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Episode 33 - Part 1: When should you adopt digital solutions? with Gavin O'Neill
67 Plays1 year ago
🔥 Join our founder Matt Nally, and Gavin O'Neill, a digital transformation specialist and former CEO of GoReport, as we explore the transformative power of digital solutions for surveyors in our latest episode.
Whether you're an SME or a larger enterprise, this conversation is packed with valuable takeaways:
✅ What digital transformation truly means
✅ Identifying the best time for tech implementation
✅ Dealing with resistance to change
✅ Finding the balance between automation and personal touch
✅ Overcoming common misconceptions
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Survey Booker Sessions. Tune in to hear from people working in a range of industries and roles to provide you ideas that you can take away and use in your own business. I'm your host Matt Nally, the founder and director of Survey Booker, which is the leading CRM and survey management system for surveyors. I'm joined today by Gavin O'Neill, who's the CEO of GoReport, which is a leading ah provider of digital data collection reporting and an analysis solution ah for the surveying sector.
Gavin's Professional Background
00:00:24
Speaker
um Gavin, I think if I'm right or not wrong, you're a chartered mechanical engineer by background and if you've worked sort of client side and software side of your career. Yeah, that's right, man. I've been involved in all areas of the the supply chain and the built environment, and but also in other sectors and verticals such as manufacturing, professional services, retail, hospitality, and even public sector projects. And I've been i've been ah a client on the delivery side. I've been a software seller.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I've been a consultant acting in between as well. awesome so no Well, I think yeah I've got um background as well in sort of the retail hospitality side, which you learn a lot quickly, I think about processes and and technology there. You absolutely
Lessons from Retail and Hospitality
00:01:05
Speaker
do. And it's always ah it's always a good thing to look for in a CV of someone coming through that's had to deal directly with the general public in those environments. Yeah, for sure. definitely You learn an awful lot about customer service very quickly. Yeah, very true. Yeah, that and the processing side. yeah ah ah You've also covered digital transformation in those roles, haven't you? So it's not just you've focused sort of within those industries generally, you've you have done digital too with that. Yes. Yeah. I mean, very, very much so really. and I've always been fascinated by why doing something well always feels so much better than being part of something that isn't quite right. um And I think
00:01:40
Speaker
I think my first kind of professional job in the built environment, I was 16 and I went straight into a ah place where something wasn't right. And so you rapidly understand the kind of the frustrations that kind of frontline people have versus what people think is happening in the business versus the people trying to to to help with that kind of thing. So it was a really early grinding and I guess being able to um interact with everybody at all levels, you know, as ah as ah as a junior going into a business, and You can ask very innocent questions and and many great people give you their time ah ah to help. So it just piqued my interest ah straight away and actually led me down the path of um of engineering ah effectively as ah as a career path.
Balancing People, Processes, and Technology
00:02:25
Speaker
and Really though, I think I've never been an advocate of technology for technology's sake, really. um It's more about getting that balance between people processing technology is the is the thing that I'm interested in.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a very fair point. It's easy, I suppose, to full disclosure, we're both operating tech companies here, but there's a time and a place for it, and there's a time and a place where it doesn't work either. Absolutely. And I think we'll discuss all of that today in terms of what is digital transformation and when. But I suppose full disclosure, we've known each other for, I suppose, three to four years now, having developed an integration between our systems. Yeah, it feels like longer. It feels like a lot longer, really.
Customer-Focused Integration Benefits
00:03:06
Speaker
It does indeed. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's a really good example. I mean, we didn't know each other before and before I came into to go report. um And um before, um you know, obviously, when you were sort of bringing your product to market kind of thing. And I think it's a really good example of and from way back then is is having a meeting of minds of the right philosophy of of how you want to approach these things. And, you know, customer front and center was has always been both our our our belief points, really.
