People, Process, Progress: Inside ADI’s Continuous Transformation with Allie Copeland

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome Back to the B2B Uncut podcast, sponsored by Oro Commerce. I am your host, Aaron Sheehan, and with me today is a very special guest. Uh, this is something that has never happened before. This is someone who I met in person before they became a podcast guest. And I saw her speak a couple of months. I guess it was a couple of months ago, right, in Denver. Was that May? I think May was May.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, at national association of Wholesalers and Distributors, Spring Executive roundtable slash MDM Shift, they had. They need to redo the branding on that, I think, and make it. Make it a little more succinct. It's kind of a mouthful, but I want to welcome Ali Copeland to the show. Thank you for joining us so much. Your talk that you gave at SHIFT was the best one I thought of the show and it immediately made me think I really need to have her on the podcast because a lot of what you had to talk about in that talk, and I don't want to spoil it for the people who are listening, is super directly relevant to our audience here at Oral Commerce. So I'd love to start a little bit with just like a brief introduction. The talk you gave was a distributor's guide to transformation. And you were talking about digital transformation, I think was definitely sort of the theme of that. Right. So before we get into the story of your digital transformation, tell us a little bit about Ali Copeland and adi. I can see the letters behind you on the background of your video. They must stand for something. So, like, tell us a little bit about you and a little bit about adi.

Speaker A: Thanks, Erin. Happy to be here. So, Ali Copeland. I am the Chief transformation officer at ADI Global. I've worked at the company for nine years and we are a global distributor of security, AV, Datacom and low voltage products. So traditional B2B industrial distribution, um, mindset and background. If you think about that, you know, your standard, naw, wholesaler. In my role, I lead kind of digital operational and cultural transformation with a focus on driving growth as well as integration. For any M and A Swede, that's fantastic.

Speaker B: So there's a lot wrapped up in being a, uh, sort of a chief. Chief Transformation Officer there. And that's not a title that we see a, uh, ton. I feel like that role often gets federated out among a lot of different executives, but you often don't see one person sort of like in charge of that. Have you had that title the entire time that you've been at adi?

Speaker A: That's a great question. So no, I My background is actually operations, but I've worked in wholesale for 25 years, and I've done a little bit of everything. I've worked in business development, I've run marketing. I've worked in sales. Um, I worked in the credit department for a week before they threw me out because I just don't do good asking people for money and hearing that the check is in the mail. So they didn't let me stay long there. But, you know, in wholesale, I've worked in a variety of roles over my careers in multiple verticals. And for me, that was great because when we did the acquisition of a company called Snap, Snap one, uh, I guess it was a year ago, it was June of 2024. They were publicly traded on the NASDAQ about a little over $1 billion. Uh, bringing them into the fold, we created this transformation role because we realized this wasn't just an integration, this was truly a transformation. And at the same time, we were putting a new ERP system in for our Americas. Uh, we were going through just a significant amount of change. And truthfully, I think my background having touched those areas, but at the end of the day, being primarily an operations person, uh, really was a natural fit, right, Because I can operationalize, uh, what we need to do. So it was a new role we created really, really focused on, you know, how we're touching effectively every single process in the company and transforming it in some way, shape or form under this new co. So, uh, I was excited to take it on and felt like it really. When I look back on my career, I really feel like it built up to this role. And to your point, you can't transform if it's, if it's a bunch of people's, you know, uh, jobs on the side of their desk, you really need to have, you know, that level of focus and cohesion to be able to bring, to bring all of those functional spokes together.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more with that. I think, uh, it's hard to drive change when almost, if it's a side job, your day job is going to be about resisting change to some degree so that you can predict what you're doing. And then you're supposed to, like, put on a different hat, turn around and be like, let's redo everything. And then you're supposed to then turn back and say, let's not touch anything. And so that you do end up with this weird sort of like two steps forward, one step back in a lot of companies. So, you know, you sort of anticipated the question I was going to ask, which is like, why are you transforming? Why is ADI transforming? Not you, ally transforming. Although if you could turn into a car or something, that'd be, that would be awesome. It'd be pretty cool. Yeah. Um, so I am curious then, how do you know? How do you know? Or how does your board or your C suite know when the transformation is complete? Because the background that you gave this was definitely sort of a, kind of a merger driven change to sort of unify a lot of technology and operations. That was a year ago. Most companies take two to three years to sort of fully digest an acquisition. Sometimes if you're like a PayPal, it can take decades. I'd love to hear a little bit about like are you done? And how will you know that you're done if you ever get done?

Speaker A: I don't think you're ever done. Right. Um, especially not in this day and age. I think what you'll find is different processes and areas tend to roll into transformation and when they get to bau, they roll out or business as usual. Uh, I'll give you a great example. We are going live in the US on a new ERP on Monday and after we get through Hypercare, that particular project team will roll back into its where it goes for BAU function. Right? the same time, uh, our data team, our enterprise data, business intelligence and analytics recently rolled in an under transformation because we're getting ready to go through a data transformation. So I think what you'll find in this day and age is transformation should never be, should uh, never be done. You should never be resting on your laurels, especially with the speed with which technology is being driven. But what you can do is you, you should also not be static in the transformation team. Your PMO team, your project management team might be, you know, should be steady and should be a little bit more static. But with respect to the projects and maybe people reporting into you, it's very dynamic. So there's groups that roll in, we set up teams, right. That maybe didn't exist under one leader to complete the transformation. And when we get to a point that that particular area is more business as usual, we'll put it back where it belongs for the longer term in the business function. It should never sit under transformation. So you know, it's beautiful in the sense that if you like to do different things, I mean you're constantly doing something different. My team's constantly evolving as organizations and transformation should know.

