Guest Podcast

See Below for the full transcription of this episode!

Sam Gupta (00:24):
Hello everyone, welcome to today's show. And if you are joining for the first time, welcome to Somebody Needs To Mute. I guess. I, uh, can you please mute? I guess I please mute.
(00:43):
Yep.
(00:47):
Alright guys, thank you, uh, so much once again for joining in. Sorry for the technical, uh, trouble, um, there. And if you're joining for the first time, this is part of our digital transformation series for which we meet every Thursday at 5:30 PM Eastern. We take one topic related to digital, uh, transformation. And we always have an expert panel here. So for today, we are going to be discussing the topic called document management. And now you might be wondering, okay, what the hell is document management? How difficult could that be? Um, just get a document dumped somewhere. We are done with it, right? Uh, but you'll realize in today's panel how difficult that could be, uh, and the kind of processes it might drive. Um, so before we jump into that, we are gonna start with everybody's intros. I am going to start with my intro. If you don't know me, I am Sam Gupta, your host and principal at Elevate iq. Elevate IQ is the independent e r e and digital transformation consulting firm. On that note, I am going to move to Chris for his intro.

Chris Gard (01:48):
Thanks Sam. Chris Gard, any owner and CEO of Turnkey Technologies. Uh, 28 year old practice. We're focused on implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 E r P solution. So great topic.

Sam Gupta (01:58):
Looking forward

Chris Gard (01:59):
To the conversation.

Sam Gupta (02:00):
Thank you so much for being here. Chris. Uh, Dave, can I ask you to introduce yourself next?

Dave Chrysler (02:06):
Yeah, sure. Thanks Sam. Hi everybody, my name is Dave Chrysler and I own an operations consulting business working with leaders in the manufacturing and distribution spaces, helping them to create systems that free them to drive growth and operate with excellence and come to you with more than 20 years of operational leadership roles, uh, dealing with E R P and document management. So excited to be here.

Sam Gupta (02:30):
This is good to be so much fun. Thank you so much for being here, Dave. Mark, can I ask you to introduce yourself next?

Mark Kanes (02:37):
Yeah, thanks, Sam. Hi everyone. I'm Mark Kanes. I'm the president of BlueLink, E R p, uh, which is celebrating our 31st year in business. And, um, so a lot of experience in working with E R P, typically with small to medium sized owner managed companies in the product space, distributors, et cetera. Um, and also have taken a, um, a direction towards helping get rid of paper. So I guess that's part of what we're talking about with document management, although it's only a small part of it. So I'm really excited to learn as well as, uh, share whatever I've learned along the way.

Sam Gupta (03:11):
Okay, amazing. Thank you so much for being here, mark. And if you're in the audience and joining for the first time, make sure you guys posted questions and comments. We typically try to cover them, um, during the show, and if we run out of time, then we'll make sure that you receive your answers. On that note, I am going to start with the first question with Chris. So, Chris, when we think of document management, and I don't know how serious this need needs to be, maybe you can layer in with different industries. Obviously in manufacturing, when I look at the document management, that's tricky because everything is document management. The most surprising part that I find in manufacturing, okay, for with the people who don't necessarily understand what is an E R P versus says what is not an E R P sometimes for them bomb could be a document. Okay. <laugh>, uh, and then you can have a real fun with that. So Chris, obviously I want to start with you, but OV is here and we'll see if he's able to introduce himself and then I'll come back to you, uh, with the question, if you don't mind. Uh, Nirav, do you wanna, uh, introduce yourself first?

Nirav Sham (04:15):
Yeah, absolutely. Sorry about that. And hello, technical difficulty, Sam. Um, yeah, Nirav, sham, CEO e O of Aer, c r p Acumatica partner. And I'm excited to be on the show and, you know, discuss and talk about document capture, document capture's getting, you know, more and more important and every implementation. It seems like now customers have this requirement where they need to take all their, you know, documents, put it in the right places in the E R P and be able to go ahead and retrieve that back and use it real time, not just as a link, but be able to weave that back into the process, uh, intelligently. So it's a very hot topic. Uh, you know, customers see the value of, you know, all sorts of documents coming in from all these different places. You're talking about Outlook, you're talking about CAD systems, you're talking about, you know, vendors and customers and all these different places, different ways as doc doc documents are coming over. So it's a, it's a topic that definitely needs, uh, more attention. Uh, so, you know, we could inform the users and the, and the viewers of this podcast and how, you know, what the best practices are, and then the do's and don'ts of document capture when it comes to e r P systems.

Sam Gupta (05:21):
Okay, amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Na. Um, so coming back to you, uh, with the question, uh, do you wanna start?

Chris Gard (05:30):
Sure. So as you look at, you know, and I think it's interesting you to document capture, you know, I think that's one aspect of document management, but the, you know, the term document management, mark, I heard you say, does that mean paperless? But I think, you know, paperless is, is is certainly as a goal is to cut less trees. But if you think about the concept of it, and it spans, it has a, a very big scope, and I think you mentioned manufacturing and in, you know, manufacturing context, right? Engineering drawings, where are, are they and who's got the latest drawing and what's the revision? And I think as you understand the complexities by space within the business, there's different requirements. And again, it deals with policies, retention policies, security policies. Can somebody download it? Can they look at it? Can they copy and paste?
(06:11):
Wow. And, and again, we're talking about electronic documents, so sure, we're not, we're not talking about paper necessarily, but, you know, nivo probably comment on how do we get the paper into the system. But if we think about scope, and let's just talk about engineering for a second, and I work with defense contractors and aviation and documents are the grail and cad, plm, E R P, and okay, well, who's got the latest copy? And the best world is where they're integrated, and you've always got the latest copies of all the documents, the right revisions for engineering. And, and again, it helps you manage engineering, change management, and then they have an inefficient document management strategy around complex engineering. It's, it's, you throw manual people at it as you try to manage even engineering change. But you know, the simple one, everybody thinks about when they think document management is AP automation think, Hey, I wanna scan my invoice and workflow it and have it integrate and then pay it.
(06:56):
So that's, that's the most basic one that everybody thinks about. First is AP invoices. And that's great because now we can route 'em around electronically and hey, with remote work, right? Everybody needed to get more electronic, convert the paper and electronics so we can move it. And we're not moving physical paper. Remember days, years ago, we had people that FedExed multiple locations, Hey, FedEx is every day back and forth between their offices. Wow, that's all gone. FedEx excess losing revenue. But again, we go back to vendor vendor management in the AP process, and you think about a W nine, Hey, where am I gonna keep the W nine? Let's attach it where it belongs. We talked about engineering data, product data lives along the product side, the engineering side, customer data, sales tax exemption certificates, who knows? What else do you attach by customers? There's a lot of different information to manage.
(07:41):
Um, and then human capital, wow. Now we got the people side of the business, and a lot of these systems, they start with AP automation and let's scan invoices. But there's a broader impact. And I think usability is a big key search seo, you know, how do I find stuff? Um, but you know, one of the big things I'll flag out here as you think about just, you know, before you load a ton of stuff up is usability portability. What's portability mean? What migration? I've got a deal right now where the customers relied heavily on attachments. Hmm, guess what? Attachments don't migrate. Wow. That's a nightmare for a customer upgrading from an e r P system to another. So I think, you know, one of the key things is you, you make this investment in electronically, you know, documentation is usability and how, where does it go from here? What if you fire the partner? How do you get it outta there? Where's it go? How easy is that process? Because there's a lot of, uh, a lot of important stuff there. But again, we can continue to talk about that. But, but by function, by industry, there's gonna be di different types of policies and requirements, um, and certainly advantages, um, to not be an electronic are not being paper-based, but good start.

