities and different cultural barriers that are being broken down. And we are seeing more and more to where even having like that international background and just like a different diverse background, that will bring a lot of people in. But right now that supply chain is so front of mind, it's a great time for companies to really leverage that and show younger people that supply chain is so front of mind. supply chain can be fun, it can be rewarding, it can be challenging. Right.
Innovative. You know, it can be innovative. I recently every Saturday I meet with a group of supply chain professionals and and students through the supply chain revolution with She. And I spoke with a student that said, I forget who I forget who she said the CEO was. But she decided to study supply chain because he has a supply chain.
He didn't go through, you know, the NBA or like the typical finance. You know, he did supply chain. So that's when she said, oh, let me see what this supply chain thing is.
So, you know, it's really cliche. You hear it all the time. You know, representation matters, but you really just have to, you know, share that story of that person or people who look like the candidates that you're going after.
and showing that it is possible, you know, and have a fun, rewarding career where you can, you know, continue to grow professionally and not hit this glass ceiling or, you know, not deal with, you know, a ton of setbacks. And that can happen in supply chain. On the other side, it's not just selling that story. It's actually walking the walk, you know, and making sure that that is indeed what is happening. once these hires are coming in, that we are providing rewarding work and that we are providing opportunities for promotions and opportunities for learning and development and opportunities to continue to grow.
So it's telling the story, but then also walking the walk once we get the people in the door. Yep. All right. So one of the things you shared there is basically stop acting like it's 1982 and clinging to.
old-fashioned traditional recruiting practices and perspectives. And, Greg, we just talked about this yesterday. Before I dive a little bit deeper with DC on this, talk about the need to really What got you here isn't what's going to get you to 2030 or maybe even 2025. Greg, speak to that, please.
Yeah, everybody, including businesses, hit the ceiling, right? That what got you here isn't going to get you any further happens all the time, and management needs to actively attack those kind of things. And one of those things is that, for instance, just in the States, there are million people employed in the supply chain industry and that's expected to grow by around depending on where you get your numbers between five and 13% a year that's somewhere in the neighborhood of two to five million people being added to supply chain as professionals of each year and that's just in the States and then you think about around the world the number of people that are going to be needed so You have to start to look at things differently.
I'm a huge fan of Day Longa, who is one of the premier experts on artificial intelligence. And what he said is for you to have better results from artificial intelligence, you don't need better algorithms, you don't need better machine learning, better calculations, you need more, more minds, more people in real intelligence situations. attacking the problem.
And that's how you solve things. And that's such a great point. If you have if you have international expertise and different ethnic expertise and different cultural expertise and and different gender expertise and all of those things, you can you can meld all of those things together.
I mean, we see it all the time. We talked to Tandrea Kelly and Elba Peralta Gallagher and Vivian Greg. And we talked to Malone Peralta, who that DC knows, we've talked to people from all over the world, Nikhil, you know, and, and, you know, just all kinds of people from, from around the world.
And you can see that those varying points of view really solve the problem that much more effectively. Yep. So DC, I love the, I love the AI angle that Greg just brought up.
It's been reported by a variety of different publications. I last saw it in Forbes. I believe I saw it last week in the Wall Street Journal about the need to really, and specifically in AI, which of course has been here forever, but 2020 and last year and this year, we're seeing it just proliferate out and impact every practical component of business. However, women are underrepresented.
I think the last figure I saw was 13% of programmers in the AI space are women. And back to Greg's point, and Greg, I can't remember the example that you typically use. I want to say it's about shoes or something where we have these subconscious biases when we think of shoes. Oh, yeah.
Even in AI, you can create bias in AI by saying. I was just going to mention it. You say doctor and you show the device a picture of a man, doctor, and then AI can't.
Can't relate to even a woman in a lab coat as a doctor because you haven't shown it. A woman is a lab coat. Likewise with shoes.
If you show it, you know, if you show it men's floor shimes, God help you if you do that. First of all, but if you do that, then it thinks only men's shoes are shoes. Right.
So you have to change that. You have to present that. And look, I think we've been presented that.