Speaker B: That's a, that's a great answer. So it sounds like the inciting incident for you to become a uh, digital transformation officer that are the chief transformation officer was the acquisition. But now that you're here, you're staying in that seat. You can't be out of this seat. There's going to be more transformations and they won't all be acquisition driven.

Speaker A: That's correct, yeah. I mean, and you know, I mean we're really an enabler, right. If you think about, if you think about strategy, right. Most businesses do a three to five year strap plan so that, that those generally tend to be somewhat transformative during that time. So you're constantly iterating and then taking a step back and moving, moving forward. And again I would challenge three to five years was probably the former way of thinking. Now you're looking at what can you do in one to three years. Because the rapid speed at which technology is shifting, what we know is coming with AI, machine learning, data science, right. Some of those things are just moving so fast that you uh, know what might have made sense five years ago doesn't always, you can't wait five years to implement. So you're constantly transforming. And the way that we tend to do it is while we're touching everything, you know, we, we can be very process specific with respect to a function. You know, again, data is an example where we can roll that data team in, we can transform it and then we get it to where it's ready for BAU and then roll it back out. And you can do that with almost anything, right? You can do that with your network, uh, your real estate strategy, right? Anything that really has a strategic area where you're doing big, big transformations to get yourself ready for the next step, you roll it in and then again I think you roll it back out. So it does require a lot of agility, it requires a ton of cross functional collaboration and at the end of the day it requires the support of your peer groups to be able to, you know, to be able to get that kind of work done.

Speaker B: I love it. Let's let you, you're sort of anticipating where I was going to go, which is about strategy. You had a really good slide as I recall in Denver on stage around what strategy is exactly. And uh, you know, oftentimes I've seen strategy is a, it's a deck, it's a PowerPoint and then it sort of lives in there. It's sort of this like dusty, musty artifact that like looks amazing on a projector and then like trickles out of the, everybody's Ears as soon as they sort of like leave the room where the, where the presentation was given. How do you see the role? What is a strap first off, Maybe what is strategy and how does transformation relate to it?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean we think of it this way. Strategy is the what, transformation is the bridge to the how. So right when you think about it, you have strategy and then you have, okay, I'm going to operationalize that strategy. Okay, well how are you going to do it? And to your point, you know, without execution, strategy is nothing more than a deck and some slides. So transformation is the bridge that turns that into. Not just. It's not just the how, but it's how. How is it then sustainable to be part of the business going forward? So we really bridge, um, we bridge strategy, we bridge why, we bridge what and then we, we make it to where it's a sustainable how for businesses.

Speaker B: Got it. So you need that transformation role to operationalize the strategy, you might say, like,

Speaker A: yeah, I, I think really we are the bridge. Absolutely. We are the bridge that enables that to uh, enables, enable strategy to happen in a way that is long term in the business.

Speaker B: Got it. That makes total sense. Your. And one of the things I loved about your presentation was that it was very full spectrum. Is that you, you. And as somebody who is sort of like a generalist by heart, at heart myself, like, I really appreciate it when you have someone presenting strategy, going into the technology and not being afraid of it, but also getting into the operations, the part process and the people end of it. And if you can, anyone who can sort of like talk to the detail, sort of like helicopter up, uh, to get the sort of like the big strategic view and then helicopter down to ground level and see like the actual details that make up really the success. So I kind of want to take some of these questions in the order that you presented them at, at Naw, starting with the technology a little bit. So you know, you had mentioned, uh, you got an ERP rollout coming next week. I'm, I'm shocked by the way that you have time to do this podcast with an ERP rollout. Like, um, you know, I, that's a testament I guess to the planning involved because normally ERP rollouts at this point in the timeline are just everyone's white knuckling like, you know, you know, it's

Speaker A: funny, my husband, my husband said to me this morning when I was getting ready for work, he said, how did you sleep last night? And I said I slept really good. Why? And he goes, because at some point in your sleep, you just kept screaming at someone and you kept saying P21, which is the ERP we're going to over and over again. And I said, really? I said, well, do me a favor, record me if I do that tonight so that I can mitigate anything that I might have been dreaming about. But I tell you what, we did a small rollout, uh, back in January of Canada, and it really was a microcosm of what we're doing in the US and we spent about six months in hypercare. We probably could have launched 60 days ago if we pushed it. Um, we got to the point where we almost launched over Memorial Weekend. And then we took a step back, we took a breather and said, you know what, let's take just 60 more days now. Uh, we have a firm launch date. Let's, let's button up some of those things and make sure everybody feels comfortable. And I tell you, I've been getting, uh, teams IMs all week from our store leadership and from sales leaders and everyone's ready to go. Like, they're like, can we turn it on now? So, um, yeah, you know, it's, we've planned, we've prepared, we've done everything we possibly can. So. Right. You should be calm a few days before. Right?