Sam Gupta (08:41):
Yeah, very good start indeed. Uh, in fact, I mean, uh, you know, I'm simply going to build up on whatever you just said. And, uh, I'm also going to go back to my own commentary in terms of sort of drawing the line between what is a document versus what is not a document. Again, sometimes I'm just blown away when I'm talking to these, uh, smaller e r p vendors and if I'm asking a question, okay, how do you implement a revision or a bomb, uh, you know, inside your system? And they're gonna say, okay, this is where you upload the bomb. So you don't really have sort of the workflow implement, uh, incorporated <laugh> in the system

Chris Gard (09:15):
And it's imperative. And, and those systems are not as efficient and people throw labor at them. Again, I've had some of these defense contractors that don't want to integrate their, their CAD with their E R P and respectfully around the document sharing, meaning you always got the latest revisions no matter where you're working, you start here, it's there. But to to, to manage the, the change management processes in complex engineering, you can't do it. And moreover, you've got compliance requirements for certifications, and if you're selling into government defense contracting agencies, think about compliance requirements for auditability of those documents, right? Trace. And now we get into, oh, confidential, undisclosed information. We're talking about document policies and security. So it can go, it can be a rabbit hole as you think about buy industry and certainly in the defense and the aerospace and the complex manufacturing.
(10:01):
Again, if you're building stuff that's going on the space shuttle, think about, you know, the auditability of that. And it goes all the way back to receiving processes. Think about capturing and there, right? We, we've got a receiving and we've got details that come in with the product. We, from the earliest point in the process, you know, there's that need to electronically have that information travel so it's accessible from anywhere, right? We don't have to go look, we don't have to go to filing cabinets. It's hard for people to imagine, you know, 10 years ago, and there's a lot of companies probably left go, I still go to the filing cabinet. So you need to bring in this on-premise document destruction company at some point after you get everything where you can move it around electronically. But that's a, that's a future state for a lot of organizations. Still. I think a lot of people are still primitive.

Sam Gupta (10:41):
Okay, amazing insight there. Thank you so much, uh, Chris for that. So Dave, I'm, uh, coming to you and, uh, you know, when I think of, uh, document management typically in my mind, uh, that's a process inside your organization and you typically want to define how, uh, and, and, and what are going to be documents that you want to manage at as part of your document management process. Uh, when I was thinking about this topic, I wasn't thinking of the document capture to be honest. Okay? Uh, because you know, in my mind, when I think of document capture, sure, can you store invoices? Yes, you can, but does it have any sort of implications on your workflow, uh, you know, of your manufacturing process? Probably not. Uh, do you need to store invoice? Yes, you need to store so that you can refer back to it. Uh, but it does not have as much implication as, uh, you are going to have a decre drawing. So for example, let's say if you mess up with your revision, uh, okay, you are probably gonna see some implications in the production, uh, invoices once you get paid, that's it done, right? Um, so yeah, so go ahead and, and talk about, uh, in your mind, what is document management and what kind of processes that you have, uh, seen with respect to business process.

Dave Chrysler (11:54):
Yeah, thanks. I mean, I, I think you did a nice job of kind of laying it out there. And, and Chris obviously, uh, came out of the gates firing today, which I always appreciate. Uh, just, I, I mean, it really to me highlights the complexity from a process perspective, right? Because it is, uh, you could take a look at it from the industry perspective. Obviously it's going to be business specific kind of use case specific. And to your point in terms of how that lays out into process, you know, with any of the panels that, that we really talk about from my, to put it, it always comes back to that because, you know, without that clear understanding of process, how it's going to be utilized, how you need to access it, who needs to access it, at what point, uh, you know, without that clear understanding kind of the rest of it doesn't matter.
(12:41):
So, to to, to elaborate on that into that point and kind of tack onto some of what Chris was saying, you know, one of the things that, uh, as the, uh, you know, this has kind of come into existence, I would say, or more widely accepted, uh, you know, five years ago we weren't talking about nearly as much remote work, uh, as we are today. And, and how that ultimately impacts this document management, um, aspect of, uh, you know, work. It also touches on the security elements of that. Uh, you know, who has access, how do they get that access? Is it, you know, through, um, uh, you know, remote desktop? Is it, you know, where does that stuff live, right? All of that is another consideration with this. Um, the other thing I would say is, you know, Chris mentioned some of the more complex, um, manufacturing and kind of, you know, um, uh, you know, high, more high profile, uh, types of industries.
(13:38):
But I've seen similar challenges in, you know, a lot less complex and a lot less high profile, uh, manufacturing facilities. You know, I come from a background of print manufacturing and, um, uh, you know, this was a challenge for a lot of those facilities as well, especially when you talk about that, um, you know, CAD system, how that interacted from an engineering standpoint where we had to get, uh, certain pieces manufactured, uh, using those CAD drawings and then how that information got relayed internally. And typically what I would see time and time again is you'd have multiple, uh, revisions and or siloed systems that were sitting out there. So, you know, one department, one group of people may have access to one set of systems, and then it was another, you know, kind of responsibility part of the process for somebody else to update that.
(14:29):
And so as you've got all of those silos sitting around, um, you know, that's a whole nother complexity to add into the process conversation of how do you manage those documents? And, and that doesn't, again, back to your point, it doesn't really touch on the kind of mechanics of getting it from one spot to the other or how we're gonna do that, or why we need access to those things. Uh, you know, um, the feature of it, kind of all of that part is, is really a whole separate conversation if you can't dive in and, and understand what that business use case is, what that business process needs to be, and, and you know, how that flow, uh, ultimately impacts, you know, your customer and, and internal operations.