00:03:35
Speaker
um And I think then going from that to working with each other on and trying to understand what would make a client's life better um and everything else kind of fell from that. I think it's been ah it's been a it's been hard work to get to the point where it's not easy. um yeah And that's that the hard work happens before a client sees it effectively. um And now it's a very, very straightforward um implementation that we've got that we you know that we believe and our clients believe adds tremendous value to them. Yeah, there's a key thing you said there actually is we we we didn't rush into it either straight away. There was a lot of time in getting it right. um and and And I suppose the flip side effect of that is ah this isn't meant to be starting to sell us obviously, but we'll move on to other things in a minute. But what it proved is but when you when you do put the time in and think things through properly, then you don't have to then do ongoing updates and get things changed all the time and stuff. is It just is seamless from from the beginning.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think the concept of, in software terms, the minimum viable product or minimum viable product was really well thought out and we socialized it as they as as might be said around and both both our existing clients and people who would be potentially our clients to understand um you know not just what we thought was a good idea, but how they saw themselves ah and with that solution in mind. you know That's a big big aspect of of All software businesses is really, our our job is not for our clients to tell us um ah you know what to do for us to make money. it's It's our job for our clients to tell us what their challenges are and for us to come up with the with the right solution. you know we We are there to set their aspirations, ah basically, or help them with their aspirations and meet their problems. We're not um you know we're not reliant on them to design the solution. That's on us. That's our that's what we get paid for, basically.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Defining Digital Transformation and Its Challenges
00:05:28
Speaker
I think that's a nice sort of intro to, I suppose, the background of who we are and what we're going to be talking about. but So across this episode, we're going to discuss digital transformation, I suppose, the good, the bad, how to get it right, where it goes wrong. um For our first topic, should we take a look at, I suppose, what is digital transformation? And we'll come into the jargon in a second. But you know when should you adopt tech um and why? So as a starting point, I mean, what's what's your thoughts around what what digital transformation is or means? so Yeah, I mean, I think if you did an internet search on it, um you youd you you wouldn't be short of definitions or people who maybe written books or made their careers off talking about it. and I think it's a it's a it's useful to have ah an overview um word that sits over the over the top of it, really. But I think and you know it really does matter about the context of your own business, what size you are, what shape you are, where where you're starting from, where you're going to, and that.
00:06:25
Speaker
is is what really um ah it defines what a project is for for you in your context, in your business. and I think from the highest level and certainly in the much larger projects and that I've been involved in, I think it's often thought about maybe from board level down or investor level down in terms of pure efficiency at times. And that's it's not really surprising when you consider you know that should be a key factor in any business investment, you know is it is it making you do more with less, et cetera, et cetera. and However, the the best projects that I've been involved in began with ah with more of a challenge to the business on how it thinks of itself in terms of its current and potential customers, its competitors, and how it impacts the profession or sector or vertical that it that it works in. and I think when you start with those considerations in mind, it makes it a lot easier to define the value of a transformation project um on and to make better decisions as you go. um you know For example, there have been many
00:07:26
Speaker
Expensive digital transformations that have failed because the focus was on efficiency for the company and not how easy that company made it for customers to buy from them. And you know guess what happens? Customers go and buy for someone that makes it easier for them. you know um So that's, I think if if you if you start from, if you took the digital out from it and and focus on on you know how are we as a business impacting on our stakeholders effectively um and then digital comes in later. Yeah, it's an interesting point.
Timing and Approach to Digital Transformation
00:07:56
Speaker
I think actually digital transformation has potentially a negative connotation now because there's enough large corporations. I'm talking about any any industry where they've put in so many tech driven processes. you Maybe you can argue with this with the banks now. You can't go into a high street bank anymore because it's it's shifted all to digital. um So it's all about finding the right balance and mix of things that works for you, your customers and everything else.