Speaker B: You should be. You should be. You should be. I think if you can disassociate really, really well, you can make that happen. Or scream in your sleep.

Speaker A: Maybe.

Speaker B: Um, maybe.

Speaker A: Yes, maybe. So screaming in your sleep works too.

Speaker B: Yeah, it does. Many, many of our customers are on P21. Actually. That's a very, very popular ERP, I'll say, in the space. So you have, you have this ERP project, you, uh, have a merger sort of, sort of like as the, as you know, instigating you in this role and sort of the way that you're thinking, thinking organizationally about transformation. What kind of systems and architecture were you starting with at the beginning of this? And what was the goal sort of driving the change? And as I recall, you had sort of an interesting perspective on this, or your business had interesting perspective on this. I'd love to sort of like shine some light on that particular interplay between the business need and sort of like what you had as an assessment of your systems.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great thing to unpack. So we started with a 40 year old homegrown green screen ERP, you know, as 400 mainframe. I mean workhorse. Right, Classic. Which a lot of us that started are familiar with. And absolutely, you Know, no disrespect to that system because it's been a phenomenal system for 40 years, but it was time for her to retire because it was limiting with respect to what we could do with new technology, API connections. You know, there's only so much you can do when you have this old mainframe, homegrown monolithic system. And that was the big, the big change in thought from us, right, was back in the 80s, it was the philosophy of I'm going to have this big monolithic system that's going to do everything, I'm going to customize it and we really change our perspective. And that is where the transformation come in, where we said, okay, you're going to have an erp, you're going to have, but you're going to go, we're going to go more to a micro services and micro application strategy, right, where you're not going to customize this ERP to be everything under the sun, right? It's going to be your transactional engine. But then the specific areas in the special sauce, we're going to look for technology that's going to very seamlessly integrate into that. And we're going to have, you know, a lot of, a lot of different systems based on best of breed versus one giant monolithic system, right? And that's really going to set us up for the future. Because if you think about it, technology, and I keep saying this because it's so true, right? Technology is moving so, so fast. You think about 20 years ago versus what happens in two years now. You know, you look at the phone in your pocket and how quick things are moving. So you don't want assistant, you want to be able to decouple things very easily. So that, let's say order management really makes a breakthrough, right? With AI and your ability to fulfill and optimize orders, you want to be able to have a system that's decoupled enough that you can take advantage of that modern technology and plug it in and continue to be relevant and continue to, you know, to serve your customer based on their new expectations. And at the same time, I think, you know, especially in wholesale, we have just this influx of retail expectation. You know, I joke, When I started 25 years ago, nobody knew what freight costed, right? If they said, oh, I need it overnight and they got a bill for whatever UPS red was, you know, which, which I still get made fun of because I see orange, blue and red, which, you know, blue does. Orange doesn't even exist. Yeah, yeah, blue is today. And uh, you know, red is overnight but, but you know, nobody knew what that cost, right? It was, I don't care, I need it. And you know, the retail aspect of, let's just say it like the Amazons of the world and even the Walmart, right, It created this perception of supply chain and it should be free, right? Shipping should be free and more transparency. And it kind of created a lot of these trends that started in retail but they're really coming into wholesale. So we have to be able to keep up with those trends in a, you know, in a way that maybe distributors didn't always have, have to historically. So decoupling from a, from a, you know I, if you think about it, right, you know, I think about a monolithic ERP is like a big tractor trailer that's trying to make a turn versus you know, versus something that's much more nimble. Where you've got these microservices M that are plugged in, those are like little sports cars that can make turns very quickly and it sets you up for the future and your ability to decouple where you need to take advantage of the latest and greatest technology. But to do that you also have to sometimes be willing to be comfortable with ROI that might not, you know, and I know I'm probably jumping ahead on you, but you gotta be willing, go for it. You gotta be willing to sometimes say I'm not aiming for perfect, I'm aiming to get 80% of what I need because at the end of the day that technology's probably gonna be obsolete in 24 to 36 months and you might be continually upgrading to something else.