Sam Gupta (15:08):
Yeah. Could not agree more. Great, uh, points and, and insight. So I'm again, simply going to build on that and probably going to tell you one story from my experience, and then maybe, I don't know if you're gonna have any sort of comment to your stories that you might be able to, uh, provide further. Um, so, uh, when you talk about the different systems scenario, as you mentioned, a lot of people think that, you know what the e r p documentation management is going to be probably tricky to work with. And in general, depending upon the systems, some systems, uh, do it really well. Some systems are extremely tricky, okay? So in some systems, what is going to happen is as soon as you, uh, generate your physical invoice, um, you are going to send either through email or print, uh, or whatever you are trying to do with the invoice.
(15:51):
And the same invoice instance, a physical copy is going to be available, uh, with your transaction that you can retrieve at the next point of time. Okay? The legacy systems, what they are going to do is they are not going to have this process as smooth. So what is going to happen is, you know, you probably need to send the invoice, get the copy of that from your probably machine, dump it into your transaction store. You can probably figure out a way of automating that as well. Uh, but when you are going to be, uh, going to have to retrieve that, it becomes very tricky, uh, process overall to manage that. Uh, and the story that I was going to tell you related to the different systems when you have, when you're jumping around in different systems, so you would think that, you know what? I can get my Dropbox, OneDrive, whatever, uh, you know, and I can manage my document using that. But when you think about your services oxley compliance or when you have to share the excess, okay, when you are going to be transferring your excess control list, your other systems, good luck with that, are gonna have it in different systems. So I don't know, Dave, uh, you know, whatever commentary or story that you, you might be able to offer.

Dave Chrysler (16:59):
Yeah, I mean, just, just again, trying to build off of things here. I mean, one consideration to that scenario, which many people would look to, you know, Dropbox or something like that, as, as that, you know, document repository, let's just eliminate the search, you know, aspect of that. What about just uploads, right? <laugh>, like what kind of strain is that gonna have, you know, on your overall architect? It's stuff like that that people don't even consider the security aspect of it, you know, uh, again, how does that data get backed up? I dial it all the way back down to, you know, all of those things are kind of nice to have, and whether it lives in your e R p, whether it is a siloed system, that's kind of all nice to have. But at the end of the day, if you haven't made a business use case for it from a process perspective, in my opinion, you're kind of wasting your time and resources on it, uh, because you've not outlined what the, what the real advantage is going to be in the long run, whether that's, you know, internal efficiency from a process standpoint, or that is, you know, customer facing and, and there is some functionality of that, uh, that, you know, ends up being customer facing.
(18:05):
So I, I think you're far and away, uh, best to start there and, and build upon it because, uh, if you were kind of left to, to, to what most people would say, like, I wanna have everything available at all times, no paper anywhere, you could be, you know, kind of overcommitting resources for, you know, not a lot of return there.

Sam Gupta (18:26):
Okay. Amazing insight. Dave, thank you so much, Dave. Um, so Mark, I am coming to you and, uh, the question, and I'm simply going to build up based on whatever we have discussed so far, uh, Chris, Dave, um, so basically when you talk about the security access control list, um, you are going to be overly worried about these things in the digital world, uh, in the physical world. How are you going to implement that security <laugh>? Because you could have papers that could be lying anywhere on your soft floor. Um, so in your industry, especially when you're talking about pharma, obviously these could be, these things could be extremely, extremely critical. Uh, you know, when you have BS C S A compliance that okay, you might be working on a specific or packaging that you cannot, you are not supposed to be misplacing or, uh, you know, not having enough security around that. Um, so I don't know. I mean, see obviously the document management processes in your industry are probably gonna be far more complicated overall from the excess control list perspective, as well as from the management perspective. Mark, over to you.

Mark Kanes (19:24):
Yeah, uh, good points, and I mean, good points, everybody. And I, I'm glad that we've kind of progressed from, you know, just talking about document capture and going paperless, which probably I see as the genesis of tech people talking about document management, but it's obviously a lot, lot bigger. And, you know, what is a document? So I'll come back to the, the pharmaceutical thing, but I mean, one of the things that I always think about when you talk about security, as soon as you mentioned security, where my mind went was checks, right? I mean, can't tell you how many times, and I'm sure it's all with all of you. You walked into a company and just seen blank checks lying around <laugh>. Like, that's like literally the may as well be a sign saying fraud happened here. You know? Um, so, and of course, like, you know, if you think about how we've managed checks, we've gone from like several years ago, someone wanted to pay you by check that, sign a check, stick it in the mail, you'd eventually receive it in the mail for ladder deposit slip, send someone down to the bank to deposit it.
(20:15):
Now somebody, if they still wanna pay you by check, which I'm not sure why anyone does anymore, but, but people do, they can cut the check, take a photo of it, text you the photo, and you can EPO it right off your phone. Um, but now just think about the security implications of what I just said. Just think about how many holes there are in the security there. So, no, nobody thinks about that. Nobody thinks about that. And I mean, I've seen, sure, we all have, I've seen checks for like, you know, four or 5 million being literally texted over a plain old phone text. Um, so very little security there. Maybe that makes it worse than just leaving checks lying around around an office. But I mean, security on security is a, a fairly, fairly important, uh, part of document management, whether it's a paper document or an electronic document in a lot of industries.
(21:02):
And I mean, one of the, one of the industries that we play a lot in is, is the pharmaceutical distribution industry. And you're absolutely right, Sam, there are all kinds of requirements around, um, not only security and sanctity and accuracy of documents, but timing of documents as well. So one of the things that I'm very sort of passionate about, um, only Theo comment there, Dave, interesting, uh, <laugh>, fair enough. Um, but, you know, one, one of the things that is, is, is also like a part in my mind of document management, and it ties in with security and with getting your processes to Dave's points down pad is the ability or the, the need in my mind to automate things. So for example, you might be a pharmaceutical distributor and you've got a large order that's ready to ship out to like a large medical facility, but you require a certificate from the dea and it, and it, and it could be a, hopefully it's a dig.
(21:59):
If you're using our software, it's a digital certificate. It may still be a paper-based certificate, uh, that you downloaded for portal. But either way, until that certificate arrives and exists, you cannot ship the shipment. So what you don't want is the document arrives, but nobody's aware that it arrives and therefore the shipment sits there for another two days until somebody checks their digital inbox or, or whatever it is. So that's a really good case in my mind or part, a big part of document management in addition to security and digitization and workflow management, which are all important things to be able to throw in. And I guess it is part of workflow management, but to throw in the ability to automate processes based on the state of a document. Another thing though, that I'll throw out as well, and, and Sam, you you asked us early on is in, in manufacturing for sure, and definitely in pharmaceutical, there is definitely a very, very broad gray line between what is a document and what is data, uh, in the pharmaceutical industry.
(22:57):
It's changing under D S C S A. Yeah. Um, something that was purely a document seven or eight years ago, which was the drug pedigree, it was always a document. Um, as of November next year, it's not a document at all. It's only data, uh, under the new E P C I S regulations. So, um, you know, there, but, but the, the concerns around managing this data remain the same. You've gotta worry about accuracy of the data, the timeliness, the ease of access of the data. So you could tie that right back to what we started off with, where, where Chris said right at the beginning that the most common thing that people think about with document management is the AP case, the accounts payable case, same thing. Um, maybe we are a little bit less concerned about security around an invoice that came in from a supplier.
(23:44):
I dunno if that's right, but maybe we are, but we're just as concerned about timeliness, accuracy, automation where possible, um, having people, uh, re reducing the amount of time and effort that people spend processing these things. So my, in my space with distribution, an invoice comes in and let's say it comes in as an email by pdf, or it's download off a portal, or somebody scans a paper invoice, doesn't really matter. So do we really want human beings to have to a, go and search for that in that invoice B, do their three A match against your packing slip and you're receiving information, and c, send it through the necessary approval process for entry into your AP system, and then subsequently through all the necessary approval processes for, for paying the supplier. Or do we want to try and automate that process with a coherent automated, you know, system? To me, that's like where some of the bang for your buck is for investing time, effort and money in, in document management.

