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Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Scott Luton and Greg White here with you on supply chain now, welcome to today's live stream, Greg, how are we doing?
I'm doing very well, Scott, you know, I think about this frequently when I do this, you know that you have to do it this way.
Because in certain countries doing it the other way means something not friendly. <laugh> so,
You know, there's a scene in the Winston Churchill, the latest Winston Churchill movie. I can't remember the name of it. That's really funny. And it speaks right to your point, but, uh, folks, you have to check that out on your own today. We're talking, uh, Greg we're talking reboots yeah. In global industry, as in, is enterprise software ripe for a reboot, Greg, I think that's a pretty fair question to ask. Right?
I think it's a great question to ask. I'd love to answer it, but I, I want our analyst to answer it first, right. I, I think we all in the, at least in the back of our mind, know what the answer is, but I I'd love, I, I can't wait for our audience to hear what our, our panelists have to say from their perspective about the right answer. That's
Right. And as I was sharing on social, uh, last night, I think it was, uh, lot been lots of reboots. If you look at the Hollywood, it's been a, like a proven path, everything from the eighties except Howard, the duck, no one has, uh, <laugh> no one has embraced that for a reboot, Greg,
And there's good reason for that as well, Scott. Right.
Right. All right. Well, folks, we're gonna be talking about, uh, enterprise software and is that right for reboot, uh, with a home run, one tooth punch, uh, in terms of a panel here. So stay tuned for in just a second, as we bring those on, um, wanna say hello to a few folks. Of course, Katherine HES, uh, hints, and, uh, Amanda and Chantel all, all the folks behind the scenes helping to make production happen. Hello to you. Happy Wednesday. Uh, Victor's tuned in from Atlanta, uh, via LinkedIn. Great to see you there. Victor Christie from Duette Minnesota via LinkedIn, Greg ever been to Duette
I'm embarrassed to say, I don't know. Uh, I've been to a lot of towns in Minnesota, but I cannot remember. Okay. A long time ago, maybe, maybe while, uh, snowing, which anyone from Minnesota knows what that really means. Um, I might have been in Duette
<laugh> well, Chrissy let's know what the temperature is like in Duette this time of year. Hey, Ken. Great to see you, uh, uh, from Cape town. Uh, Ken, if you remember, Greg, uh, we all got together with Jenny F at STIX and had a really fun supply chain trivia contest. Ken is quite, um, quite a guru. So Ken, great to see you here today. Um, Wally says Aloha from Southern California via LinkedIn. Aloha.
I be, I bet we can predict the weather there. Oh, I
Bet. I bet it's gorgeous. Uh, let's see here per kitty, uh, via LinkedIn. Great to see you here. Let us know where you're tuned in from as well. Um, okay, so Greg, again, we've got quite the one, two punch today. We've had a lot of fun, uh, appreci show, talking golf, and many other things with Eric and, um, mark, wanna welcome them in officially Erik Bush, CEO of demand driven technologies and Mark Goode president of next world. Hey, Hey Eric, how are you doing.
Scott? How are you doing? Doing great.
Great to see you. Great to see. Great to have you back. Love our repeat guests and mark. How are you doing, sir?
We're doing fantastic. And Denver today.
Wonderful. What's the weather like out there in Denver? Yeah.
Well, it's cooling down. It's it's all across the Midwest. We're cooling down, but I've heard it's moving your way. So good luck with that.
You. You much need it today. It, it had been a little bit cooler, right, Eric, but, uh, we, we're getting a little burst of, there you go late summer today.
Well, and like Christie, uh, asking you shall receive, Chrisy says 62 degrees up in Duquette, Minnesota. That sounds, uh, gorgeous. And it's south of Duluth, about 50 miles south
Of oh, okay. Probably have been there. <laugh>
Right. We're we're getting our geography lessons in here today. Yeah. Uh, but folks, before we get into, uh, enterprise software and is it right for a reboot, Eric and mark? Uh, the heavy hitting question we wanna pose to you as we have a, a fun warmup, is it is one of our favorites birthdays today. It's bill Murray's birthday, right? The iconic actor. So the question, quick question for the panel here today, and we'll start with you, Eric, what is your favorite all time? Bill Marine movie.
I really gotta kick outta stripes. I mean, there's a lot of, oh my gosh. Uh, you know, bridge Sergeant brilliant <laugh> and, uh, but I also would wanna, you know, he did a cameo role in Zombieland that was epic as well, you know, just a very short little piece, but, uh, I really got a kick outta strike. He was one of my favorites.
<laugh> all right, so mark that's, that's gonna be tough. Uh, tough to top there. What's your favorite bill Murray movie?
Uh, I'm probably aging myself here, but it's caddy shack
CLA all time. Classic. Of course. Yeah. He, he played the, uh, the golf course maintenance, uh, professional. Right. That
Was the battle with the golfers, the
Golfers, golfers and golfers, maybe who knows, Greg? How about you?
Well, since caddy Shack's been taken, I'm gonna say St. Vincent, which is kind of a sleeper, uh, movie, um okay. Where he plays a really rowdy dude who is a babysitter to Melissa McCarthy's son. Um, and it's, you know, it's a, a great story anyway, but man, there are so many Scott what's yours. Come on.
Oh, it's, it's the cliche answer, but it's a real answer Groundhog day. I've watched that movie so many times. <laugh>, it's so funny. Uh, I'm not, I'm not crazy about the love story part of it. Right. But that where he's trying to kind of just shoot through the days and find different ways of, of, you know, ending. Cause he, he keeps waking up and then when the, he lets the Groundhog drive the, the truck, I mean, there's so many funny, funny scenes in that movie. So certainly an all time classic Groundhog date. I love
The, I love the circularity of caddy shack into Groundhog day, right?