Speaker B: So which is not something you say when you're asking for funding by the way, is like, well, I mean it's probably gonna be gone in three years. So like. But I need some money. I think one of the things that keeps businesses from pursuing a best in breed strategy is often the procurement process involved. Because now instead of one hand to shake or throat to choke, however violent you want to make the metaphor right now, there are, I've got, yeah, I've got discrete order management, I've got a pim, I've got dam M, I've got mdm, I've got analytics, I've got E Commerce, I've got cms, I've got, I could keep going really um, ad infinitum. But the process of like having to. And I think this, this comes back to the strategy and the planning actually the bridge to transformation that you're talking about. Because if you're encountering that if you're doing that on accident almost or not deliberately, you're going to be one of the wind up toys that keeps bumping into walls. You're like, oh, I need to get a this system and you, oh, I need an iPass. Oh, I need a, I need, you know, I need a front end as a service. Oh, I need this. But if you plan it out in advance, it's maybe more attainable. I'm curious about like when you sort of set out on this journey, how much did you know sort of at the beginning like where it was going to take you in terms of how microservice oriented and how best in breed you were going to create the solution?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, I think we were already prepared to, I mean coming from a 40 year homegrown system, I was, you uh, know, as a business we were very apt to challenge ourselves to say how do you not get into this situation again where you're dealing with such a heavy lift and so much fear and you know, and oh, by the way, right. ERP projects. And for us it took you know, four years from, from starting the journey to, to you know, where we'll finish, you know, and knowing that, how do you not do that over and over again? Because 40 years, 40 years from now is going to be a lot different as we know in technology. Right. Than it was for the last 40 years. Um, there's so many things that are coming, right. We've got quantum coming. I'm going to, you know, you talk about AI, there's so many things that are coming down the, you know, down the pike that are going to be revolutionary and transformative in the business. So how do we not get to a place where it's going to take us 40 years to evolve our system in the future? And that was really, I think where the question kind of stemmed from. Right. And then the research and the partnerships came from there. Um, EY was a great partner with us, uh, that we, you know, that we worked with to understand. We work with NTT a lot. You know, those are some, those are some companies that people are familiar with and really understanding. Okay, where, where are things going? And I'll tell you, just a lot of reading and you know, reading books. There's a, there's a ton of books we could talk about. Yeah, that, that, that, yeah, that talk about where, you know, where is the future going? One of my favorite is uh, uh, was recommended to, to a good friend who's also a member at Naw, and it's called the Singularity is Nearer, um, by Kurzweil. I mean what a book, right? Like understanding, you know, not only where we're going, but you know, he paints a good picture of showing the data of how we got here and how quick things is moving. And it's very, it's a very data driven book to show you, you know, he's not just pulling, pulling, you know, stuff out of a sci fi book. And it's really important to educate yourself to think about, okay, how do I. You're never going to be able to 100 future proof because we don't know what the future holds. If we did, we, you and I would probably be sitting on a beach, you know, a private island that we own.

Speaker B: I would be making uh, I, uh, would have a lot more money. Like for sure. The horses, I'd be doing the horses every, uh. There we go. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, so, but, but so, so the question wasn't, you know, how do we, how do we plan for what we don't know. It was more how do we plan to be as agile as possible knowing the speed of which technology is moving? And that was really the question that we had for ourselves. And then at the same time, you know, we want to go on. We've done several, several acquisitions over the last few years. Um, but that continues to be a trend in distribution wholesale. So the other question was how do we get to a point that we can really, you know, make these almost cookie cutter. Right. And not get into a situation too where we're just bolting things on and building a Frankenstein. So how do we create an architecture that enables us to very quickly and rapidly integrate businesses in. And this was another piece that was enabling us to do that.

Speaker B: I love that sort of deliberately planning for agility, um, as a goal at the beginning. It's a rare thing to do, I think, but it's very valuable to the business in light of the rapid pace of not only technological change, but channel change as well and customer expectations. And I do want to talk a little bit about that because you, as I said, you sort of, as a generalist, you kind of like went through kind of the, all the phases of digital transformation. You talked about customer experience. We do all of this for them at some level, which is like to make it easier for our customers, to make it easier for our buyers. I can imagine if you're going through a lot of M and A, like a lot of companies, distribution are because it's frankly the easiest way to show Top line growth. Ah. How were your customers engaging with you? And how do you build? How do you, how did your customers view what ADI was? If, if ADI was really going to be like half a dozen different companies wearing a trench coat, pretending to be one company, which is what happens a lot of times, like for some period of time after that. So what are your, what were your buyers telling you? Like, how did they see all of this activity?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think at the end of the day, right, our job is to make it easy. It's to make it easy for our customers. Right. Uh, one of, one of our leaders, he uses the phrase a lot. Frictionless commerce and to be, you know, how do you eliminate friction? So we do a lot of work here, um, with customer journey mapping. We do employee and customer NPS surveys once a quarter. Um, a lot of surveys, customer councils, right? Customers are going to tell you what they're looking for. And we have kind of a core value. And then we have, I'm going to call it a tagline of our integration. So we have a core value and it's, it's the first of our core values. And it start with the customer. And then we had a tagline for this integration, which was even better together. Which was the thesis of our deal model, right, Was that as a whole, we're going to be so much stronger than, you know, then, then our parts, right? The sum of the whole is going to be significantly better. The joke was one plus one is going to equal nine, right? And people were like, what does that mean? Right? It doesn't equal to. It doesn't equal three, it's going to equal nine. Uh, you know, how do we bring these two together and be even better together? So, you know what, what I'll say is we made that kind of our litmus test for everything that we were doing, where we were investing. And the question was, are we starting with the customer? And is the customer going to say that that decision reads as even better together? Yes or no. And if I'm the customer and you make this decision, or you make this change and it's not even better together. You lied to me, right? You didn't build trust. You're not making things easier. And, and if it didn't pass that test, then we said we're not doing it, or maybe we need to slow. You know, these are areas where if it passed the test, accelerate, and these are areas where if it doesn't pass that test, maybe it's okay to take a step back and finesse we do a lot of piloting. You, uh, know, which is great for a global organization. I don't have to, you know, do something across 200 branches or stores globally. I can do it in one market, finesse it a little bit and you know, kind of go slow to go fast. So those are some of the other things we did. Taking that customer feedback all along the way and constantly iterating and you know, at the end of the day, customers want speed, they want simplicity and they want consistency and they tell you whether or not you're doing right with their wallet. So, you know, what I'd say is so far, so far so good. Right? They're telling us we're doing the right thing.