Sam Gupta (24:42):
Yeah, so some very interesting layer there that the best point that I like in your commentary is going to be the distinction between data and document. And I don't know how many people really think in that direction, to be honest. I mean, you know, the way I would like to do this as when I am personally doing any sort of, uh, P R P implementation, probably you wanna call out every single business object, whether this is going to be a data or is it gonna be a document, then you'll have real clarity. I'll give you one more story. And you know, again, when you talk about different e r P systems, the way they treat these things is going to be very different. For example, let's say if you talk about an E R P system, okay, show me your quality manage, uh, management module, and they're gonna say, you know what?
(25:22):
I have these attributes. And, you know, uh, you can upload your quality management document here. You can upload your task cases, whatever you want. You can upload <laugh>, but you don't really have those workflows set up, and you need to have the workflow. And I don't know if workflow is also going to be a term that, uh, companies should be using. What is going to be a workflow? What is going to be a data, and what is going to be a document? And that is probably a, just a physical document that does not really have any sort of implications on your, uh, processes. Uh, so again, I mean, mark, I don't know if you're gonna have any sort of build up there based on my commentary. Any, any other thoughts by any chance?

Mark Kanes (26:01):
Um, not really. I mean, the only, the only thing that sort of does bring to mind is that there are, there are certain things that are very obviously documents or document centric. And you know, I think with a lot of, certainly with a lot of the kind of companies that I deal with, which are maybe the somewhat smaller, you know, 50 to a hundred employee type companies, wholesale distribution space, that's often one of the biggest clues in terms of improving efficiency. Like, you know, I, again, what about expense, uh, expense reimbursement claims, guys, anybody seen, uh, cumbersome, very paper-based labor intensive salespeople, expense reimbursements or, or technician, traveling technician or expense reimbursements. But most of those expenses, not all, but most of those are document based. You've got a receipt from the restaurant, you've got a hotel bill, which again, it may be paper, it may be, you know, electronically emailed to you, but it is, that's, that's clearly a document until you, until you convert into data anyway, it's a document.
(26:56):
So that's an area where, you know, you could, with a combination of the appropriate document management processes, well thought out, well structured the tools to automate them, uh, and the tried and tested workflows you can get to where, like, again, I, great solution and we use it ourselves. Um, somebody gets a hotel bill or restaurant bill, and they're going to, they're gonna basically claim it. They take out their phone, they take, they use a scanning tool to scan it. They notate one or two things on the scan, click a button, it automatically gets into the e R P system, it automatically goes onto their account as a reimbursable expense awaiting approval. There's an electronic approvals, you know, the, the, the whole thing goes sort of seamlessly. You cut people out, you cut timeout, you cut cycles out. But that is very, very document centric. But yeah, I mean, there, I think there are a lot of internal, more internal bu, sorry, more external business processes where there's a total, a total disconnect, or not a disconnect.
(27:52):
There's a total gray line between data and with documents. And there's also not, forget about external documents that you're sending out. That's another side of it. You know, you have a, again, and a lot of industries can, pharmaceuticals one of them, but a lot of regulated industries, when you sell product A to customer B, because it is product A, and because customer B is a part particular type of customer, maybe in the military or maybe government with that product, you have to send a certificate of authenticity or some sort of a document that has to be generated. Well, for customer, for this customer, you can send that electronically. So you're just transmitting data. But for this other customer who doesn't have the ability to receive it via edi, you're actually creating a document and sending a document. So now what you're doing is you're taking data and turning it into a document, but hopefully you're doing it automatically without somebody manually going handling the document.

Sam Gupta (28:42):
Okay. Amazing insights there. Thank you so much, mark, for those. Uh, so Nara, I'm, uh, coming to you and, uh, do you wanna talk about your experience in terms of what you have seen overall from the document management perspective, where people are likely mi uh, to mix, uh, the data document as well as probably external documents that the new layer that, uh, mark brought in?