Yes. Yeah. So <laugh>, we're okay. We're, we're
Still Murray and, and underground environments. <laugh> <laugh> GE to comedy.
Oh, Mant. All right. So we're gonna shift gears, make a hard right. Turn here today because we're talking all things supply chain, uh, with our dear friends, Eric and mark. And, uh, Eric, I wanna start with you, um, uh, get the, share a question, prompt you with a question, just to get the conversation going in your view. What is wrong with E R P and other enterprise applications that are sold today for supply chain management and you know, some other business purposes?
Um, well, you know, to really understand, I think that to give a proper response, we gotta kind of wind the clock back about 20, 25 years when some of these movies were coming out <laugh> um, and think about what were the problems people were trying to solve at the time, if you go back to the early to mid nineties, I was working in IBM consulting at the time. And one of the things that was really starting to take root was the whole E R P movement up till then a lot of big companies who are running on their own homegrown systems, E R P as a category, really hadn't taken the, the hill, if you will. Um, at that time, and from an it perspective, there were some real fundamental issues happening where customers or companies had so much legacy software that they were maintaining, that they didn't have any bandwidth to innovate and do new things.
Right. And if you think about that's when the internet started exploding and.com and you know, eBusiness, uh, paradigm started coming to, uh, the front. And so they're stuck with legacy software maintenance. They're stuck with islands of automation, and many of them were definitely afraid of what was gonna happen with Y2K, you know, which was just a few years away. And so it, I think E R P came in and they sold it's all in one database, we're gonna maintain it for you. So it's gonna be cheaper. This is gonna free up working capital for you to shift into innovating more. And, um, it's why two take two K complaint. So this is a very, very compelling argument at the time the business guys in the room heard, oh my God, this is all new software. It's best of breed. It's gonna be so much better for us.
And, and so there was a, you know, land rush going after that. Now the reality is that in the supply chain segment of that portfolio, the E R P landscape, the logic that they were bringing to the market was the same stuff that had been around for 20 years at that time. Right. And it never really got evolved from that point. So we're seeing this now, when you look at statistics from the federal, uh, reserve bank that shows that us manufacturer's inventory turnover rates are today, what they were 25 years ago in spite of the billions of dollars that were spent on E R P during that horizon. So I think the business guys heard we're gonna reengineer, we're gonna get to a better place. Then the needle didn't move. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so they're still suffering the same impediments today that they were all that time ago.
So now I think what you're seeing in the market is clients are starting to recognize that a big monolithic platform may not answer all your questions. Mm. And, um, especially in critical areas. And if you think about salesforce.com, they took the customer relationship management portion of E R P and did it way better, you know, and I think there's a link of all of this into the, what mark and next world are doing that is really, really important to understand. So I think that the issue is that we're two and a half decades downstream. Now the code is the code is the code. If anything, those E R P companies are struggling to get into the cloud and to provide more flexibility. And they've got the issue of legacy maintenance now themselves, right. Trying to pivot to current market conditions, I think is a real problem for them.
So Eric, that is quite a masterful job at level setting. Uh, you, you, you covered a lot of ground there and by the way, kids, these days will have, have no clue about how that Y two K thing and everybody's shaking, right. I mean, that was the last time we thought the world was gonna end.
Um, mark, I'm gonna get you mark and Greg to comment there. Uh, mark, what comes to mind, you know, what, as Eric was level setting, um, before we get into some main priorities that clients are highlighting. Now we'll get to that in just a second, but mark, any thoughts that I prompted for you?
Well, I think the, um, you know, I, I think what, what Eric was, was, uh, was venturing into was, um, you know, when you look at the, at the current state of, of the it landscape today, um, you know, I was just reading an article yesterday from Gardner that, you know, they're always off by a couple years, but by 2026, over 60% of the product centric companies will have implemented some type of composable architecture with an embedded analytics layer. And, you know, I think it, I think it's interesting to look at that market share trend that, you know, it, it, you know, during the eighties and the nineties, you know, a lot of the E R P landscapes really took a land grab for everything. We can do everything. And now when you, when you, when you think about composable architecture, uh, and with cloud computing, now you have the ability to say, I'm gonna take best of breed and I'm gonna build a best of suite.
So, you know, I think, I think along with that cloud computing, you know, one of the things that's evolved, that's a tremendous asset. I mean, we think about it every day is, you know, with cloud computing, you get an enhanced security layer and, you know, if you're managing your own your own on premise systems, you have to manage your own security and you CA you just, it's hard to keep up with it. But one thing that, that, uh, I think is often overlooked is that cloud computing brings a tremendous amount of, it brings another layer of security and a lot more security tools that we didn't have before. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, cuz getting an intrusion or getting malware or you, you know, getting any type of ransomware in your, in your company can be the, it can be a death threat. So, you know, that's the only thing I would add to that
Appreciate that cyber's gonna be all the raise all the rage and, and we're gonna see a lot more act, uh, activity from bad actors in the months come for sure, Greg, uh, your thoughts as we're level setting here on the front end.