Speaker B: That's perfect. I'd love to drill in on this a little bit. Can you share any examples? Because I love the decision making and I want to slow down on that a bit. Your decision making process was is this making the customer happier? Is the customer seeing a better together story as a result of this decision that we are making? And to be clear, that is a conversation you are having internally with your teams at a point where you, you have a choice to make between the path A, path B. Right, yeah, absolutely. Um, do you have an example of that playing out, uh, in either direction that you can think of?

Speaker A: You know, I mean a great example would be on marrying things like freight policies. Right. You might have different policies in the company, right. Your legacy company and your acquisition company. There's, there's variances and there's different. So policies are a great one where you say, okay, you know, I'm going to make a change and I have to harmonize things to come together. You have to harmonize certain policies and whatnot. The question is, if I'm the customer and the decision you're making on harmonization, is this better for me or is this worse? And at the end of the day, if it's worse doesn't always mean you don't do it. It means that creates a much higher level of accountability and scrutiny at the executive sterico level to say, are we really sure we want to do that? Right. Because if I'm the customer, I don't know if I buy that. Are you putting more inventory into the locations or are you pulling it out because you're trying to decentralize and strip? You know, we all know about synergies in integration, right? But you know, for us it was how do we, how do we do more? And um, I'm happy to say within one year, you know, we have more than 5,000 more SKUs available in cross sell. Across both organizations, we've expanded. You know, Snap had something like 46 locations. We've opened an additional four where we already had those locations. But we added local support, more inventory. You know, I keep saying even better together. Generally to me as a customer means I'm getting more, not less. So uh, what are you, you know, what are you giving me? And again is, are you getting faster? Are you making, you know, are you simplifying things for me and am I getting a consistent experience from your sales team and from your supply chain? And if you answer yes to those things, I'm generally going to reward you with my business. If, if you're taking things away and making it harder to do business with because you're trying to squeeze any, every penny, you know, out of it, uh, I'm probably going to go somewhere else. And in wholesale distribution they have a choice of uh, where else to go.

Speaker B: So, you know, that's very true. Yeah, yeah. And it's a, it's a low margin business ultimately compared to others. Right. And so like you have to, your customers have to stay happy for the value to be delivered to them and to you. Have you had, I'm super curious, like, have you had feedback from any of your customers, like, or digital branch managers or physical branch managers? Is there anybody that's, are you doing nps? Are you deploying sort of like customer CSAT metrics? What are you seeing in general or what are you hearing anecdotally from, from, from people on the ground?

Speaker A: Yeah, we do. We send out um, NPS surveys once a quarter and our NPS score continues to be world class. Um, we are getting great feedback. We launched three, well, four now four pilot, uh, locations where again where we had stores that were legacy ADI stores didn't have the assortment and the expertise that our acquisition stores had. We added hundreds of SKUs, more than a million dollars worth of inventory at some of these locations that you know, that we piped in and the customers are loving it. They love that we understand what made the company we acquired so special in terms of product availability and expertise because they were, they were very strong in audio visual with a lean towards residential. We were very strong in security with a lean towards, I'd say more commercial. So that's kind of the precipice of you bring them m together and it's even better together. Right. We were, we were to begin with not so much competitive as we were complementary. So it, it truly is even better Together. Not to say we didn't compete in the markets, but by and large, again we were two, you know, two complimentary organizations that by coming together, give both of our respective core customers access to more expertise, more training, more products, just benefits all down the road. So we're really leaning into that. And I'll tell you, the customers that came into Omaha was actually Omaha, Nebraska was our first prototype 3.0 store that we opened. Um, just because we leaned in. We already had, you know, had construction going already and we really leaned in when the deal got closed. So within four months after closing, we had a store that was a complete store that was a representation of what the new CO was going to be with assortments again, staff that was both security trained and trained and expertise there. More products, more, more of everything local. And the customers love it. Because at the end of the day that's what a distributor is. Right. If you don't have products that I need when I need them, where I need them at a competitive price, like what are you doing here?