Nirav Sham (29:04):
Yeah, no, I think everyone has some really good points here. Um, you know, my, our, our firm does a lot of work in the make to order space and manufacturing also does some work in the distribution side make to order. That's a hard line, right? That, that is tough for someone to understand, whether that's gonna be data or that's gonna be documented. Everything's customer designed. It's coming in, it's being assigned to a project, being, you know, being associated to maybe a, an invoice, uh, all of these external communications that they wanna bring back in, into the project in the e r P system, right? So there, it is critical. A lot of, a lot of companies, um, want everything in there, everything under the sun, let's put everything, all our communication in there. Well, you know, we could, but what's actually gonna add value, right?
(29:47):
What, what, what's gonna add value in this document, uh, management process, what we're adding here at the end of the day, what analysis are you doing with that type of information, right? What could be fed into ocr, you know, directly back into the system versus attachments, um, that you could reference if there's a dispute, if there's any question on any type of invoicing, any type of drawings, things like this, right? Going one step further, you're looking at production, right? But you have engineering that's doing all these bill of materials, you're using a CAD system, then they're saving these drawings and a third party system. I had a, um, had a customer that, you know, probably 150,000 square feet facility, every single one of their production orders before being released, they would have to go run to engineering, get, get a print of the drawing, come back and, and then start the production order with the traveler.
(30:35):
Well, was an efficient time. So what we did was created an intelligent retrieval system. So we hooked in URLs, basically addresses of, uh, part of the address was, was that was static. Part of it was variable, right? So every time they went and created a production order and was printing a traveler, well that process went and basically plugged in the item number of the drawing and needed to go and retrieve and bring that back and essentially not even save it in e R p, but pass through it, either print it or show it right there on the screen for them, right? Saves all that back and forth for that particular client, essentially, right? So they don't have to go through, go run to engineering and get the latest drawing, cuz the latest drawing would automatically print when they're ready to execute the production order when they're printing the traveler.
(31:20):
So they would get that customer specific drawing printed right away, right? That was a huge cost savings for them to be able to go and retrieve that drawing. Um, essentially. So that document management from a make to order standpoint is critical, but we need to understand, right, what is gonna add value in getting the data, storing the data in the rp, right? Other than, you know, then the data could stay sit outside the rv. Another thing now I wanna touch on is more and more what we don't realize and what customers should probably start thinking about with document management is the utilization of customer vendor portals. That in itself could also be used as a document kind of replacement in a sense, right? Because you could, you could navigate, you could take orders, send invoices all electronically, right? You're not really, you know, passing anything, you're not sending anything, but it's all in a medium platform there.
(32:07):
You know, these portals, same thing on the vendor side. Vendors could send invoices, you could go and send purchase orders, right? That streamlined communication, I studying it instead of all of it having to pass through email essentially. So that's also a way of, you know, looking at document management, but taking that to next step, right? Utilizing tools around that, right? Electronic data that you could use, uh, that will generate these kind of what we call supporting documents for customer, customer vendor, right? Another good one that we touched on was, was, uh, expense reporting, right? Being able to be out the field, take a picture of an expense report that will then OCR it essentially right there into, right, the e r p system to take in that, that particular expense and log the expenses in ap so you could pay the proper employee, you know, with the, with the enough background information that you need for that.
(32:55):
So, you know, if you look at all around you, look at the whole er, you know, e r p system, there's documents that are gonna be, need to be managed, right? We have to bring, bring in that's either gonna be, you know, captured, there's gonna be scanned, there's gonna be, there might be a picture from Outlook, drag and drop functionality. It's all there. You know, mark talked about compliance regulations, you know, we talked about quality, uh, conformance type of, um, examples, right? And that, that's all important, that it gets generated, gets captured properly because the e r p system at the end of the day is gonna be your audit trail, right? Somebody may leave the company, well now you have to go through their email, right? Instead of doing that, let's have a process in place where if it's an important auditable document for us, let's get that hooked into the system, right?
(33:38):
Either by way a data, we OCR that into the system or we link it and attach it because that's, you know, the way we wanna go. But there has to be a strategy. It can't just be, oh, we wanna turn on document management and now we're gonna start doing everything under the sun that requires us to go paperless, right? Yeah. We, you know, we wanna be 80% paperless, but what's gonna add the most value in your e r p system as you're gonna go ahead and, um, you know, embark in the, this strategy to go, you know, with, with, with all these documents coming in from every direction, um, you know, in the business.

Sam Gupta (34:09):
Yeah. So some very interesting layers there. And, uh, I am going to touch on one point that you mentioned that is very, very, very interesting. And typically a lot of people struggle with it. Um, so when peop, especially the companies that are trying the e R P for the first time, for them it's going to be e r p or no, e r p, meaning e r p, meaning I want to automate everything. I don't want to do any work whatsoever. Okay? Uh, so <laugh>, their goal is going to be, for example, let's say if you talk about email, right? Uh, so email, obviously you have the sort of the isolated mailboxes. And now what you're trying to do is if everything is going to be inside e r p, obviously your life is going to be easy if somebody leaves and you don't have to go to their mailbox, retrieve every single document and then, then figure out, okay, what happened there, right?
(34:55):
If you keep everything in e r p, it's easy. Now let's look at the perspective of person who's sort of trying it for the first time. They want to automate everything, getting the test of automation for the first time. So for them, it's gonna be, okay, I'm going to use this fancy add-on in my outlook, okay? I don't wanna go to my e p, everything that I wanna do, uh, through is my Microsoft Outlook add in. Sure, a lot of e r p systems are going to provide that, but the amount of data that it is going to dump inside your E r P system, it's gonna be so clunky, so bloated, you are gonna get the whole mail object because for the add-ons to work, and you are going to cut up the whole, you know, database, uh, of the E R P system. Going back to, to Chris's comments about the upgrade, he mentioned the attachments, you cannot, uh, migrate. Okay? Good luck in migrating the, the technical data of that add-on. It's gonna be a nightmare. So I don't know, ra uh, you know, based on my commentary and these stories, if you have anything you can offer, please, yeah.

Nirav Sham (35:54):
It, it's com It comes down to strategy, right? What are we storing? Why do we wanna store it? What is the business reason behind it? What value are we gonna get down the road, right? How are we gonna create the database, right? And not everything, right? E r p operational, and then we have C R m, okay? Think about what goes into A C R M versus e R P, right? There's a clear, there's a distinction there, right? The not everything has to go into the E R P, right? There's some information that has to live in the C R M essentially. So, you know, instead of it making it all clun, you're putting everything into a customer record when that customer already exists in the crm and you have per people contact, your capturing leads, you're capturing interactions, all capturing all these things already.
(36:37):
Keep some of that stuff in there, right? Because that's more, that's a different type of, uh, um, audience that's gonna be needing that information, that needs that at certain points in their day-to-day activity versus e r p operational, we need this for maybe a financial audit. We need this for, you know, a customer complaint. We need this for, uh, engineering before they start production, right? So on so forth. There's different type of, of documents and we have to have a clear strategy and where these documents are gonna sit, they can't sit all in the same place, right? We wanna make sure that the strategy is clear and communicated throughout, throughout the organization.