Yeah. I mean the, the promise of E R P was much different than the reality of E R P. I mean let's face it, EER PS were basically finance systems. QuickBook QuickBooks could argue these days that they are an E R P right. <laugh> because it all started with finance and automating finance. And in fact, SAP, the biggest of all of them still has code from the 1950s in their technology. So it, it tells you kind of where they started from. And, and in fact, while they wanted to be that best of breed solution, it was quickly realized and think about the dates we're talking about here, right? The seventies, eighties, and nineties. And that was the heyday of, of E R P that's when they were really, really mature companies and growing incredibly fast. So, you know, what happened was they built finance and customers asked for more and more of the adjacent technologies and, uh, and solutions, and they kind of slapped them in there.
Unscientifically, you know, for instance, what Eric and his team do at, at demand driven technologies, the MRP functionality, it was very rudimentary very often in, in an E R P and mark. I mean, we haven't really talked about this, but there, the, the, um, provenance Scott of <laugh>, uh, thank you of next world is one of the later E R P companies, JD Edwards JDE, which started in 1977. So a relative newcomer in that time. And, and they've got a lot of that provenance with Kylie McVay that their CEO and, and, um, honestly, look, this is just an observation from doing a little research here for, for people with a history and traditional E R P to make the leap, to understand the evolution of technology into cloud and the power of cloud, and to, um, take both the extensive expertise that they've got and apply that to new technologies is really, really rare. We did that at blue Ridge and, and it was no small struggle to do that, but fortunately, uh, both of these companies have overcome that sort of legacy and, and recognize the power that's in the cloud to enable real best of breed and some new, uh, incredible new capabilities that all of the power of the cloud provides for you.
I, I appreciate you sharing there. Uh, one quick comment for, we shifted back over to you, Eric, uh, T squared who holds down the Fort forest and YouTube says Y2K definitely had me shook as a college student. Cause all things computer were subject to be getting shut down. That's how that was kinda like the mindset back then. If y'all remember, uh, back in 99, that was crazy. Um, okay. So Eric moving right along, I'll tell you that was a very healthy, uh, level setting segment on the front end. We look kind of, uh, did a look back and kind of how things evolved, but let's talk about today, right? Uh, so Eric, what are some of the main priorities that clients are highlighting today?
Um, I'm, I'm gonna talk to it mostly from a supply team perspective, cuz that's the space that we deal with. Um, but I think that there's a couple fundamental issues. Go back to the comment in made about inventory turnover rates haven't been improving. And yet if you are in a company like that and you're sitting on all this inventory, you're sitting on a lot of cash working capital that you could pivot and use to help whatever strategic intent you're trying to follow for your company. One of our clients in the automotive industry is engaged in a project with us to roll out to a hundred plants, free up a hundred million in working capital because bringing up that cash allows them to accelerate their shift in their role within the automotive industry. So we have to unlock those improvements. That opportunity is absolutely there. We've proven at time and time again.
And, and I think that's kind of what they're trying to get to at a high level, from a financial perspective. The second problem they're finding is that the workforce, the people who use supply chain planning software is evolving in a declining manner. Meaning back in the day you go back 20 years, there was a thing called a certified production inventory control manager, C P IM certification from a group called apex American production inventory control society who had a huge membership, you know, here in the states and around the world in the like, and you would see guys at these conferences with a list of certifications attached to their, uh, conference batch, right? They were proud of all the knowledge they had. <laugh> that's a dime breed. I'm telling you the gray haired guys like me, they're disappearing and what's coming up instead into these roles are, um, younger people who grew up on laptops and touch screens and iPhones and modern technology.
And they're looking at the software that's in their space that they're trying to use. And the metaphor I use, it's like, they're putting 'em in a Apollo space capsule where you've got all these toggle switches and knobs to flip and all this stuff to try to get the right answer. When that happens, they become intimidated because they don't have the training. They don't have all those certifications. Right? And so it's more and more critical that we deploy software that is as intuitive to use as your iPhone is where you can pick it up with your thumb and know how to navigate and know how to find the answers. And I think the evolution there in terms of user interface and technology is so dramatic. Mm. And the other thing they're asking for is give us a platform that we can use in an automated manner.
Why is it that we have to have users checking the math of the system they ask, right? Because when they get into that mode, what we end up with is the inability to scale. We can't take a planning approach and roll it out to a hundred plants because every plant's got their own secret sauce. They're shaman in the tent. If you will, who has all the wisdom to figure it out for them. And so there's no scalability, so they want results. They want an easier to use, easier to deploy platform and functionality. And they want to take a lot of the workload out of it. Let's rely on the system to do the job force. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, mark and I'm sure you guys do fly all around the world and all this kind of stuff. And the pilots rarely fly the plane. They're allowing the system to do the job they get involved on, take off landing and exceptions. Why is it? We can't manage inventory that way.
Interesting. Okay. Uh, mark, I'm coming to you next, your thoughts when it comes to priorities you're seeing here today or what some, what has shared,
Well, I think it's, I think, um, you know, what I would echo is, is, is, um, nothing has really changed for a long, long time. I remember, um, uh, 20 years ago, I, I walked into a, a, a top 20 manufacturing company, United States and made a customer satisfaction call. And, and the CIO literally threw me out of his office. And, uh, his whole principle was, I've spent 400 million on this E R P 400 million and I'm nowhere. And I think, you know, as, as we work, you know, part of our portfolio today at, at next world is we sell inventory management as an edge to E R P. And we, we see these implementations still that people have this vast idea, what E R P is that it can do supply chain and it can do all this stuff. And it never gets fully implemented. It never gets fully.