00:08:20
Speaker
I suppose ah suppose we start with timing. how How do you decide when to start looking into a transformation process of, of you know but I suppose take digital in this particular example, but when when do you start with that? um you know it's ah it's a it's ah It's a great question. It's the question really. and I think to your ah to to the comment you you just made there around, um it has negative connotations. I think we are now in an era where you know if we if we sort of look at sort of mid businesses that have been around for at least you know eight to 10 years kind of thing, they will have had in some aspect of their business, some form of um of digital implementation. And you know for businesses then, how do you how do you separate yourselves when everybody is the same? And the reality is when you've worked around a lot of businesses, you know they're not the same, and they're far from the same. um And I think some of the negative connotations come from failures, effectively, where
00:09:19
Speaker
and the right balance of people processing technology wasn't employed, the right consideration of what you were doing it for. And therefore it has become, um in some instances, sort of synonymous with and reducing headcount, reducing staff numbers, that kind of thing, that kind of efficiency drive. And really, that's not what you or I are in the the business of. we're We're in the business of, you know, I always believe if you remove the things that you don't need to do because there's a better solution. It makes you a better business and therefore you are a better business for your customers. So we should never shy away from that. and But the objective is not to you know replace people as the start point effectively, it's to give them better tools to do their job and better processes to do their job. So when you, again, come back to that start point, what's the perfect time? um And the reality is there you know theres there's never been, there never will be a perfect time. and you know You have to,
00:10:13
Speaker
take the time to consider and invest in improving your businesses. you know That time is only afforded to those who have work to do and deliver it. You don't often have the luxury of investing in your business or thinking about your business when there's no work to do. You're too busy trying to so survive. And so there's always a trade off for me for delivering. um You have to trade off delivering for your clients with taking the necessary time to consider what could you do? What would it mean for your business? how to do it, what would it cost, how to ensure that you realize the benefits and value, which is the most important thing, in your business is better after you've made the changes, after you've made the investment. um you know That's a very important part. And that's why I think a lot of digital transformations in the past feel because that closed loop of you know are we now better um from what we've done hasn't been properly rounded out effectively. you know The project that starts, the people involved disappear, ah you then um
00:11:10
Speaker
ah ah somebody else picks it up, deems it a failure, and then you you cycle around again. um so you know For me, digital transformation starts with something that every business does or should do already ah to a greater or lesser extent. It starts with asking the question, you know what are the challenges the business faces today? you know What are your aspirations? Is it that you want sales growth? Is it you want to reduce cost? Do you want to scale the size and shape of your business? Do you want to do more for your clients or with your clients? Do you want to attract the best candidates? you know Are you trying to manage your risk better? These are all business challenges and any transformation project, whether it includes an element of digital or not, starts with those questions that you know you you have to ask yourself. Yeah, I think that's very fair. I completely agree with that. I'm going to probably touch more on this in topics two and three around um yeah how to get the process right and and
00:12:05
Speaker
you know, measure success and and yeah understand what you're actually trying to get out of it and and and put that context into the sort of implementation phase. So we'll come on to that. um But like I completely agree with you've got to understand what your problem is first. Otherwise, what are you implementing any process change for whether it's tech or not. um So without that, you've really got to understand what you're trying to achieve, what you're not happy with.
Addressing Resistance and Dissent in Transformations
00:12:27
Speaker
um And then you can establish what the goals are that you want to measure against later on. If you don't, if you if you don't, understand where your high level, at least hypothesis of what you want to do. and You don't have a feedback loop. You don't have ah a way of addressing whether, you know because with any transformation project, while you're delivering, um it gets ah you know it can get difficult. Your time is squeezed. You're having to think about things. It's easy to regress to what you already know. And yeah more importantly, if you've got a ah bigger company and more people involved that are maybe two, three,
00:13:01
Speaker
communication, direct communication steps away from the reason why you're doing it in ah in ah in a business, then and you know it's it it can be easy to, you can see why failure happens or where progress slows um in the first instance. And so you always have to keep banging that drum about what the what the reason is, what the aspiration is for the business and that and and feedback to that. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think um the other the other point you touched on around um perfect time I think there's there's issues i so I occasionally see with this that um yeah where people get it wrong and there's obviously therefore how to get it right. But ah one of the one of the key ones is I see in the industry ah is the sort of, I call it the make K while the sun shines fallacy. And we've talked about this before on on different episodes, but it's there's often this, that um ah maybe it's an excuse, I don't know, but it's
00:13:55
Speaker