Sam Gupta (37:12):
Okay. Amazing insights there. Thank you so much Nara for that. So Chris, coming over to you, uh, any comments over comments, stories?

Chris Gard (37:19):
Sure. You know, it's funny, mark, I'm writing down some things and you're saying them, I'm like, how do you see my notepad here? But you know, the, the, the conversation about documents into data and then data into documents. It's very interesting perspective because, you know, we go back to usability and back to that point. And, you know, I, I, Rob said ocr and again, we rpre ocr, everybody's watching what is ocr? Optical charact. So that is where technology can read a document and turn it into data fields and eventually integrate that data into a process. And I think as, as we think about that, it's very interesting and I have a, a client that think about ed. I, they're getting all their invoices, uh, there's no documents. Think about the anxiety those folks have. And so they, they wanted, we have a client that brings it in.
(38:04):
They wanted actually, can we fabricate documents from e d I data? So we have something that feels like an invoice, okay? And is still electronic. They didn't print 'em, but very interesting. And that's a data into a document. But that's our life, right? We take transactional data, we create documents, managing those documents, the content, the accuracy as part of document management. Again, can I reproduce a document? Well, that's interesting cause everybody, oh, I need copies of my checks. Well, why can you see it on screen? Can I see it electronically, digitally? Okay. Don't, don't get, so I think that's, that's part of what you have to hear as well as you think about, you know, how do I build my policies? How do I build processes? You know, am I consuming the data electronically? Meaning do I have a tool that can take these documents and scrape 'em?
(38:46):
Not all documents you need to scrape, right? You know, engineering data documents are, are created from very low level technical data, right? We're still managing that technical data, regenerating the documents from that data. It's not the reverse process. But, so just making that kind of comment. And I think as you look at, just, you know, in, in the other comment about time and expense, yeah, we, we actually, and this is a different, we added an app. There's an app that lives on dynamics and um, so we rolled it out. They basically take a picture of the receipt, throw it away. So, great. And so what are we doing there? Well, we're simplifying process. We're not trying to hang on to paper and move paper around. I think another thing that I'll come back to as we think about clutter, we go back to policies, we go back to weight, you know, in attachments, right?
(39:28):
And, and where am I storing this and how much am I storing and how much is that costing? So I think there still needs to be an understanding of impact. And as you say, well, let's keep everything. Okay, well that's, that's the extreme situation versus just keeping your AP invoices. So I think organizationally you really need to, as you study business processes, you look at where is it so helpful for people just to be able to see it right there. I don't have to go anywhere. It's, I can get that, I can see that data in seconds, whether it's data, whether it's a document that I'm reading. But I think that's an important part of the process because you still need to determine, okay, well how much is storage gonna be? Well, I'm a, you know, I got 20 years. Hey, what about all my attachments?
(40:04):
Well, we're not gonna try to get 20 years worth, that's for sure. But again, you go back to computations, and again, most people still think storage is free, but it still comes back to efficiency. And again, you go back to search and if the documents are not translated in data, right? Once it's data, we can get at every little granule of it. But if they're stored as documents and most API automation tools let you, let you tag a document with metadata. So what metadata is, just to explain that, is they're just additional attributes, meaning, right, I'm gonna put search criteria or category, oh, that's, maybe there's a department code that's part of the metadata. Maybe the GL account is part of the metadata. Maybe it knows the vendor number, it knows the invoice number. But if those examples were, can I see all the invoices for this department for this month?
(40:48):
There's an example of being able to search just pure PDF type documents cuz they add a little bit to them. That data may be in your e r P system, right? We took the document translated into transactional data, it's in there. But if we wanna find an image of the document, and again, most e r P systems, you get to the transaction, the document's right there next to the transaction. So we have an understanding how does it, how does it place em, where does it store 'em? What's the accessibility look like? Um, there was another mention about outbound flow of documents, and that's a huge, a huge detail meaning item item certification, Hey, I sold you this and when I ship it the sales order, I need a supplemental document. That's a, an item certification document. Well, again, to attach and manage those documents at the product level, have 'em automatically flow out the door when you do a sales transaction.
(41:33):
Um, it could be example on a purchase order as well where you've got a purchase contract that's maintained somewhere in the system, in the vendor, you need to send a copy of that contract out with the purchase order. Okay? Again, the awkwardness of, oh, I gotta get a PO and I gotta find the paper, put 'em together, scan 'em back in, email 'em again, there's systems that will automate that for you. And I think again, you're, you're architecting business process. Where do I need the document? Where do I capture it? How do I capture it? How do I influence to send it to me in a better form? That's easier for me to capture process. Lots of hands off right. Retention policies. But, uh, anyway, I can keep going. So,

Sam Gupta (42:06):
So some very interesting layers here and I'm probably gonna have a story there, okay for you Chris, and you are gonna love this, okay? So since you are talking about all of this clutter as well as, um, uh, the reproduction of the, the documents, right? So I was at a facility, EER P implementation and you know, I was able to see that they probably have two warehouses and I'm, you know, as e p consultant, you need to know how many sites do you have, how many warehouses do you have, what is happening with each of the warehouses, what is the correlation between warehouses? And I'm asking all of these questions and um, the owner, uh, is responding that, okay, okay, we have just one warehouse, sir, I can see two warehouses in your facility. What's going on in the second one? No, no, no, no. Don't worry about that. I got one. Okay. <laugh>, I'm fine. Come on, I can see two here. Okay, you need to tell me what is that? And then we figured out, okay, after I, I think I had discussion with the employees and then they told me that that second warehouse, it is supposed to be the most confidential for the company. That's where he stores all off as documents for the last 23 years. Everything super stacked, bins and labels, <laugh>, our warehouse is not going to be as managed as the document repository. Nobody touches that. Okay?

Chris Gard (43:26):
Then there was a floater of fire and guess what? <laugh>, oops. Yeah, think about if you're in the west coast of Florida right now and you had your documents in your garage, you got a problem.

Sam Gupta (43:36):
Exactly. Exactly. But all those cybersecurity is far bigger risk, right? Chris

Chris Gard (43:43):
<laugh>, you know, it, it's, if you're old school, you gotta get over it, you know, and everybody else just expects it. Nobody wants paper, nobody wants to touch things. They all expect to be able to click and see what, what's it look like. Show it to me. So it's very story though, but you're right. You know, and you go back to, what do you do with those, again? There are, there are tools out there where you can, you decide what's valuable, you tag them and you scan 'em into your systems. And these systems will manage transactional data and they'll also let you create storage mechanisms, electronic filing cabinets to get it all out of paper and move it up into a cloud storage where there's redundancy, which means it's not gonna get wet, it's not gonna burn. You'll never lose it. And I think that's part of this risk mitigation, is you look at document management policies, that's, it's part of it. So it's great stories, Sam.