I, and immediately, you know, the, the technical debt starts to mound, but it really gets people locked then in their business agility. And there's one thing that's parallel to the digital economy, it's business agility. And, you know, that's the one thing that E R P was, you know, I think people MIS MIS uh, interpreted what it was. It was to lock down processes, but they were locked down. You weren't changing them, right? You weren't changing. If you were gonna change them, you, you better have a lot of dollars in your wallet to go change it. So, you know, the name of the game with, with, with what we're seeing in SaaS and cloud computing is, is total cost of ownership. Mm. And your ability to move forward quickly. And, you know, I I'll echo what, what, what Eric, um, Eric said again, is that, you know, the, what we have available for a, a labor resource pool is changing dramatically.
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And you know, what we're finding out with our solutions business analyst can use these solutions and they can implement the solutions. And that's a major, major shift, you know, that, um, you know, where, where people want to go on their career, you know, if you were an SAP program, you had to know, I a, if you were an e-business program, you had a new e-business. If you're using, you got a no Java and, and, and people don't want to be siloed into those technologies. And, you know, they want to be more business problem solvers. And, and so business analysts can use a lot of these modern SaaS, composable architecture to compose the applications, adjust your workflow, and be agile on your business approach.
I love that mark, Greg, I'm coming you next, but really quick. Uh, uh, Eric mentioned some of the certifications. Hello, gene pledger. You'll see some of those certifications behind his name there. See a, the very
One matter of that's, right? Yeah.
Uh, and he's, he's probably recollecting Y2K where, where gene was, uh, back then, but really quick, uh, Greg gets your take, but, uh, uh, Eric referenced, uh, APICS the American production inventory control society founded in Cleveland back in the fifties that has morphed into what is down on his ASCM, they're having their conference this week. So just to kind of connect dots for folks, Greg, uh, we're talking about current priorities, uh, for the market. You, you heard Eric and, and Mark's take there your thoughts.
Yeah. The world has changed. And unfortunately, a lot of ERPs are a slave to the old world, right? In the old days, Eric, you may recall this, even at IBM, you deployed what was called a kernel of technology, and then you built all the functionality around it, which made the big consulting gigs and the big implementation gigs that mark was talking about and absolute necessity. And then companies like Accenture and other big, uh, consulting firms built entire practices around it. So for, for example, for many, I, I'm not gonna single out anymore up for the rest of the show. <laugh> people are talking about a particular one and, and the truth is it's EER P generally put any letters together and it's EER P right. Uh, especially, I mean, especially the older ERPs, but they became a slave to that because if those ERPs wanted to sell their technology, they had to leave the ability to make tens or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on implementation in the design of the product.
And as both mark and Eric have talked about that ha that philosophy has gone the way of the one it's only a few of us old gray haired folks that, that still even recollect that it's not even the expectation, just the expectation of these new generations. It's the presumption that everything is as simple as an app. I, I, I recall I'll keep this brief, but I recall growing up on windows, which now seems like it was a a thousand years ago or on apple OS, right. Where everything was object oriented. And, and then going to my, the first retail company that I went to work for and saw something called a green screen, which really a black screen with green letters on it that were, um, that made me feel like, uh, to Eric's point, I was navigating Apollo 13 in the 1960s. So I, I think we have to recognize that things have changed economies have changed and that, uh, companies are doing, um, what, I'm sorry, it was either Eric or mark said, they're now just leaving these old ERPs in place in some cases and layering, um, the ability to manage the wealth of data that exists in them.
And they are further and further partitioning the, the deep, uh, applications that, that add value, like demand like, like MRP and, and demand forecasting, and various sundry, other things into this technology. But more and more even the old guard are sort of dumping one major E R P provider is basically dumping their old, um, on premise model. And they're deploying a new brand that is, that is cloud based. Right. I bet mark knows that one pretty well, cuz I be against them every single day. So even those big, those big companies have recognized that their model is, is dead or dying and, um, and that they have to change things to meet the expectations presumptions of today's user
Well said and all the space talk, I'm looking forward to the Artemis, uh, their, the next, uh, launch window, uh, what a fascinating program that is. Um, okay. So mark, uh, we've referenced this a couple of times. Um, I want, if we can, you can shed some light on the background of next world and, and what are those key differentiators in E R P software?
Well, select, I think it's, um, I think the biggest differentiator is the background. Um, so, uh, next world was, was, uh, started by ed McVay and, and for the founders one of'em including his daughter, Kylie McVay, you know, ed was really one of those pioneers, um, in his company was JD Edwards. And, um, you know, ed was one of those pioneers in, in the beginnings of, of the E R P and, uh, uh, you know, uh, JD Edwards went public and it was, it was acquired by, by PeopleSoft and Oracle got a battle hostile taker with PeopleSoft. It acquired JD Edwards and then basically, you know, milk the maintenance on it. But, you know, the one thing that was always fascinating about JD Edwards was, is, you know, the total cost of ownership of it, uh, compared to his competition was amazing. You know, it was mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, a couple people could manage the whole E R P implementation, but, you know, ed ed never forgot about, you know, what the drawbacks were and the drawbacks were is you had to install it, you had to deploy it.
You had to hire consulting firm and then you had to upgrade it. So, you know, uh, six years ago they, they started next world and we literally spent four years just building a contemporary SAS platform. And, you know, if, if I would make an analogy, you know, what salesforce.com did for CRM, a business analyst can pick up the tool and deploy an application. That's really what we're doing for E R P a business analyst can use next world to deploy applications, to run their, their business. And, you know, the, the, the secret sauce in that is you remember the, you know, back in the early two thousands, when Salesforce got started was the circle on no software. Remember that mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's kinda like Ghostbuster circle, right? <laugh> um, so the whole idea of an upgrade goes out the window. It, it, it goes out the window. We're talking about releases and in our value prop to our, our customer base is you'll never be left behind. You'll never be left behind and, you know, but we're always going to give you that business agility, we're gonna give you that business agility and that total cost of ownership of all the be business benefits of, of cloud computing also.