Look, our generation, Generation X and since have been presented with that. kind of integration. I really think that what we have the opportunity to do now is take advantage of old norms exiting the workforce. And and take the the level of diversity that we all have experienced all of our lives and that we know creates a better atmosphere in in society and at work and and implement that at a greater rate. And the thing is, we we know it.
Like you say, Greg, we know it. And if what happens, at least I think, is that we we get kind of lazy. So we know that we're supposed to do it.
And if I can't think of someone kind of right off the top of my head that would fill, you know, the space of the person I'm looking for, whether it's LGBTQ or, you know, I want a woman or I want a woman of color. If I can't quickly think of somebody, then I'm just kind of like, you know, maybe next time. But we have to actually say no.
I'm going to intentionally ensure that I have diverse representation, even if it takes me more time to find it, because it's not that it doesn't exist. They're out there. It just might take me that much extra time to find that person that I don't really want to spend the time doing. So, you know, there are plenty of platforms out there. There are plenty of organizations that are created to connect mothers that are reentering the workforce.
Yeah. or to connect minorities with STEAM opportunities and STEM opportunities. So, again, getting them in the door, but then also providing, you know, support once they are part of the organization.
For mothers that might be flexible workers, just parents in general, that might be flexible working arrangements. You know, there's always the joke, if you need something done, give it to a mom. So they're always managing so many others. prioritization, task management, multitasking.
If you need something done, give it to a mom. GSD, that's right. Get stuff done. We see that, you know, what happens is a lot of women don't expect to have that support.
So they don't go for the next manager role or the next director role. And we as companies, you know, I have seen that at Akili. That when I went on maternity leave, you know, no one really batted an eyelash.
When I came back, no one batted an eyelash. You know, work just continued. Life continued.
If my kid was sick and I needed to not be around and cancel meetings, you know, at the last minute, nothing happened. The world did not end. So I feel at my company that the limit, I put the limit on myself.
If I want to become a manager, if I want to become a director, my company has. supported me, I can communicate that with them. We can talk about what a path forward looks like.
So once we get those diverse hires in the door, we have to understand how we can then support them to continue to move up. And that's what we want to tackle last. Real quick, one comment from Fatima, who has been on a couple of live streams with us. So hello, Fatima.
Stop hiring industrial engineers for supply chain jobs and hire the right person with the right qualifications. Because it's a management job and an engineer doesn't know about that. So Fatima, we'll have to get Fatima on a live stream. That sounds like a very lots of discussion around that commentary. There are a few engineers that would take it.
That's right. But Fatima, thanks for joining us and thanks for contributing. You know, it's important to get all the perspective out on the table.
Also, one other quick comment from, let's see, Clay Phillips. The dog himself, Clay, shares more brains attacking a problem, not better brains. Varying points of view really do solve problems more effectively.
So good stuff there. Okay. So, DC, let's go back to your last point you were making. And, folks, I really hate Greg and DC, both of you.
I feel like these topics deserve such a fuller, deeper, a lot more time. So, but we'll have to just have a second episode. But DC, let's talk about once we get the talent and diverse talent into the industry, how can we, you were just talking about as it progresses, you know, from frontline management into, you know, director level or VP level.
How can we ensure that those upper levels? I mean, we're not where we want to be, right? And almost by any measure, how can we make sure that everyone has an opportunity to, you know, progress and move into the upper echelons of leadership? I think it's.
Not maybe not completely analogous to the chicken or the egg, but I would not have pursued supply chain had I not seen other women executives in supply chain. So, you know, maybe there's another little black girl somewhere that is seeing the news about supply chain everywhere, but she's never seen a black woman in supply chain. So that's not really in her realm of possibilities for the future.
So really making sure that we are hiring and promoting people who would fall into kind of that role model to where others can see themselves, to where they even pursue that career path. I'm a very big believer that we are at a point now and some others might say I'm naive. But I do think that we are at a point now to where we recognize the need for diversity and we recognize, like the comments say, like we've seen in so many studies, businesses with diverse leadership just fare better because there are more ideas. There are better ideas. There are different ideas.
And in that, you know, kind of banter and brainstorming, that's where the beauty really happens. So I don't think that. there is a lack, at least from my experience, of leadership that wants to do it or that has the idea. But I also see, again, that because I don't see someone that looks like me, I'm not even going to pursue it. So there is that lack of, I think, pursuit.