Speaker B: What are you doing here? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, one of the things that's really, this is sort of a sidebar, but one of the things that I'm seeing here in talking to people is um, the expectations for distributors keep getting higher. It used to be I have this stuff and I can get you this stuff. And it feels like I'm seeing a lot more value add services being added by distributors where that was almost like a separate channel for a lot for, for years and years and years you had like local installers and they ran a business. You had VARs, had a business. You see more, more things like vendor managed inventory and um, service and support. And even depending on the product like education and training is part of it. Consulting services is a big thing for a lot of folks where that would have been a totally separate entity that you would go talk to and now the distributor has some kind of capacity to deliver. I'm generally curious, do you feel like the bar for what it means to be a distributor is changing in your industry? Is it, is it moving beyond, okay, we've got the stuff in the local branch and we can get it to you. Is there other components of what customer satisfaction, customer success look like from your point of view?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think having the stuff is table stakes. Just to be in the game, you have to have um, the stuff. And the other thing I'll say that I think's evolved especially around distribution is two day networks, at least in our space, two day ground Parcel networks, it's not good enough anymore. Proximity and the expectation of proximity continues to be important and I think it's significantly important. Right. So you see some distributors that have backed off the brick and mortar. You know, our strategy is to double down on that brick and mortar strategy and really lean in to what's local and what's available. Because we think proximity and again, when I talk about technology and where 3D printing is going, we think proximity is going to continue to be something that's important and where the direction is going. Right. So less too much centralization, decoupling where you're two days away, more. How do you get closer and more intimate to the customer? Right. You talked about that vendor managed inventory and things like that. So I think just simply having the inventory again at a competitive price is table stakes. And it's the services that become the special sauce and the ability to trust the distributor, that they're reliable, that they know the products. You know, that expertise. I mean if I was just wanting to buy a box and ship it to me, I gotta be honest with you, there's plenty of E tellers that do that incredibly well. What distribution brings and continues to bring in that value and those services and those, you know, software and different things that we do, really understanding our customers and what their needs are, that's, that's what makes us incredibly different and what's going to continue to make us different as, as the revolution of technology continues to happen.

Speaker B: Perfect. Yeah, totally, totally agree. Okay, I want to now switch to what for me was the most compelling part of your presentation, which was on culture and people, which is something that, you know, I go through a lot of these sessions and um, there's a, there are, there's, there's like a whole separate track on like workforce development and stuff like that. But what you get in a lot of those is I would say kind of uh, an HR process driven look at, you know, recruiting and retention and training and development. The specific challenge of taking a actually multiple companies worth of teams, people with overlapping roles I would expect and titles and expectations, and then driving, driving a course, setting a culture of okay, here's the North Star, here's what we are going to from a, uh, corporate architecture, from a governance, from an organizational chart standpoint, from an IT standpoint and moving everybody's cheese and getting them on the same page and actually pouring into those goals. Not just like reluctantly doing what their boss is telling them, but actually advocating for new ideas and better ideas. That whole part of the story that you Told was really interesting. I'd love to share that. And partly it's because the technology advice do I do microservices, do I do monoliths, how do I arrange it, Do I keep the green screen, um, or which ERP do I choose? Do I do multiple erps? There's always, um, company specific dependencies and legacy decisions and OPEX and capex limitations that change specifically what technology you might pick. But human nature, it's pretty much the same everywhere I found. Um, so we're pretty universal firmware for people. So ah, I regularly. Anybody that listens to this podcast regularly will have a bingo card for every time I trot out Conway's Law, which is basically like organizations produce designs that copy the communication structure of the organization. And it's a software adage really, which is saying that you get the software system you get reflects the org chart of the people who made the software. Like you tend to just replicate the same patterns like over and over again. So you have to change the org to change the technology. I would love to hear how you did that and take as much time as you want to on this because I seem to recall there were some really great stories uh, in this, in this part of the talk.