So mark follow up, uh, I think you may have touched on this, but, uh, the 11th commandment, I believe literally reads thou shall not customize. Yeah. So speak to customization when it comes to E R P.
Yeah. Well, we are, uh, we're breaking that paradigm. Um, and again, we, um, you know, you is a configuration is a customization bottom line is you can't strain your business, constrain your business agility. And, and the one thing that's incredible about our platform is we believe in extensibility. So we believe in the fact that if there's an application that we don't have in our portfolio, then you can build an application. You literally can pick up our platform and build an application. And when you're building that application, be assured, it's gonna meet all your compliance and all your regulatory compliances, and it's gonna integrate to everything else that you've touched. So, you know, there's design principles and things like that. You need to, you need to pay attention to, but, um, you know, we're, we're breaking that paradigm. Uh, we want you to configure the system. We want you to customize it towards your business processes, use our workflow engine to be agile making business decisions, you know, because Eric talked about it, you know, there's, there is an exception though planes planes can land themselves. Now <laugh> the
Other can. I know, and I can tell when I'm landing in one
But, you know, but it, it, so there's, you know, the system and building workflow is smart enough to make decisions based on conditional things we program, but it's, it's really, uh, it breaks the paradigm that don't worry about customizations there, you know, um, you know, we, we believe you're gonna move on to the next release and the way that the whole platform is architected is we're never gonna be stuck with legacy technology is new tools come out. We're gonna be layered things into our platform that our, our customers will never have to know about.
It's, it's good to break some stuff. Uh, mark. So I appreciate you sharing that. I wanna share a couple quick comments and then we get a great quick comment from Greg. And then Eric, we're gonna go into demand driven technologies here in a second and get some of your key differentiators. Um, Wally says very interesting to see articles on company strategy, where they are deciding to simply sit on inventory as opposed to right. Sizing it as demand slows companies that continue to over buy will never get out of the cash crunch. There's gotta be a better way. Well said their Wally well said they
Will get outta the cash crunch, cuz they'll go bankrupt. But
<laugh> <laugh> uh, uh, Renee, I think this is Renee. I think I got your name right. If I got it wrong, let us know, says, I often find that a frustration with many ER P systems is due to the lack of knowledge and proper use and implementation companies will piecemeal or only use certain modules within these systems or use these modules incorrectly. Interesting comment there, Renee. Um, okay Greg, your quick comment, uh, as mark was talking about some key differentiators, and then we're gonna go to, uh, Eric next, Greg.
Yeah. Customization in the classic sense is just like E R P historical E R P legacy E R P in the classic sense it's code behind that you might never know about, um, that only your implementation provider may not, may, may only know about and that even your E R P provider may not know about. So it can get wiped out as you get upgraded to Mark's point because they're using technology that doesn't use code behind low code or no code, then users can deploy it and it can be made aware to the provider like next world, that that stuff exists and they can defend it, protect it and support it when you upgrade, cuz those are the classic problems, right? Your, your technology becomes unsupportable and then you become stuck with those, uh, practices and processes and, and screens and, and technologies that you don't understand like Rey is talking about.
Uh, okay. Uh, good lot of good stuff there. Um, Eric, I wanna give you the option here. You're gonna be, uh, I'll give you the quarterback option to call an audible and feel free to comment on what mark and Greg have been stating there. And then I wanna get into, uh, some of your key differentiators when it comes to supplying software. So first comment on what you heard, Greg and mark speak to there.
Yeah, I think, I think the next world story is phenomenal, uh, since we learned about them a couple years ago and I'll talk a little bit about our partnership with them in a, in a few minutes, but you know, it's like getting the band back together, but you come in, if you only knew then what you knew now, right? You've got all this learning that mark alluded to here in this comments about what were the limitations, what were the things we could have done better? And I think that the approach that they've demonstrated we've had countless conversations over the past couple years as we've started. Touse our partnership together just revealed a, a very, very different culture than I've seen in other software companies. Right? And the whole premise of this extensibility is I think very appropriate and, and effective in the way that they're approaching it so that you get, you don't paint yourself into a corner.
I saw this happen with so many SAP clients where they would write so much code to customize cuz they had to have this and that. And the other thing. And now all of a sudden they're stranded on a given release because to move forward, they have to now go back and refactor that code to meet the new standards and the new release. And if we have the ability to make those enhancements or customizations or extensions, as you wanna call 'em without being painted into a corner, we are in a far different position and we've been historically one of the large national tire manufacturer. We watched customize their sales and distribution model and SAP to an enormous, uh, con um, level, because they had so many dis different discount programs that they offered into the market. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and you gotta believe at some point you've passed the knee of the curve, that where, you know, the fir after the first three, maybe you had enough and you could have cut these off, but they just kept going and going and going and they're creating their own problems.
And I think that there's also on the client side, a need to be more pragmatic and judicious and use those, uh, capabilities in a, in a good way so that you don't overcomplicate things. And go back to one of the comments earlier that people are, don't get all the software implemented. Right? Well, that's because there's a lot of software to implement and that's, there's a lot of features and decisions people have to make when you do that implementation. So the more you can grease those skids, the more you can smooth the pathway to, um, to getting business results, the better off you're gonna be. Right.