And I have been getting more comments on the not comments, but questions from LinkedIn and just people since I've won the CSCMP video contest. I saw it last week, right? So, yes, I did the video contest. Real quick, what was that about?
I talked about data. So it was a young professionals video contest. So if you're a young professional member, the video contest, you had to either talk about. And in 90 seconds, a technology that has revolutionized the supply chain industry or how to improve visibility and traceability in supply chain.
And I talked about data. So getting the right data in the right places and then leveraging that data to implement cloud based software. So that was it.
So 90 seconds or less. Yes. 90 seconds or less.
Wow. I think like the last word is actually cut off. You want to give that last word here? No, I don't remember what it was, but I think you could understand.
You could get it. But I won attendance to the EDGE conference, fingers crossed that it will happen in September. But from that, I've gotten a couple of LinkedIn messages from other young people of color that are saying, you know, I...
How did you get into supply chain? Can you help me out? So even once we get those hires in, connecting them with a mentor because their experience is not going to be the same. And I actually think I wrote a comment or something.
Maybe it was you, Scott, or Sarah Barnes Humphrey with Let's Talk Supply Chain. But I actually at a previous job had a supervisor tell me, you know, you can find a mentor here. There are a lot of white men here. your experience in this industry as a black woman is going to be very different.
So you should find a mentor who can understand that experience and can help you navigate your professional life through that. And that was that was very eye opening for me because it's true. You know, in a lot of larger companies, you'll see it at big consulting firms. You'll even see it at big organizations like Delta Airlines or, you know, Accenture Deloitte. They have these.
LGBT communities. They have these, you know, women's network or the black network or the Latino network. So those are very important. You know, those are very important to allowing people to be able to feel comfortable talking and feel comfortable understanding how to navigate moving up in leadership.
So it's a mix of, you know, to kind of wrap it up. It's a mix of convincing people to come to supply chain. Yes.
You should take an entry-level position because you can move up. And once they get in, you know, supporting them on that journey, you know, whether it be moms or whether it be, you know, with a diversity network and providing that mentorship, but just having that connection. All right.
So real quick. You know, 22 million people are unemployed and supply chain is front and center of the news every single day. So when, as the economy starts to come back, there won't be any reason to be unable to find candidates with diverse backgrounds, right?
There just won't be any reason. So as expected, Dc and Greg, and Dc in particular, you're eliciting feedback from our audience. We've got two nice pieces here. One from Angie Reno 111. Reno 111. Arena 911. Sorry, it's been a long Tuesday.
She was on trivia with you. She finished third, right? Fierce competitor with DC. So Angie says, hey, what about crafting contracts to support diversity? We have government contracts, and our metrics specifically state we have to support X amount of SPC, including one of the toughest, HubZone.
I guess HubZone is one of the toughest. I'm not familiar with that. C-level leaders need to drive commercial agreements that support initiatives, and some do. Good stuff there from Angie. Angie also says, DC, when you were talking about mentoring, that you really hit the mark on that.
And then for Memory. Memory's got some good stuff here today. Memory says, so glad you guys are making the gender gap a part of these conversations. It's challenging to navigate up in the profession as a woman due to certain stereotypes we are labeled with. I was recently at a distributor conference where there were only three women in the room, and I was the only one directly involved with the sales of industrial compressors.
Women need to be trained more to hold their own thoughts confidently, because there are people out there who are ready to mentor us, but it takes some courage. And remember to share some of the stuff there. But write in those three or four sentences there from memory. Angie's comments. I mean, DC, clearly you're hitting the nerve.
And, you know, we're hoping to facilitate a lot more of these conversations, which I'll tell you, some of the most uncomfortable and awkward conversations I have in our team and I guess I'll just speak from my personal journey. That's where I've learned the most. Elba Proud Gallagher, which Greg shared, founded and leads ShowMe50.org, which is a great nonprofit to really.
The vision there is to get boardrooms to look 50-50, right? And we all know that's not the case now. But, man, it's been uncomfortable, but it's one of the most important ways to learn is having the conversation, right, DC? That's where growth happens, you know, when you're uncomfortable and when you're going through a change.
