S2 - Ep 1 | Sparkflow Transforming Data Analytics for the Equipment Finance Industry ft. John Perry

Speaker A: Welcome to yet another episode of Livebyte where we dive in the latest technology, custom software solutions and success stories by enabling tech and business processes. Well, for today we have with us John Perry. He is a business minded IT leader who seeks to serve the business's goals with the right information at the right time for the right person. His specialties are business intelligence and data warehousing, ERP implementation software, application design, business process design and technology enablement. He recently joined uh, liventus after the sparkflow acquisition which happened just a few months ago. So, welcome to the podcast, John.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Danielle. And it's great to be on the podcast and to be part of Levintis.

Speaker A: Yeah, fun, very fun. Um, so, so why don't we just start, uh, for the audience, why don't you explain what the sparkflow solution does in general terms?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, absolutely. So it is a piece of web based software that allows us to build data analytics from any variety of data sources. So that could be any variety of core systems, whether those are ERP systems, banking systems, medical, health information systems. Anywhere where there's data, we can extract that data into a data warehouse, transform it into meaningful business terminology and produce um, analytics that allow the business to see and gain insight into what's happening in their business. We use Microsoft, uh, as a platform and that is very powerful in what we do. And based on that we build a lot, if not all of our analytics around the Power BI tool set that Microsoft, uh, provides.

Speaker A: Nice, that sounds really powerful in my experience with, you know, so before we acquired sparkflow, labintus did dip our toes into this because ultimately all roads lead to data. I would always say like every time we'd have a client come in like that.

Speaker B: Can I steal that?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's true, it's true. Like once people get access to their data or get a taste for just builds from there and they unlock all these opportunities, uh, to kind of avoid potholes. So it's such a critical thing and an excellent rounding out of love interest is offering, uh, so we're really excited about it. So on that note, why don't you tell us a little bit more about this acquisition and what does it bring to the table for both Leventus and Spark?

Speaker B: That's a good question. I think sparkflow fills the gap in the wide offering of services that Leventus provides to clients. So where Leventus is more focused on custom software development, we bring a uh, talented team of customer focused data engineers who can turn the data into information and turn that information into insight for our customers. So the various systems that Liventis has built for clients and the volumes of the data that they produce in those systems as well as the other systems potentially in use at ah, clients we've got this big sea of data and there's a huge need for analytics around the collective clients data, not just out of the core systems but also these extensions that Liventis has built as well. So our team knows many and most of the systems, they know data and we can partner up with our clients to harvest the incredible insight from the wealth of data that comes through sparkflow.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Sounds just like a kind of a perfect puzzle piece fit. And again we did a little bit of it, but it's really great to have a team that's dedicated to that type of solution and really goes deep in it because like with any technology it's always changing. Right. So as much as things, there's a lot of stability, there's a lot of new um, technologies to stay on board, to stay up to speed on and it's nice to have a team that that's their focus because it's a deep enough subject to have people. That's all they do. Sure is um, so kind of expanding a little bit more on the acquisition. Um, and you kind of touched on this, but what are some of the synergies that made this acquisition feel like a, ah, kind of perfect fit for both companies? Maybe get into. You talked about how the solution, how um, living to this custom software and this kind of uh, bridges it into data. Ah, but what are kind of other elements that you know, especially now that we're a couple months in. I know this is new to you but what your experience has been so far.

Speaker B: Yeah, so we've had some pretty extensive experience with Leventus since uh, a sister division was acquired by Leventus about three and a half years ago. So we've continued to work collaboratively on projects with that group and with uh, Leventus overall. So we came into the acquisition quite familiar with many of the clients that we still share today that we do analytics. The custom software team does their custom software development and then there's other Leventus clients that, that we've been brought in to partner with. So in a way we've been an extension of Loventus for quite a while. But now being officially part of Leventus is almost a formality.

Speaker A: I think that's a really good point. That's a good point. Yes. Uh, yeah, and you're right if you've been um, kind of a sister or a sideline company for a couple years but to have you in house kind of unlocks, you know, it's just easier for us to explain the story to our clients. You're part of the company, it doesn't feel like being referred out or anything. Not that it was before, but it's just a little bit more of a one stop shop for everybody.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker A: So, um, you know, now that you're part of uh, the Ventas formally and can leverage more of the resources and things like that more easily. Not that you couldn't before, but I think it's a bit more seamless now. You know, is there new features or improvements or things that you know, you're, you know, even with or without the acquisition, what, what could kind of the future hold for?