Good stuff there. Uh, we need to bolt on another hour here between, uh, the three of y'all talking technology and business global business and supply chain, but Eric, in particular, let's, let's focus in now on the background of the demand driven technologies and your key differentiators when it comes to supply chain software.
Um, when we started the company, there was one competitive strategy that we focused on. If E R P is long labor intensive and the needle isn't gonna move, then we have to be the everything's that that's the opposite of that. Meaning you get a result and you're able to sustain it. And it doesn't take, you know, the King's army and ransom to get there, right. That you can get there in a few months. And that's what we focus on. So I think at our core, we are driven by getting clients to the right results. We do that through offering them simulations. So we can actually replay, you know, quarterback Monday morning quarterback and say, had you used these techniques, here's where you would've been in terms of inventory level, service levels and things like that. And that's working, it creates, puts us on the same side of the table with our clients.
And I think they really value the approach we take to and our concern about their, their needs and priorities. Um, I think the other key piece that's a differentiator is that we have made the foundational decision that we are going to build agility as the first premise, not predictability, meaning that our solutions are designed to allow you to pace your inventory, supply your production schedules, to the real demand, not the forecast, but the actual demand in the market. It's the most accurate signal you're gonna get. And there's different ways of getting there, everyone in the past thought you had to have a forecast cuz that's way M R P worked. And we've said, you know, there's too much air out there. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, let's start with a cleaner demand signal and we'll get into a much, much better place. Once you make that shift in thinking it opens up a lot of doors because now look at, everybody's talking about agility. Well, to be able to pace to the actual demand coming in, you've gotta build that agility into your business. So our platform helps clients put that foundation in place, right. And get better results and do it in a much more manageable way.
Okay. So, uh, we're gonna get into the partnership next, but Greg, that demand signal, um, and being able to really adjust your, um, your planning and your oper and operationalizing that speaks to that really quick for a second, Greg.
Well, you know, I call it post casting, right? What Eric is, is referring to is what they tried to avoid is looking at history and expecting that to be an indicator of the future. Now, let say that again slowly for the people in the back, looking at history and expecting that to be the indicator of the future. Think about 2020 in the great toilet paper shortage. Could anyone have looked at history and in any way ever predicted that that could happen? No, of course not. Right. So what we have to understand is what are those indicators of demand now? And that's what Eric is talking about and how do we leverage those to have a more accurate prediction. And I, I really love the idea of focusing on the agility because for too long in, in supply chain planning in particular, we have focused on the forecast and cost. Mm. And we've done that at the expense of enabling a solution with the agility, the responsiveness, the recovery and resiliency that is required. And a supply chain always has always been, but is so clear and apparent to everyone on the planet today. So that perspective is a huge differentiator.
I love it. Hey, if it's clear to everybody on the planet, I wish you're doing a lot more of that. Uh, Eric, I wanna get into this partnership, this, this pretty cool partnership to next world and demand driven technologies, speak to that and speak about how their approach Eric can help, uh, our, some of our listeners, companies and customers.
So, um, yeah, we're really proud of the relationship we've got. I've spent quite a bit of time with mark over the past several months. Um, next world reach out to us about a year and a half ago as they were starting to get ready to launch into the market. And they were intrigued with the demand of the methods that we support and they made a decision to interface into our solution to address those functionalities instead of building their own platform. Right. And so we are, uh, engaged with a number of clients right now as, and very, very cool opportunities that we're working on together. Um, mark didn't mention, but they have a platform called next bot, which is an application development environment. Think of that. And it's a low code, no code kind of paradigm. And so we would expect that as we get the engine running here and, and start to really do a number of deals together, that we will essentially migrate our code into their next pod environment, thus fusing the UI relationships together and things like that as we go forward. Uh, and that spans not only inventory planning, but production scheduling S and P and things like that. So we've really had a great working relationship together. Um, I think mark and I have a shared vision about where, uh, this partnership can go and very excited about the opportunities going forward.
Love it. Well, mark, I'm gonna get your take on the partnership, but, but first, uh, those landings back on the plane, your, that comment hasn't escaped me yet. When you bounce off the runway a couple times, is that the bots doing it? Uh, mark <laugh>, uh, I don't know. Uh, but tell us about, uh, you give us your take on the partnership mark.
Well, I think, um, you know, I, I, uh, I hope I haven't used this example too many times, but I'm gonna draw upon it one more time because I'm, you know, we've all been in this business for so long and there's so much you learn from history, you know, about what things work and don't work. And we were talking about Y two K earlier, and I want to, I wanna bring up a company name and maybe I shouldn't do this, but I think for historical res is important. You remember, remember Bel systems. Yeah, Tom then at CR and just as long as had people had great big pocket books, man, they were implement like crazy well after Y two K and nine 11, nobody had any more money and, you know, um, and then here comes Salesforce, right? And, and Salesforce becomes a 900 pound grill overnight.
And, you know, part of Salesforce and strategy, as I explained before, was, is, you know, very similar to what we're doing for E R P. And I think you're gonna see the same trajectory in our dominance of the marketplace. I think we, that big or profound effect, um, you know, bringing a no code, uh, E R P platform to the market. But, you know, if you followed Salesforce over the years, I think to the most successful software company in the history of the world, I mean, you know, they, they're very predictive in how they grow, but you remember several years ago, they said, Hey, we're gonna grow our, our, our applications business, our ecosystem, you know, it'll be just as big as our, our, you know, our CRM portfolio. And they have, so people build on the Salesforce platform. You know, you go, you can go buy an app on the Salesforce platform.