That's how you grow. If we just do the same thing all the time, yeah, it's nice because we don't feel, like you said, uncomfortable. But nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to change.
Yeah. OK. Go ahead, Greg. Quick point on mentorship, because I would encourage people to go look at the episode we did with Tandrea Kelly and Kate Mulyan about meant specifically about mentorship and how each party plays their part in that.
And Tandrea is one of my favorite people on the planet and a very, very good. mentor, obviously, and her insights are unbelievable, like earth-shattering in terms of assuring that your mentorship is effective. I would encourage people of color and other ethnicities and genders to go also find an old white man as a mentor. Have two mentors, because the old white men have been there.
Right. They've experienced the people that you're looking up to that you see as, you know, people like you, Dc, who people see as, you know, people of color in supply chain, let's say. Right.
They have they have dealt with that already. And and they know a lot about history even farther back. I can assure you of this.
Old white men. Don't solely discriminate against other than old white men. There are some. Similarities regardless of what your background is, there are some similarities that anyone can share.
Everyone has been bullied, pushed around or disadvantaged in some way in their career, and they may not be able to relate on the same terms, but they've also been there so they can help a lot. We're going to meet Joseph. I think we might meet Alessandro.
He just woke up. I didn't even know he was asleep. How long have we been doing this? We're over a little bit here.
He was just here. That's right. So to our audience, we had a great fortune of meeting both Joseph, DC's husband, and Alessandro, her one-year-old son, right?
Yes. And look at that beautiful baby. And his shirt says, can't catch me or don't catch me. Either one, right? It's a warning.
All right. So let's wrap up here so we can protect your family time. Really appreciate you sharing.
One last note, you know, reverse mentoring, which we've heard a lot from Tandrea and Karina. We talked about that in that episode as well. Yeah, that's right.
All right. So, DC, I want to thank you for your time. DC Manns Safregola, and she is the anti-planning consultant with Akili Incorporated. We can wrap up. We're going to let DC get back to spending time with her family.
And, Joseph, don't go too far. We're hoping to have you. as part of our May 13th Supply Chain Trivia Night.
So, DC, thank you very much. Clay, we'll just move the live stream to Greg and I. We'll kind of make an audible here on the fly.
DC, thank you very much for sharing, and we're going to be reconnecting with you. If anyone wants to connect, I'm on LinkedIn. Please feel free to reach out. And if you want to talk, Anaplan Implementations, Akili, A-K-I-L-I.com.
Perfect. And we'll make sure we include that. in the notes as well. Thank you. Bye, guys.
It's a pleasure. Dc, take care. Wow, Greg.
It's kind of a super jam-packed show. Wow, that's a lot. It is.
It's tough to do those topics justice. I know that you and I both had a lot more questions for DC and certainly want to pose some different scenarios and add some comments to it. Regardless, great conversation.
Yeah, no doubt. I mean, you know, we have this conversation frequently with Elba, with Tandrea, with with Vivian Greg, with lots of people that, you know, that we talk to. And it's enlightening every time.
I think it's interesting to get the perspective of someone newer in the workforce. Yeah. Right.
And and hear firsthand their perspective on. you know, on these issues, right? And it's important to, you know, it's important to understand.
It's important to discuss. It's important to conflict and resolve, frankly. Great point.
I want to welcome Joseph Moretta. Great to have him join us. I know it's a busy Tuesday.
Another trivia contestant. That's right. All right.
So on that note, let's wrap up on two final things. First off, Greg, we've got National Supply Chain Day. First time.
ever, at least in the U.S. It took us when we were founded in 1776, so quick math, 200 some odd years to have our first National Supply Chain Day. It took a woman to do it. That's right.
Mary Kate Love, the founder. That is right. National Supply Chain Day from Point A here in Atlanta. Point A, the Center for Supply Chain Innovations, one of the newest innovation centers in Atlanta, which I think is either 60 or 90 centers deep.
But it's one of the most unique, and we're looking forward to continuing our partnership with the Point A team as we open a studio in their new Point A offices. 40,000 square foot facility, including a TED Talk station, which I can't wait to see you up on stage there. All right.