Speaker A: So, So I mean, I think you're spot on. Right. Culture is where the work happens. Like you can have the best plan on a deck that you want to your point that culture is what's going to dictate whether or not you're, you're really able to execute. And one of the things that I love to do that, you know, I think is really critical is we theme our large transformation initiatives. And the reason I do that is because you hit the nail on the head. You're going to have a lot of cross functional teams. Right. And they're all going to have their own individual priorities and quirks. So one of the things that's really important is you have to have a banner that you all rally around around. So hopefully I do not get sued by George Lucas or anybody by saying this, but we had two big transformative initiatives, one which was the ERP and we coined that one Project Avengers. And we used a lot of the themes around the Avengers. Right. In terms of. And what's funny is everybody would ask me, they're like, wow, you must be a big Marvel fan. And truth be told, I haven't seen any of them. Yeah, but, but my kids had and they, they've educated me well on, on what it means. Right. But we talked about how, you know, different Skill sets. Iron sharpens iron, right? We can't all be Hulk. I do know the Incredible Hulk from the 80s. Loved the series, right? Because if we all come in and we approach things with Hulk, we're going to probably have a bunch of broken processes everywhere, right. That we're trying to rebuild. So, you know, we, we very purposely think about a banner that everyone can rally behind. So whether you're from operations or finance, it doesn't matter, right? You are an Avenger and you're on Team Avengers and you're going to put your cape on. And we set the tenets of that project team that we live and breathe by. And when we did the integration, right, we were bringing two companies. Again, complementary, but there was still some competitive nature in the industry, right. We still bumped up against each other. So there's that sense of, of competition and there was that sense of, you know, who's getting acquired here and you know what's going on. And for that one, that one was called Project, Project Rebel alliance, right? Where you know, hey, we're fighting something bigger, bigger and better out there. We're going to be a bunch of rebels together. We're going to ally together. Even though we might be coming from different backgrounds and different places and spaces, right? And we're going to put something together. And again, we create themes and tenants around that. And you know, I think it's really important because don't underestimate that teams have to have something to connect with. And yes, you're going to have your core values and you're going to have your vision statement, but when you're dealing with these big transformative projects, you have to have something that people can latch onto, right? That, that, that. It doesn't matter what background you come from, whether you came from a legacy org or an acquired, but it doesn't matter. We are all marching under this project manner, right? And we set what our tenants are very clearly. Kind of like I talked about, start with the customer and even better together, right? We set some really clear guidelines so that we're all very clearly, myself included, I'm like, don't hesitate to call me out if I'm making a decision that isn't starting with the customer and even better together. I expect you to challenge me on that, right? And we should all be challenging one another in an above the line fashion, right? So we set that freedom for everyone to be able to bring that. And then the other piece is you have to operationalize it. And we're very good at putting a, uh, management Operating system, we call it an Mosquito. And that's really around the rhythm and the visibility that we need for the initiatives. Right. So when we put the Rebel alliance together, we did it functionally. We had 12 squads. Um, each squad got to pick what their squad name was. Finance took Mando Squad so they could constantly tell us this is the way. Um, I actually thought HR Legal would have grabbed that one. But either way, it was Finance. Right. So there were, there were different squads that they all picked from, you know, from different Star wars themes. They had their own logos, we had swag behind it. Um, we then had. Every Friday there was, uh, basically what we called was a, was a squadron call. So each squad leader would get on the call. Every Friday we would report out because it's such a cross functional transformation. Right? Everyone needs to know what's happening and what's going on. Uh, we did a lot of recognition. Um, if somebody was recognized, we would then, you know, say the alliance thanks you and send them swag and things like that. And all those things that sometimes feel, you know, little. You can't underestimate them, right? Because it's what, it's what gets people going. Right. And it's what keeps you in the, in those moments of despair, those moments of frustration, just for somebody else to reach their hand out and grab you and lift you up. Right. And do that. So we really put a lot of focus on a branding those initiatives. Right? Bringing us all together under something, talking openly to, uh, you know, something you'll hear me say a lot. I talk about the trough of despair when you're going through change and that moment where it's like everything is dark and terrible and the excitement has faded away. Right? And we're. And that's okay too, right? Because we normalize that. We support each other through it. We do things like not just town halls, but I actually did a series that was called Real Talk, um, that was 15 minute videos that were coming out every week or every Friday. And it was based on things that came out of employee voice surveys. What are your concerns? What are bothering you about these projects? And you could submit any question to me and I'd answer it and sometimes I'd answer bluntly and say, hey, I don't know the answer to that. Right. Um, but here's, here's what we're working on to try to get you that answer and we're going to keep you informed. I mean, you know, I, the way I like to describe it is if you ever played Mad Libs as A kid. Right. If you aren't being transparent with your team, they're just going to fill in the adjectives and the verbs on their own, and the story is going to be crazy. I mean, I heard crazy things when we, you know, when we first did the acquisition, uh, I, you know, I heard we were closing all the stores and we're like, things that just weren't even. And how do you get around it? You get around it by telling what's telling the truth and telling people how it is. And, yeah, things are going to be hard. And here's what's going to be hard. And, you know, we really led with that sense of transparency so that it was like, you have the freedom. You know, I tell people my team's calendar is always updated. If you see an open spot and you have a conversation you want to have, that spot's for you. Just take it, you know, because I'd rather us, uh, be talking about it and us communicating the truth than, you know, and again, I'm going to tell you if it's something, hey, I can't talk about that versus folks assuming things are going down the wrong path. So, you know, we establish a banner to rally behind. We set up an MOS that really, really focuses on transparency and supporting one another. And that transparency isn't just the squad leaders. Right. Building camaraderie across the squads, but it's also all the way down, you know, at every level of the organization that anyone feels like they could pick up the phone and call me at any time or we had an email box that was set up that I regular. I still check it to this day, and I'm going to answer your question within 24 hours. So, 48, if I have to get legal involved.

Speaker B: What's your SL? Yeah, you the SLA for legal at all times.

Speaker A: 48. If I have to ask legal and HR for their opinion. I love legal and HR, if you're listening.

Speaker B: I love you guys if you're not listening. Allies, a safe place. See which. See what you really think, you know,

Speaker A: um, they keep me out of trouble, is. Is what I think.