really busy, you know, the market's ah packed, you've booked three, four, five, six weeks and and in advance, you don't have time to deal with it. um And so we're not going to do it right now. But then conversely, when you get quiet, you also don't put the time into it, because now we're worrying about getting sales back up and getting the yeah the lead time back in. And so there's constantly this, not the right time to do it, because either we're too busy or were' too quiet. Yeah. And, you know, the, and i think I think it's it's not about, I think the the right time is where the challenge outweighs not doing anything. And as you say, ah good performance masks that. um and you know In a business, with everythings everybody's flying, it masks that. And if you're you know if you're struggling, you know where it's it's not so long ago that we had you know a pandemic situation where all the rules of business kind of,
00:14:49
Speaker
ah maybe didn't get thrown out the window, but could set aside for a period of time while we we we tried to work out what survival meant ah during that ah during that period of business survival, I'm talking about in that in that sense. And so you know with all the best plans in the world, something like that coming around as ah as a curve ball changes the the dynamic, but from a normal business operation, and i I think you know it should be a standing item on your agenda. How how can we be doing better? and And you know that's what leadership in a business is is about really, because and you want everybody contributing to that, but that is you know the direction, the strategic direction is set by the by the leadership in the business at whatever level, business unit level, line manager level, and you know board level, investor level, whatever it happens to be. and that's you know that's That's the driving force. and
00:15:38
Speaker
you know what do we know about business? The growth curve isn't always upwards. and There will always be fluctuations, there will be plateaus, there will be step backs, those sorts of things. So you you almost have to ignore all of that and just think every day, how can I do better for my customer? Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think, um yeah, the soon you planning those those meetings, you say, those to to to review where you are and where you're going to be. It means that when everything does drop, you're not in a panic situation you're or you're being as ah effective as you can be from that point already. Yeah, I think i think you know in terms of you know practical advice for any business sort of um or anybody you know listening to this and thinking about it um really is, ah you know in terms of moving forward, it's to remember really important to remember that the decision to make change, whether it's
00:16:28
Speaker
in software, process, people, skill sets, whatever it happens to be. It's not actually the first thing you do. um you know it's It's something you decide to do once you've evaluated your options and you've you've thought about your challenges. So in my experience, a lot of businesses delay consideration of what they might do for fear that they don't have time to make the changes. They're they're they're they're bringing the problem forward effectively. They're borrowing problems from tomorrow and ah to stop them doing today. and i think And you know if every business has built in that regular dialogue into normal review on areas of opportunity for improvement, it opens the door for the dialogue there, both upwards and downwards to um have it as ah as a standing item. And therefore, the right time starts to come sharply into focus. And you know I think you and I both talked about, in the past, and you know where you have ah maybe people who are resistant to change in ah in a business, um either
00:17:24
Speaker
you know, just generally resistant to change, or um ah perhaps there are, you know, oftentimes there are valid reasons. And, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know, what are your thoughts on on how you deal with that? Well, I suppose before I come to that, I think, interesting, it ties into ah one of the things I wanted to discuss was misconceptions, no which then causes this resistance to change. um and And I suppose that varies for for for all firms as we but yeah, one of the ones we we see, um I think it's such as and exactly what you said, which is staff potentially worrying about, is that their job on the line? yeah yeah know what why Why are we going through this process? Is it because actually, um maybe we're not performing very well and we don't know and we need we need to cut costs and that's why technology is coming in. um Or it's potentially a different issue, which is they were excited initially, but they weren't provided the support and training to get used to it and therefore,
00:18:20
Speaker
that's not confident with the products just because they've just been thrown at it and and they've got to crack on. I don't know. but what do What do you think about sort of misconceptions? Do you think they vary quite differently between businesses? Is that a driving factor behind? and I think i think that you know the the definition of calling it a misconception is is what the problem is. The truth lies somewhere between what you've said and what you've been told, basically, and it's it's finding that out. I've worked in some very large multi-million pound transformations, both you know externally providing support to businesses and internally bringing ah bringing systems in. And and you know one of the one of the things that I always and kind of think as a first rule is when you hear the dissenting voice, and there's there's often a, um ah I guess you can start to see how people try to manage the dissenting voice. you know either
00:19:16
Speaker
avoiding it, excluding from a project, keeping on the sideline, that kind of thing. They would always be the person I would go straight to, straight to the dissenting voice, because you may, and what you generally find is yes, there are definitely people who are resistant to change. So out of fear, pure fear. And they they wouldn't be able to tell you what that fear is. They might be fear of the job. They might be fear of you making their life difficult. and They might be fearful of, and you know, a change that takes them into an uncomfortable area with their own skill sets. And where they just not may not be used to it, but you need to find out, you need to find out what is the issue. And I've always found that, uh, when you do that, you'll find some little nuggets of information that perhaps they were, maybe they've lived through it before. Maybe they were, they were somewhere else in another business that had happened in the field. And that's, you know, that's gold dust really at that point, because you want to really bring that out and go, well, let's make sure that doesn't happen again. Let's.