Sam Gupta (44:28):
Okay. Amazing insight. And so thank you so much Chris for that. So Dave, I'm coming to you comments, over comments? Any stories?

Dave Chrysler (44:34):
Yeah, uh, there's so much to pick from. So, uh, I'll kind of tack onto a little bit of what Chris was just saying, you know, in terms of, uh, you know, having the ability to, to, you know, have that stuff kind of live forever, which is, is great in a lot of sense. Um, but it can also lead to, you know, kind of additional clutter, uh, you know, just in the cloud or living somewhere else. And there is a real cost to that at some point, right? Um, so depending on the system that you choose, depending on if, you know, you're, you're working with on-prem servers and you have, you know, some IT infrastructure that maybe you're doing some of your own document management and or you are, you know, utilizing whether it's an E R P or c R m, what have you, uh, to do that, and it does live in the cloud.
(45:17):
I mean, there are considerations to kind of each different scenario. And again, I dial it back to what are the business process behind it? And, you know, and, and everybody is touching on that. Uh, so hopefully the takeaway is for anybody that's listening to this, uh, is to really dial into that because you can go, uh, to the extreme and, you know, never see another paper trail anywhere to be found. Um, but you know, there is a cost associated with that. There are resources that get allocated because of that. So making sure that you understand what that looks like. And the other thing I would say, um, kind of tacking out to what NARA was saying with his, uh, example in, um, uh, with the engineering schematics kind of being, uh, readily available and, and circumventing the process of, you know, having to go and, and get physical copies and those types of things.
(46:11):
One thing I would add to that is oftentimes when I'm looking at, at those types of scenarios from a process standpoint, people don't always understand what the bounds of those are. And so what I mean is that, you know, is there ever a situation where a revision overlaps a, uh, aversion, right? And so that's a real consideration, again, back to understanding where your processes live and you know what the boundaries of each one of those are. So as you're making these decisions about, you know, how do we automate, how do we access information, how do we make it easier for people to do, uh, the work that they need to do that all of those, um, you know, intricacies get factored into the, uh, you know, into that, that, that process map, um, and, and that decision making tree. So, um, yeah, I've, uh, you know, in terms of, uh, stories, uh, I've kind of seen things that span the gamut.
(47:07):
Uh, you know, where you go into an organization and, and it's that, you know, we want, we don't, we want to be paperless, and you start to dial into, you know, well, why, what access do we need? What are you really gonna be doing with this down the road? And more times than not, it is more of a, um, I think you made the point, you know, it's kind of an all or nothing, right? There is no in between. And the reality of it is when you start to, to kind of unpack that and talk about, you know, that resource allocation, the cost, the long-term impact of that on an organization, it, it becomes a little bit easier to say, let's take a look at, you know, let's start, let's start with the most critical things. Where are we struggling? Where can we eliminate ways?
(47:51):
Where can we make things more efficient? Where can we have an impact, you know, internally, uh, at those kind of high value touch points? And then again, obviously if there's things that impact from, uh, you know, customer standpoint externally, let's start there as well. Let's, let's see how we can make that, uh, you know, connection and, and that communication more seamless for them. Um, and, and you know, kind of go from there. So that, that's where I would, um, that's where I would land, uh, you know, all about process and make sure that you've got a great understanding of that before you start to tackle any type of automation or document management because, um, you know, you, you could potentially just be duplicating, uh, to your point and duplicating a, a warehouse full of paper <laugh> just in the cloud

Sam Gupta (48:38):
<laugh>. Exactly. Exactly. Super cloud, right? <laugh>, super cloudy warehouse. Um, okay. Amazing. Thank you so much Dave for that. Uh, mark comments over comment stories over to you, mark.

Mark Kanes (48:50):
Sure. So, um, actually what Chris said, and, and you kind of supplemented it really made me laugh. So Chris, the, the, the story about the incoming e d i invoices where they wanted to create an actual document and, and Sam your comment about the warehouse of documents, that really struck a chord with me because, you know, we, we, listen, I think we have to recognize that there, there's a whole generation of people in the workplace who grew up with paper, and paper was comfort. I mean, originally I was one of them for sure. So sometimes there's, there's definitely a psychological, um, barrier that you need to somehow break down around digitizing documents and digitizing document centric processes. And, um, like one of the examples that, that we found from time to time is, yeah, you know, you, you put a new a r p system in a company and you, now you've digitized the invoicing process.
(49:39):
So all the invoices go out either via e d I or automatically emailed PDFs. So whatever, it doesn't really matter. There's no longer a paper invoice that you print, put in an envelope and mail out. Amazing. How many people are so uncomfortable with that? So they'll still insist on printing a, a file copy or two file copies so they can still file an alphabetical copy and an, you know, invoice numeric sequence copy, and sometimes to get the implementation done, particularly when you're dealing with a smaller, you know, smaller company, you just say them fine, do that. So, you know, we had a case several years ago now actually, where this person insisted on printing and filing these file copies. And it was a company that was growing and they were doing, like, I think when we started, it was only about maybe 120, 130 invoices a month.
(50:26):
But it grew up to where they were generating like a couple thousand invoices a month. And this person, he was still printing his copies and sticking them in these files and folders and everything, and the owner was getting very exasperated, but the, um, person who was doing this, who was the controller, was his father. So he was a little bit of an, a awkward situation. So one of my guys went in and, and spoke to the father and said, listen, I, I'd just like to test something with you because I, I want you to help me test my system. We're trying to try test some out. I've got a list of, uh, I, I want you to give me a list of about a half a dozen invoices, any, all of them spread it over the last three months. So the father like brought out this, you know, came, come for the list of invoices, and then my guy whose name was Mike, said, okay, now I wanna test whether I can actually find those invoices in the system, uh, efficiently.
(51:13):
So how about I'll try find them in the system. You go grab 'em outta the filing cabinets. And of course, you know what happened, right? The father got up, walked over to the filing cabinet before you touch the first drawer. Mike said, here they are all on screen. No more printing of invoices after that. But, uh, that's what it took is basically the amazing race, if you like. So, uh, I can't enjoy that. But one thing I've really noticed on this conversation, we're all singing from the same song sheet because I think we're all saying, and Sam, this should be music to your ears. Um, the most important thing is to understand what are your objectives? What are you trying to do? What's your strategy? Um, define the processes, particularly which processes will, will give you the best bang for the back, figure out how they should work or how they can work more efficiently. And then, you know, the tools that you'll find, the right tools. Hopefully the tools are the tools, but you know, like a lot of people tend to approach document management in general by saying, there's this tool, let's use it, as opposed to, here's a process that we can improve. Let's see how we can improve it. So I think, you know, hopefully anyone who's listening to this realizes yeah, you know, we, we've all got a lot of experience between us and we're all saying the same thing. Chances are we probably, right.