Speaker B: Sure, sure. Uh, that's something I'm really excited about. In joining Leventis, uh, we were a very small, relatively small, tight knit group at sparkflow before the acquisition and so we had a small dedicated team that was working hard, delivering great solution for customers but we were pretty conservative in how we invested in the product itself. So we've had for quite a while a large roadmap of backlog and features that we'd like to add to the product that we feel like we're going to have the opportunity to invest in going forward with Leventus, uh, we have the Leventus India team being part of the corporate resources that can help us really build and improve on our product and we're looking forward to making many of these features that we've hoped for and had in our backlog as a part of a reality of the product. So our internal team has known how to work with sparkflow and, and for many years we make it work. But it's a matter of with the recent growth that we've had before the acquisition, our customers are actually becoming much, much more involved in doing their own development using the sparkflow toolset. And I'll say that there's quite a few, let's call them idiosyncrasies to the software.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That our team knows and understands uh, where those are and we work with the software but it's not as seamless of an experience as we'd like to have in our customers hands. So we'd really like to improve um, on how to make sparkfloor a really user friendly tool for building data warehouses and building the analytics. So that's something that we have some great opportunity as part of labentis to really improve upon. Another thing that we've done is that we've built around core systems for a few enterprise resource planning systems, ERPs as they're known. And this gives us repeatable templates, repeatable processes that we can really quickly implement for customers and get from data to that insight, operational insight deeply into the organization. We can get there very quickly. So the SparkFlow tool set and the solutions we've built using it allow us to extend into those customers at a really rapid pace. So then our customers can extend the analytics to any of their own customizations that they may have done in their core system and to bring data from outside of that core system that erp to enhance the overall picture of everything that's happening in the business, both inside and out of the business. So we look at opportunities, uh, as we've joined Leventus, there's a great core expertise in the equipment leasing and finance industry. And so we're really excited to partner with the thought leadership that exists at Leventus and with, we can bring similar solutions to that industry where we'll focus on the top three or four equipment leasing management systems and then have ready to install solutions that have built in expertise and intelligence into those systems into the equipment leasing industry. So that's exciting to have a new set of knowledge, but then to apply our tool and solution to bring rapid change and rapid implementation for new customers.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great point. On the equipment, uh, leasing and finance industry, it's like any industry, it's, you know, everybody's at a different level of technology maturity and adoption. And as we work with more and more clients and move them from Excel and QuickBooks to, you, uh, know, the goal, the primary goal becomes automating the process, reducing redundancies, manual entry, all that kind of stuff. But once we do that, once we've put someone online, let's just say it then, now they can access their data because it's out of archaic systems that can't really be leveraged very easily. But once they're in a modern software solution, now they can get easy access to their data. And to your point, what a nice journey as we bring them online, get them off of some outdated, um, technologies and processes and then the next step is leverage all that data now that they have access to, because they need tools to access that data you talked about, you know, not just from one system. Many companies use several systems to run their processes and uh, their functions. And so you may need data from multiple systems which, and from data that

Speaker B: Comes from outside of systems as well from the industry, from outside sources that can really enhance the quality of information that companies get beyond just their four walls and the four walls of their systems.

Speaker A: Yeah, if they're just looking internal, they may be missing, you know, they're just looking at themselves and they may not, they'd be missing huge opportunities. Um, and yeah, those without uh, a standalone data warehouse, you're not going to be able to bring all the data together. So that's really a ah, nice kind of continuum, um, you know, for any industry. But yes, the equipment finance uh, industry does have um, um, you know I think they're particularly kind of primed for that at the moment. Okay. So you know we've brought in, as we talked about your data analytics expertise and it's you know, just mentioned it's unlocking a lot of potential with our clients and a lot of synergies uh, before. What else can clients and users look forward to? Is there anything else that you see as a result of this acquisition?

Speaker B: Sure. Danielle and I mentioned uh, we've brought tremendous solutions to a few specific ERP systems. M& we've proven that the analytics we produce using those systems really drive performance and growth and insight for those clients. And so we're actively looking to expand into other ERP systems whether they're on premise, whether they're in the cloud, uh, to develop connectivity to those systems to bring a, ah, similar insight to users of other ERP systems. Systems are generally very similar in the data that they produce, but each system is a bit nuanced in how they achieve the results of how to operate the company. I like to say that every system is the same, it's just different and uh, they, they operate in a similar way. So uh, one of, one of the great things is that we have learned so much from our customers in terms of how they measure and analyze themselves. Um, there are ways that we've never even thought of. We don't operate their business the way they do on a day to day basis. So we learn with every client that we go to, we take the insights that we've gained from each customer and incorporate the solutions that they, how they look at how they operate, how they analyze themselves and bring those uh, to a more full fledged suite of power BI analytics to all of our customers and make those available to already implemented customers and bringing the full suite of insight to everyone that we do business with. So we're constantly learning, we're constantly improving and the solution gets better every day with every customer and Every bit of knowledge and insight that we come across with each customer.