00:20:09
Speaker
Let's understand what it felt like for you in your position so that we don't make the same mistakes. Um, and you know, we don't intend to make those mistakes, but let's be extra careful. Let's be extra careful with our ah communication. And you can find when you do that, you can get, um, if the the people that are most vocal about not wanting to do it, becoming the the biggest champions for, for what you want to do. like Not in all cases. Sometimes you, that's what leadership is for. Sometimes you have to keep pushing ahead and bring people with you. Um, uh, but you know, one of the things I always find is interesting. Um, it's, it takes people an awful lot longer to ask for digital solutions. Um, then it does for them to ask for them back when they are taken away. So when somebody is in a business, they've been through a transformation or they're using a tool, they then go somewhere else that doesn't have the same tool sets that make their life easier. They're the first people to ask for them. Um, yeah so I think kind context matters a lot, but definitely.
00:21:09
Speaker
and both talking and listening. Listening more, I think is is the way to get past misconceptions. Yeah, i think I think that covers sort of personal or employee misconceptions ah really nicely. I think I suppose the other side, side sorry, to the story is um thinking that tech is for like enterprise firms, big firms only, and actually is as an individual, perhaps, because you know we've got an industry that's very small, SME driven, rather than all being all being big firms like the banking sector, for example. I keep picking up on that one. I may barely look at others.
Tech for Small vs. Large Firms
00:21:45
Speaker
Something you want to share? My banking is fine at the moment. Good to know. but um yeah yeah i think I think there can be a misconception that it's not going to provide the ah ROI or the benefit to you as a smaller firm, when actually it can it's the complete opposite. it's you know as as ah As an individual, you're more likely to think ah to derive benefits because you're trying to spin all the plates yourself, so anything that helps you is going to be better. Yeah, I think you know the benefit of um ah we We have, you know, i I consider myself to still be very young um and it's only whenever I kind of look back at how many years or decades of experience I've got in in business that you realize that actually, you you know, in this small small amount of the last 20, 25 years, we've seen such tremendous change in what is possible for us as as in businesses um and as as individuals in terms of the tools and the tool sets that we have, you know, the
00:22:43
Speaker
smartphone in our in our pocket, the wealth of information and knowledge that that can bring when used appropriately is is quite remarkable. But I think business has changed dramatically. I mean, when I started and in um you know in ah and a very large American um contractor, at that point, and you know the consideration that your data wouldn't be sitting on ah on a box with blinking lights in ah in a room somewhere within the building. was a completely alien concept. And and you know when I then moved into software sales was selling solutions like that, and the the idea of it would be over my dead body would and that that our data ever leave this building effectively. And if you flash forward a very relatively short period of time, everything we do is in the cloud. And and so and that that is such a fundamental shift in in that just happened. No one people had to be
00:23:40
Speaker
Individuals didn't need to be convinced as such because the argument just changed, the whole parameters of the argument changed. And because of that shift and because of that move to cloud computing, it's meant that so many of the tools that would have been the preserve of the business and the investment of a business are in the hands of individuals effectively. um You know, it used to be whenever I was When I was very young, and you know the best tools were what my dad brought home from work effectively. yeah yeah yeah And then over a relatively short period of time, it flipped around and the best tools were the ones in the hands of the consumers and businesses were scrambling to catch up with what you know what would an iPad do for the business? What what would ah um um accessibility to data at any point do for ah for a business? So I think that we are very today we're very lucky in that and
00:24:31
Speaker