So National Supply Chain Day, we've got Duria, president of Point A. We've got Benjamin from the Metro Atlanta Chamber. Mary Kate Love, who you already mentioned, the founder of Supply Chain Day, part of the Point A team. And then we've got several of their members that are doing big things in the fight against COVID-19 from a supply chain and technology standpoint, right? Our fellow members now.
That's right. I got to get you to say that. Point A now, right?
That's right. Pretty cool. It's official. It's going to be an interesting discussion.
So I'm looking forward to it. Look, it's a big celebration. I hope everybody turns out.
I can't not believe. There was no National Supply Chain Day before now, so it's tomorrow. Join us.
That's right. And we'll be live streaming across a lot of platforms. I want to give a quick shout out to Fatima.
Hey, she says rude but true in terms of her commentary from a while back. Hey, it takes all perspective. And we've got to jump in and have the conversation.
I've said it about engineers. I've said it. That's right.
And Fatima, we welcome your perspective. We'll have to talk more on a future live stream. Maybe we can reach out and get connected after this one.
Okay. So after National Supply Chain Day tomorrow, Supply Chain Trivia Night Part 2, May 13th, Wednesday, May 13th, 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
Will Mr. Inventory come out and successfully defend his championship belt, Greg? I don't know. It was pretty strong. It was a great comeback.
I got to tell you, I have talked to a lot of people, and they are studying. Joseph is one of them. Sarah Barnes Humphrey has determined that she is going to, she's going to study.
Chain Gaffney, who finished second, is going to study. And Angie Reno, I'm sure she hasn't stopped studying. So I don't know where you find information on supply chain trivia, and it's kind of a roll of the dice at this point, right? It's not like who won Super Bowl I. That hasn't been asked 1,200 times. There's no questions that have been asked that many times, right?
That is right. Well, so sign up. We're still, you know, hey, we're supply chain folks.
We're going to get better and better and better, always looking for making it easier and more enjoyable and more of a quality experience for our guests and our participants. We had a few glitches in the first ever one for us, but we're going to knock that out. And you're not going to have to register, but it's best if you do.
And the. If you go to supplychainnowradio.com, I think, Amanda, we've already got the link set up ready to go for folks to register for the next supply chain. And if you register, of course, we can share those details as we get closer.
So May 13th, 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. All right. One last note. And this will also be published at.
SupplyChainNowRadio.com under the webinars tab. But we just now finalized our next webinar, where we're going to be featuring Mike Griswold with Gartner, who will be publishing the 2020 version of Gartner's supply chain top 25 list, which I love lists, I love rankings, and this is, of course, this is about supply chain. Well, this is the most important one that you'll see.
That's right. And Mike, you know. Unquestioned authority in terms of supply chain. and technology and people wait to, I mean, people flock to, well, Phoenix, Arizona. So that, I guess that's not that far of a reach is it?
Phoenix or Orlando doesn't seem like that much of a reach, but they flock to see who lands in the top 25 every year. And we're going to, we're going to share that with everyone. That's right.
827th, right? Key takeaways, key insights from the the soon to be published list. I think they published the event, the, the list, um, in mid May. So we'll get it right, you know, a week or two later, along with the, the, uh, quarterback for the whole top 25, uh, list there at Gartner. So look, stay tuned for that.
He's a basketball coach. Maybe we should say point guard. Yes. That's good. Which is what he is also.
That's right. Good catch. So that webinar is open.
Uh, you can find that soon. If not today, at sapatchanowradio.com. Okay, Greg, we have, this has been the deluxe version, an hour 20, not nearly as efficient as we are, but hey, we were, DC had some great information and we were- No charge for all this extra time.
That's right. Hey, well, if you've been unhappy to our listeners, we'll give you your money back, right? That you paid for the live stream.
All right. So Greg, as we close, of course, check us out to our listeners. Podcasts, webinars, live streams, other resources, blog articles, you name it.
Thought leadership at supplychainradio.com. Be sure to find us and subscribe wherever you get your podcast from, which comes out Monday through Friday, sometimes Saturday. And on behalf of our entire team here at Supply Chain Now, stay safe.
Brighter days lie ahead. And we'll see you next time here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks, everybody.