Sam Gupta (52:23):
Yeah. Amazing insights here. And thank you so much for that story. Mark, uh, have, uh, comments or comments? Any stories?

Mark Kanes (52:31):
So actually just noticed, there was a comment there, guys about, uh, <laugh> roll eyes. What percentage of e r p features were built solely as, okay, roll eyes, if that's what it takes. Yeah, I I'm not sure that's a conscious thing. Certainly not that I'm aware of. Um, but I'm sure some of those features are capitalized on by good experienced implementation consultants to say, Hmm, I'm gonna use it that way. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Sam Gupta (52:57):
Okay. Uh, Al do you wanna go next? Uh, and I don't know if, and if you have any follow up, uh, questions.

Nirav Sham (53:03):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right? Any, anyone that's listening right now that's looking to embark on a E R P journey, go into e R P selection phase. Make this a requirement. Uh, you know, look at, you know, what, how you could take a lot of paper in your organization right now, bring it into your right system electronically, whether that's data or if you're doing attachments, make it part of your project plan. Um, you know, find out best practices in, in terms of AP is one right away that you could, you know, that's best practice right now. Get it out of paper and then go ahead and scan it right into your e r P system. What's the next place that you could do that in? Where are some other efficiencies in the, in the production process? What about even, you know, we talk about e d EDI customer portal, but you know, on the AP side you could scan an an AP document.
(53:48):
What about on the sales order side? Why not take a customer PO scan that and make it into a sales order, right? Um, and, and store that right away on that side, right? What else? Right? If you're doing, if you're doing checks, we talk about, you know, checks, um, uh, system checks. Why, why can't we go ach, right? That, that's a form of paperless, right? Let's go paperless. Let's have the bank do some of this work for us, right? Keep this part of the forefront in implementation. And then obviously process is important. Data is important, right? Uh, but this is a place where you could really find quick ROI on your E R P implementation to, you know, start getting people more outside of their inbox, you know, outside of, you know, checking mail and more inside the business to help, you know, build the business up and become more efficient, become more lean ultimately. So you know, what everyone said here, echoing all those sentiments and, uh, you know, continue, continue looking at, you know, how to, how to get the most value out of your e r P system there.

Sam Gupta (54:45):
All right, amazing inside insight there. Thank you so much Nira for that. Uh, crystal, the only thing we can take right now is going to be closing advice.

Chris Gard (54:52):
So again, study your processes and do a good job of thinking about, you know, how to impact the business process efficiency. And again, coupled with that, you need to make sure you really do visit and, and articulate document management policies, retention, security, et cetera. Yep. And like I said, look for the big wins. AP automation is a form of remote process automation. So again, you hands off, the thing comes in, it's integrated, it's sitting there, there's processes that can turn around and select and send your checks out the door. On the AR side, it's like cash coming and out. So again, as you look at getting documents into electronic forms, you support remote process automation and whatcha are you doing? You're eliminating headcount. So there's what I'll leave you with look for it.

Sam Gupta (55:32):
Okay, amazing. Thank you so much, Chris for that. So Dave, uh, we have three minutes and we can probably take longer closing advice today,

Dave Chrysler (55:38):
<laugh>, I'm used to trying to sneak it right in there before the wire. So I, I think what I'm gonna do instead of talking about process, because uh, we've talked about that long enough today and Chris just touched on it again, um, I think I'm gonna toss out there something we haven't brought up today, but in terms of how to look at that process, through what lens, and that's through the people, right? People that are closest to the process, people that are on either side of the process, um, you know, and looking at it through their lens to have this conversation about document management, uh, to really understand, you know, at what points, what are those high visibility kind of, you know, hopefully low cost, but high impact, uh, points that we can address those process inefficiencies with. But through the lens of that's, that's where I'll leave it.

Sam Gupta (56:25):
Okay. Amazing. Thank you so much, Dave, for that. Uh, mark closing advice, please.

Mark Kanes (56:30):
Well, firstly, I think that Chris and Dave have really nailed it in terms of closing advice, and I think those are probably the two, the most important takeaways from this. Um, I'll just add, I'll just add to this, that for those people who are daunted by the thought of getting rid of paper and or, or automating processes that they currently do sort of on a more manual basis, the, the strongest recommendation I have is try it. Try one, try try something that's maybe the least threatening thing for you. Try it because I, I always find like the fear of the unknown sort in, in anything but parti. But, but, but certainly in, in, in implementing new software in a business, the fear of the unknown usually dwarfs the reality. Now, yes, I know we could go in the opposite direction about all the E R p implementation horror stories, but I'm talking about a one little particular piece of technology or one little daily habit that you've changed. You know, if you usually like come into the office, hang up your coat and then grab coffee, try one day, grab the coffee first, and then hang up your coat. It's not that threatening. And it's kind of like that, try and break that habit of being so married to your existing process by just trying one thing that you can always go back the next day and, and, and, and you'll find it's less threatening. And if you really love handling paper, the library has lots of books.

Sam Gupta (57:41):
Okay, amazing. Mark, thank you so much. And Rob, uh, seems like three minutes are not as long, so I'm probably looking for now brief closing advice.

Nirav Sham (57:48):
<laugh>. Yeah, no, uh, you know, kind of touching, you know, pi piggybacking off on Mark's said. Um, if you're confused and where to start, look at your desk. There's paper there, there's probably something that you could put into your system. The answer's right there. So look down, see what you can put into your e r P system now, right? And how you can, you know, take that data off your desk and more electronically, uh, right there in front of your screen.

Sam Gupta (58:10):
Alright, love it. Thank you so much guys. And, uh, that's it for today. If you joined for the first time, this was part of our digital transformation series for which we meet every Thursday at 5:30 PM Eastern. So make sure you guys are gonna be in next week. You're gonna come back with another topic, uh, on that note. Thanks everyone for tuning in tonight.

Chris Gard (58:26):
Thanks everybody. See you again.