You, you know, it's like you buy an iOS app on the app app store. So that's the way we're approaching the ecosystem in the market is, you know, we're gonna have ISB relationships we're gonna integrate. Um, but you know, what, what Eric and I are talking about is really, you know, developing some best in class apps on our platform. So, and again, it's, it's the way that our architecture's composed is you can, you can take as, as big as bite as you want, take a little bite. Now you can take a bigger bite later. We're totally fine with that. We want to grow with our customers. So that's the, you know, um, you know, Eric is right. We see, we see this market, um, exactly the same more specifically on going to market. Uh, we're both after product century companies. And what's unique about us is we see the product centricity and also service companies relying on product in the digital economy.
Um, you know, the reason this is so important is, you know, traditionally ERPs looked at inventory within the four walls. Okay, well, has Amazon broken that paradigm? Do you think they think about inventory within their four walls? No, it's about the long mile. It's about where is my product going? And, you know, we've already got all those great capabilities with the cloud inventory platform and next world working together right now is when that product leaves the four walls, we're gonna help you track and manage that product. And, you know, and if you think about a traditional field service application, where are my parts to service, whatever I'm going to work on. And that's what, you know, Eric and I are talking about, you know, the evolution of our working relationship. Yes, it is about MRP. It's about manufacturing, but inventory is in the wild mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's, you know, inventory is absolutely in the while.
And, and, and, you know, seeing that, that inventory is part of your supply chain and still that narrative back from E R P E R P stole the narrative supply chain. And, and, and, you know, we, we see it as a holistic approach and, and the way we see manufacturing materials, warehousing, and, and field inventory, all in this, this cloud of inventory, uh, Eric and I are completely aligned and, and, uh, you know, all the folks on this call today, I mean, you're, you're gonna watch, uh, the trajectory of our company really go through the ceiling area.
That's exciting. Uh, so congrats on this partnership, it sounds like you're just about hit the, um, the fifth or sixth gear. So looking forward to seeing the results and outcomes, Greg, I'm gonna get your comment here, but, but first I'm gonna share a couple here. One from Chad, uh, Chad, great to see you. Uh, Chad joined us, uh, on the live stream a couple months back. Hope this finds you well. And by the way, Chad is in Denver as well. Uh, mark, uh, he says Sibel had a great vision, but the system failed to deliver because it was very cumbersome. Yeah. Salesforce has definitely done well to build the, uh, ecosystem. Yeah. Another good example is Atlassian, JIRA, JIRA, maybe, I don't know. Um, Greg from Milwaukee, Greg hope this finds you well says the forecast of the future is a guess and is incorrect after published too many variables all based on prediction, especially when you have to look out six months or longer to order supplies. Great comment there, Greg now to our Greg, uh, Greg white, before we, uh, make sure folks know how to connect the dots, connect with mark and Eric. And we got some great resources from the, uh, from Eric's team, the share of momentarily, your final thought, maybe on the partnership and some of the things that, uh, Eric and mark have shared.
Yeah. I love the perspective of the Salesforce ecosystem and, and using that in supply chain and, and for E R P and finance and other solutions because, um, it works and, and, you know, the fact that their companies that have built their platform cloud native is what we called it way back in 2011, it was built for the cloud, not adapted from on-prem. Um, and, and it takes full advantage of the processing power, the new technologies that are available to you, the ease of integration and, and these no code and other types of solutions that allow you to adapt your solution right? To the edge of customization. I can already see in the comments that we're having this discussion around customization or configuration. The that's not even the point, what word you use. You need to rethink the term customization because the baggage that we all carry is all of that code behind the scenes that got lost or got wiped out, or, you know, or, or kept us from getting upgraded.
That's not the case anymore, and it doesn't need to be. And, and we need to think about this more as the digital natives who are naive to those old ways, right. To, and just presume that this is the way that things always should have been built. Um, and now we have the technology that enables that, and it's a huge leap forward, and it will disrupt the industry. And it is an industry, right? For disruption. There's only one, in my opinion, current E R P player that is sufficiently equipped to compete with what next world and demand driven are doing. And, um, and that is a great spot to be in for both us as users. They, as, as service and technology providers, it's a great spot to be in, and it will dramatically advance how technology is used and how it's deployed in particularly in supply chain. But, but also all of the other areas around business operations
Well said, good stuff there. Um, alright, so I wanna get into is we're coming down the final stretch here, right. And Eric, I I'm actually gonna start with you. We're gonna share some of those resources now, and then we'll get with mark and, and how folks can learn more there about next world. So I'm start with Eric. Uh, so Eric, we've got some resources to bear. I appreciate what you and the team, uh, first that we've got a white paper focused on simulating demand, driven material requirements, planning, right? AKA, DD, MRP, those buffers. So Eric, and we're gonna drop a link into comment. Why should folks check out that resource?
I think it's a, a great example. We started doing this years and years ago, and we, uh, the white paper was actually written at the back of an AP API conference where we had done this simulation, where people came into our booth, they gave us random demand patterns, 10, uh, days of demand. We collected 'em all. And we showed 'em how we could buffer without having any idea what numbers they were giving us and successfully have high service levels and low inventory levels in that. And it was kind of amazing little gambit to do, but it really helped people get the idea that, Hey, maybe there is a different way of planning your materials. And so that, uh, white paper is kind of an illustration of, uh, what we learned that day. And, uh, I think it helps kind of turn the light bulb on for a lot of people when they read it, it's continues to be our most widely downloaded white paper. <laugh>
Uh, Hey, some of the best things come out, uh, on the back of a bar napkin, right. Eric
<laugh>. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of all in the same philosophy. We do the same thing then when we meet with clients, because we'll get their data and then we'll show 'em what actually what happens. So it's a good kind of a teaser around, uh, what simulating a DDM R P environment would do for you.