Speaker A: You know, you brought up customers. One of my favorite things is, you know, kind of case studies or hearing stories about customers and um, is there kind of a favorite case study or story you like to tell about a client who you implemented and kind of how they leverage the data and their results? Um, you know, any one that comes to mind of kind of one of that, you know, you always remember this specific story.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I do have one that uh, didn't go the way that we expected. So uh, sometimes you learn a lot when you're, when you're having to think on the fly and work on the fly. So we have a customer in the Midwest who is restricted by governmental regulations that we can't actually access their network. So typically we're working in tandem with the customer, working on their hardware in their environment and accessing their systems and data. Well, we found out just before the go live or the start date of the project that we would need to work every bit of this installation through their local people that were on site and we would essentially be flying by wire at that point from thousands of miles away. Uh, no ability to put our hands on the, on the systems and touch that and investigate and interrogate the data ourselves. So that ended up being probably one of the best implementations that we've had for a couple of different reasons. One is that we had to communicate to our customer how to do what we do. And there is a big benefit to actually verbalizing our process and translating that to the business or uh, the technical users on the other side. That has been something that we didn't plan, but it's been a huge, huge benefit because that customer knows sparkflow, knows the process, knows the system and the way to make the data sing better than any of our other clients because of the restrictions we had placed on us. So what initially seemed like a pretty big roadblock has turned into a huge benefit. Uh, where that client is super self sufficient doing things that uh, that few other clients have been able to do just because of their dedicated involvement in the whole process. From end to end they have taken, we've, we've learned from them, as I mentioned, we learned from our customers. Just ways that they've worked with the system, worked with the data, built it out and really owned it themselves has been really fantastic. They are a uh, great reference client. We're going to a trade show here in February and our client lead is going to be speaking with us at Our Sightline User Network conference in, in February and uh, representing their process and their systems and how they've benefited from sparkflow. So it's really exciting.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's such a good story because it really, like you said, stretched you as an organization, made you do something different than you normally would have done it. But the benefit, well the other benefit was kind of when you stop and verbalize your process, you learn about your process. Sometimes you just go through the motions and now that you have it probably documented, you're like, oh, that I'll fix that. Or at least now you can explain it to other people so much easier. It's not just in your head, that type of thing. The other thing I love that I heard in that story was uh, something we tried to do here at the Ventus since I've been here is, you know, we are interested in making our clients as self sufficient as possible. And a lot of this technology does require us to stay around and we do and we will, but we want to keep it to just what you really need a developer for. And as much as we can unlock that for them, I think people like to have a little bit of sense of control and hands in there when they can. And if they can't, not all clients can do that. Some of the clients have to turn everything over to us and that we can handle that as well. But really giving them kind of the keys to the kingdom themselves to some degree, um, really empowers clients. And I think what you were saying too is, you know, unlock the tool more than you would have because you're not a business user. So with a little bit more power they've been able to explore a little bit further perhaps and um, push it more than you would have because you're not building a business like they are. Absolutely interesting stories for sure. Those are, those are fun hard at the moment, right in the moment you're like, oh my gosh, I can't do this. Why has this come up now?

Speaker B: How is this going to work? It's worked fantastic.

Speaker A: How long ago was this?

Speaker B: Uh, this was about a year or so ago that they have had taken it on and just to give a little bit more color to it. They had a very complex environment in that they didn't have just one system. They actually had five different equivalent ERP systems that we're sourcing the data from and bringing it all together in a consolidated staging database and then working from there, uh, in a consistent way. So with operations in Europe and Australia and the US So multiple Companies, multiple systems, one data warehouse, one page of sheet music to sing from.

Speaker A: That's a pretty good story I have to say. You've got a global company with five different ERPs, which sounds like a lot. Um, and now you've come all the way that they're co presenting with you.

Speaker B: Yes, it's a great success story.

Speaker A: I like it, I like it. Um, so as we were talking about before, you know, you've got um, you had a great team with sparkflow and now being part of Love Vintage Family, you have deeper access to more resources and possibly, you know, that's what we're exploring, you know, possibly more business potential as we can kind of push this, what I talked about earlier, this journey, you know, you build to get people online, so to speak, and all of a sudden they can uh, they now can leverage their data and we can implement a SparkFlow solution to do that. But now that you're here and you see you've been in more formally here, you're right, you've been on the sidelines a couple years, but now that you've got the full kind of, you've got full access to everything, how do you see sparkflow transforming in the next few years now that you're officially under living to.

Speaker B: Sure, it's a great question, It's a big question.

Speaker A: Um, look into the future.