Speaker B: That's right. That's right. Risk mitigation as a service. So. Well, I. I think that was really, really good advice. And I think that whole section just like, really resonated with me as someone who's been through multiple sort of like M and A activities and corporate restructures or just regular. Even BAU can generate like, a certain amount of fog in an org sometimes. Uh, if you're not clearly communicating as leaders, like, what is the goal? Where are we going? What metrics are we optimizing for? How do we know what success is? Everybody needs to know jointly what success is for them to sort of like be a part of making it happen, I think. And that's something that I think gets missed sometimes in org charts. I want to ask our sort of a wrap up question because I know we're close on time here. Fair to say you've been doing this a while. Nine years at adi. And I think you said you'd been in wholesale distribution for. Was it 15, 20, 25. 25. 25. Okay, 25 years. Yeah. If you have one piece of advice to give to a peer who is about to embark on a similar journey, let's say someone has just been asked to be the Chief Transformation Officer in reasonably similar circumstances or unofficially asked, like, hey, in your side hustle. Can you, can you do this? Which is way more common. What would you give them? What, what, like, what would you tell them? And then what's the most surprising thing you learned from this whole process at adi? And you could take those in any order you want?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think what I would tell them is, you know, me coming from an operations background, I tended to be a little, probably a little bit more black and white. Right. Because you have a process and you have a standard process and you execute to the standard process. And everybody in operations knows that. You say, well, is there an SOP and am I executing to it? And we go from there. Moving into transformation, I had to learn sometimes the hard ways. Don't underestimate the emotional journey. Uh, you know, my kids would tell you, I'm not a super huggy mom, and I've had to learn to be a little more huggy in the transformation journey. And that's been great for me too. But you know, as a leader, me having to learn and change and do things right, you know, expect people to want to know the why, not just the how. Right. Again, transformations. The bridge between the why and the how. So you have to put those pieces together and learn how to tell that story in a way that you're comfortable. But what I, uh, won't say it surprised me, but it just reinforced things, is just how much people will rise when you give them purpose, clarity and support. Right. When you tell your team members, here's, here's where we're going, here's why we're going here, you do it in a way that, that shows that you trust them. Right. That you, that you respect one another. As I say, we're all here generally to put a roof over, you know, roof over our heads and food in our bellies for ourselves and our families. And you assume best intent, and you support one another. Coming from that approach, you'd be amazed what people will accomplish. And don't underestimate the significance of that. And I will absolutely say, do not tolerate leaders that don't lead that way, leaders that undermine, or leaders that, you know, are rowing in the other direction. Um, I use the phrase to. In the locker room. I don't care how good you are out on the field. If you're to it, you have no place in my locker room. And I would tell every other leader, I don't care how good the person is and what results they get. If the behavior is not there, get them out of your locker room.

Speaker B: Very nice. Very nice. You Cowboys fan? Eagles fan?

Speaker A: Like, I'm an Eagles fan.

Speaker B: You're an Eagles fan, You know. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. Very nice.

Speaker A: I'm gonna, uh. I'm definitely not a Cowboys fan.

Speaker B: I was just checking. I was just checking.

Speaker A: I do live in Dallas, so it makes it about two games a year. It's awkward with my husband, who is a Cowboys fan. It gets a little.

Speaker B: You get to do the whole house divided thing. Right. So gets.

Speaker A: It gets a little tense.

Speaker B: Although.

Speaker A: Although. I mean, I'll. I'll put my last 25 years up against his.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I think that's a pretty safe bet. I. So I'm from. I'm from northwest Louisiana and grew up m. Uh, in Cowboys country and grew up hating them. So, um, I'll root for anybody but the Cowboys in any. Any given day. Um, look, Ali, I really appreciate this. I always ask once you just alienated,

Speaker A: by the way, like, all of. All of, you know, North Texas.

Speaker B: And part of that, they already know that. I will have that conversation. Anytime we want to talk SEC football, I'll have that. UT is now. Uh, come on, let's. Let's. Let's. I'll have that conversation. Gladly.

Speaker A: Here's episode two, Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I always ask one sort of surprise question at the end, and you might have already answered it. Actually, very weirdly, you would be the first guest to have done so. But I always ask everybody who comes on the podcast, what is one piece of media? Could be a book, could be a, uh, movie, could be, uh, a magazine article, could be a newspaper, blog, podcast. Anything that you have read, watched, smelled, whatever in the last couple of months that stood out to you that you would recommend to other people. You did name drop Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. Uh, he's got a couple of books on this topic. Yeah.

Speaker A: The Singularity is Nearer is phenomenal. I recommend everyone to read that. And I'll tell you what I'm reading right now. I'm only about a hundred pages in, but it is, it is amazing. I started it the other night and I don't want to put it down. It's called Apple in China. Um, I can't remember who's, who's writing it, but it's basically you know, about how Apple's, Apple's supply chain and um, you know, the geopolitical events. Right. That have, that have influenced Apple supply chain and how China kind of has Apple over a barrel a little bit, um, with supply chain and I, you know, so again I'm reading it right now and I don't want to put it down because it's truly that good.

Speaker B: So so far, okay, it's good. It's by Patrick McGee. I think it's, it's number ah, one bestseller, uh, in the computers and technology section on Amazon. So pick it up at your bookstore near you or on your Kindle. Uh, Ali, great recommendations. Thanks so much for, for coming on here and sharing all of this. I really appreciate it. This was uh, a good conversation and a great reiteration for me of, of a lot of the points that you shared um, earlier this year. Best of luck to you. Best uh, of luck to um, the Eagles, uh, and you can tell all the people in Texas I said so. Uh, and I, uh, hope that uh, we will see you again at some point in the not too distant future. Speaking again, uh, or out of the show.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Go Birds.

Speaker B: Go birds. Thanks Ally.

Speaker A: Thank you, Aaron.

Speaker B: This episode is brought to you by Oro, a leading innovator and provider of customer driven, powerful and connected open source software for B2B digital transformation. Oro seeks to build long term trustful relationships with its customers, integrators, developers and technology partners by empowering people with the best tools to digitalize their business. Find out more@oroinc.com that's O R-O-I-N C.com thank you for listening to B2B Commerce Uncut A Journey Through Change Powered by Oro. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.