Love that. Uh, and then the second resource that y'all brought, uh, I was just watching this morning on the history channel, uh, of, um, a documentary on the Cola wars. And it's really fascinating, especially the last 50 or six years. Um, you know, that the triumphant, uh, market entry, that diet Coke made is so fascinating. Anyway, speaking of, of Coke folks should check out a really neat case study on Coca-Cola beverages, Africa, and its continuous improvement initiatives, especially those involving its work with DD MRP. And we've got a link to that as well. Um, Eric, one final question for you is how can folks connect with you and your team
Best way to do it is to reach out to us, uh, either through LinkedIn or at info@demanddriventech.com, uh, or to our website, much, many, many ways to, uh, get in touch with us and would love to talk to you.
Wonderful folks. Y'all check out those links. Uh, thanks so much for, for all you've shared here today. Eric, I wanna switch over to mark. Mark really have enjoyed your perspective. I look forward to, uh, as y'all to work more together, you're going to write a book on your adventures. So where this partnership goes, uh, mark, how do our listeners learn more about next world? And as Eric mentioned that next bot platform, what it can do for their business?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, um, you know, uh, our, uh, our name itself, um, you know, we, we've just recently adopted a, a slogan going to market, which is staying ahead of what's next. So if, if, if you feel like you're, you you're, uh, your, your E R P locked, you feel like you don't have business agility and you want to get on a platform. It's always gonna keep you ahead of what's next. That's our value proposition, WW, next world.net board, find us on LinkedIn and next world. So, uh, look forward to, uh, to following up and having any conversations. We've, uh, you know, we've got a wealth of experience at this company with years of experience of, of, of helping people solve business problems and look forward to work forward, to follow up. And, and thank you guys for your time today.
You bet we've got, uh, the production team dropped the link there, uh, your one click away next world.net. So y'all check that out and find the company, as mark mentioned on LinkedIn. So big, thanks. Uh, once again, uh, Eric Bush, CEO demand driven technologies and Mark Good president of next world. Thank you both gentlemen. And we look forward to having you back again real soon. Thanks
All right, Greg. Uh, it's too much to think about my 17 pages of notes. Uh, I'm gonna had a lot of studying to do tonight on this conversation, this partnership, uh, breaking stuff, right. Changing how business is done, but, uh, if, if folks help help distill this down. Yep. If you would, especially the folks that may not be, you know, that don't have your experience or Eric's experience or Mark's experience as technologists, even though these days, that's what the supply chain, uh, supply chain professionals are in many ways, speak to what folks should really pay attention over the last, uh, hour or so. Yeah.
Well, I, I, I always think of a quote you use all the time, which is what got you here. Ain't gonna get you through it. You don't say ain't, but I like to say ain't so, um, and, and that is, you know, the old model of E R P and I, I keep thinking what an appropriate name is next world, right? Um, because I think we have to understand how rare it is to do what Eric and mark and, and the teams that their respective companies are doing in having an incredible amount of knowledge about the history, um, and the, from once we come of, of their respective products, but being able to put that in a new future focused perspective, that allows them to use the best parts of their knowledge and their expertise and to, uh, issue the old ways of thinking to create a new way of leveraging that knowledge into, uh, technology for another age, this next world. And, um, I, I just think that's so, so exceptional. And whenever you find a company like that, you wanna latch onto 'em because they are gonna make big changes. And that is, um, it's harder to accomplish than you can imagine. We were very conscious of it at my companies in the past, because we had a bunch of,
Let's say experienced practitioners <laugh> in the company, but they were able to, they were able to use the best of, of both worlds. And I, I think that really bodes well for the success of their customers and their companies going forward.
Love that, Greg, thank you for sharing folks. Uh, we've also dropped the, uh, resources that the demand driven technologies team has brought, uh, that white paper we talked about with TD MRP buffers. And what I thought was a really interesting case study again on Coca-Cola beverages Africa. So y'all check that out, who can't relate to Coca-Cola story, right? Uh, especially when it comes from a supply chain perspective. I love that. Um, folks make sure you connect, uh, with Eric and mark and Greg, uh, and Greg, your supply chain commentaries hit every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, where you tackle subjects like this and, and a lot more, make sure you follow or connect with Greg and participate in those conversations. Okay. Folks, we've covered a lot of ground and we couldn't hit, hit everybody's comment and questions here today. Be sure to, Hey, you know, who I bet would love to take those questions and comments and maybe even map something out on the back of the bar tab, Eric Bush and mark G.
Yeah. We shall see as a break stuff and drive the industry forward with an exciting new partnership. Um, thank y'all all for joining us here today. Big thanks to our production team. Uh, thanks to all the folks in the comments, uh, thanks to Nicole and all of that great facilitation folks, whatever you do. It's about deeds, not words, right? Change is tough. It's Greg and everyone has been speaking to, but that's the only way we move forward, right? Uh, taking that action. So on behalf, our entire team here, Scott Luton signing off for now challenging you to do good to give forward and to be the change that's needed. And we'll see next time, right back here at supply chain now. Thanks everybody.
Thanks for being a part of our supply chain. Now, community check out all of our programming@supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to supply chain. Now anywhere you listen to podcasts and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on supply chain now.