Speaker B: We built our, our solution on Microsoft and the SQL Server ecosystem and that's been a great decision because Microsoft is a clear leader in the space that we work in in this analytics market. You look at the ratings and evaluations of leaders in the market, uh, from evaluators like the Gartner Group and Microsoft is always in the upper right hand quadrant there. We've really picked a good partner in Microsoft because of how they're embedded and invested in the analytics world. So we continue and intend to continue to follow along in that Microsoft path. Leventus is a Microsoft gold partner. So we are fit hand in glove with what Leventus is doing and where uh, Leventus is heading. So with Microsoft they're continually innovating, they're continually pushing forward in that um, and so one of their big initiatives is their Microsoft fabric ecosystem which is a pretty complex online in the cloud solution. Um, and so we're beginning to build solutions in fabric which Microsoft has and is heavily investing in. So that's sort of the next evolution, next phase of evolution. They've made huge investments in AI tools like Copilot and other technologies that we're going to be able to natively use in Power bi, in SQL Server and in Fabric. And we're really confident that we've hitched our wagon to the right horse, so to speak, to be able to take advantage of that. There's no way in a world that, uh, a company of our size could generate the amount of development and research and depth as Microsoft can and is doing so. The trick is that we have really simplified and standardized this process of building a data warehouse. That's what the SparkFlow tool and process does. So as Microsoft fabric evolves, it is evolving. It is not, I would say, perfectly ready for prime time today. Although it's like many things that Microsoft does, it comes on month by month, makes dramatic improvements. We saw that with Power bi. It was not a great tool at the beginning, but has turned into a fantastic tool. And their dedication and evolution of that product, uh, we see that as becoming what fabric will, will evolve into as well. So, uh, we want to be there and go through the growing pains with them. Uh, we're already making strides as to how we can, as I say, spark flow ize Microsoft fabric to make it easier to use, make it really focused on building the complex processes that fabric does. And we want to make that tool set easier and faster and more repeatable to build solutions in the fabric ecosphere as well.

Speaker A: What in fabric? It's got you kind of excited, kind of. Why, why make m. I know it's the newest thing, but from what. And I know it's um, you're still uncovering and research and all of that, but just initially kind of what's got you most excited about fabric or how do you think it can help your clients and help the sparkflow solution just off the top of your head?

Speaker B: Yeah, it, uh, it takes a very structured approach in, not to go into all the technical detail, but they're bronze, silver and gold layers of evolution of the data to use data lakes and to have the scalability that cloud resources provide. The smaller company with smaller data sets can benefit from it. But those clients that have enormous data sets that we can build a solution that fits both the smaller, um, client as well as the larger client and take advantage of that, the massive computing, uh, potential that Microsoft provides. So it gives us sort of a one size fits all, uh, that scales according to what their needs are. Yeah, that's a huge thing. And to have sort of the full path of what we do today, which is now broken up into multiple tools, whether it's Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Analysis Services, PowerShell, Power BI, that will all, uh, be under one umbrella, sort of one, one pane of glass so to speak. And that simplifies it in a way that it unifies uh, the whole process of building the data warehouse and the data lakes and all the other technologies.

Speaker A: So a bit more scalable and a bit more simple. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker B: Not simple yet. We're going to make it more simple.

Speaker A: Well, it will be simple. That's what you're looking for from the fabric, uh, solution, I guess. Just what you know, as we've been announcing this, you've been talking about it. What has the client response been um, to the acquisition? What's the initial thoughts?

Speaker B: Yeah, really Danielle, it's, it's. The Leventus acquisition has been a non event for our customers. Um, with the exception of maybe our email addresses changing, uh, it's been business as usual for them. So our team is highly engaged day to day with our client teams and that is in the, in the Leventus DNA as well. So it's been business as usual for them. Everyone uh, that was on the sparkflow team prior to the acquisition joined Leventus and actually one of our team members who had left for a brief stint at another firm returned to the sparkflow and Leventus team. So that's exciting to have the band back together so to speak. So we have already started taking advantage of offshore resources that Leventis brings to the table. There is just an enormous talent pool at Leventus and the offshore business model can really translate into value for our customers and so just starting to scratch the surface there and engage our team members uh, in other locations and really tap into that and bringing uh, great value and expertise to their, uh, to their delivery. So I believe that most if not all of our customers really appreciate that we're as readily accessible to them as we were when we were a smaller company, are starting to appreciate the new resources that we can bring to this relationship and uh, are enhancing our ability to deliver and to scale with them as they need, need things. It's not as single threaded as it might have been before and obviously the financial stability of the much larger is attractive and comforting to our customers to know that we're going to be around for a long time.

Speaker A: Yeah, that all makes sense. And um, I like to see the Levintis vest you have on.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, we've got great swag too.

Speaker A: I know. Pretty good stuff. Pretty good stuff. All right, well I think we covered it today. Thanks for joining, uh, with joining the podcast with me today, John. It was really interesting. Seem to hear about sparkflow and kind of the journey and uh, kind of a bit more details around it. Thank you to everyone who listened today. If you want to learn more about sparkflow and the Vintus updates, visit our website or get in touch with our team. Until next time, keep innovating and pushing boundaries. This is Danielle Dolof, signing now from the Live Bike podcast. Thank you,

Speaker B: Sam.