a lot of things are are possible. you know A sole trader can have a completely online um order processing through the payment collection, ah through marketing solution like yourselves ah in a very, very short ah period of time with with quite minimal investment. so I think once you you know once you set that as the baseline, I think it just then puts it back on how well you run your your business or how you think about your business. and i think running a business in the most efficient way, giving the best possible service um and deliver value for your clients. It's applicable whether you're a sole trader or an enterprise with thousands of ah of employees. The only difference is, the well, the differences are the you know the context of your priorities and the resources you have available to um to support you. um um When it comes to this software in particular, and I think the the first question there you know is, is this software tool that I'm considering
00:25:26
Speaker
uh, right for me, I'm in my context. So there are software tools, you know, particularly in other verticals or industries that are designed with an expectation of different types of use, you know, a manufacturing ERP system, enterprises with planning system, as an example, that wouldn't have a context of a sole trader. Um, and, and so would be, wouldn't, it would be designed around an entry level where an organization is much larger with multiple stakeholders, et cetera, et cetera. And in both go report and survey bookers case, you know, our software and has been designed for the surveying industry. And so, you know, we considered that everyone from sole traders to large enterprises should find it easy to adopt gain value from quickly. And because that's the landscape of the surveying industry, you know, a sole trader can produce the same output on an individual basis as um a much larger organization, both on the residential side is often the same product level three survey, for example.
00:26:22
Speaker
But when it comes to commercial, you know, we have specialist sole traders, but we have a much larger enterprise solutions where, you know, it's not the output that's that's different per se, it's the capability and capacity and ability to draw on other expertise effectively, which is why they are, you know, they they do it that way kind of thing. um So I think, you know, focus on the business and then make sure, you know, don't try and shoehorn a tool that's designed for a different context. ah into your environment, you know make you know, challenge your vendor to make the case for your context, basically. like Yeah. And I think that comes down to ah what we'll talk to probably topic two onwards, which is choosing the right vendor.
Industry-Specific Software and Automation
00:27:04
Speaker
And um yeah, you you could you could look at something in another industry, it's cheaper, ah perhaps, but actually it's completely wrong and you're not going to get the benefits from it.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's, there's the, there's the one that's focused for another industry. And then there's the generic, which is focused on all industries, which is, which can be quite as, you know, quite, quite as bad because it's, you know, it's 60, 70% of the way there and cheaper because it's, you know, targeted at the masses. But when it's that little nuance of what you need for your profession, it falls short. Um, and that that can be enough to, to move a project from value to failure very quickly. Yeah, and the amount of costs that goes into them both bespoke development to personalize and bits and pieces. I think the final um misconception for me, and then we'll move on to topic two, is ah I think often automation people misconstrue as being impersonal.
00:27:57
Speaker
And again, it just comes down to what what are we automating and choosing the right the right processes to change. If you're automating them the production of um i don' know an invoice or a terms document or whatever it might be, the customer doesn't care how that's produced and it's no no less personal once it gets to them. um But yes, if you if you automate every single part of the inquiry process and you cannot speak to someone to to understand ah yeah what product do I need or something like that, then yes, then it is impersonal. So it's down to what you implement and how you implement it. Oh, completely. And I think that's always always been the always been the case you know before um you know going back before software and and computer availability that would have been the same and you know in any any business environment going back you know centuries. Basically, I think if you lose
00:28:44
Speaker
and ah you know You should be looking for ways of doing it better, but it should be gauged against, does it improve the experience of the people that effectively give you money? um you know So you're doing and efficiency gains internally. Theoretically, that should be giving the client better value for money because you're not having to load your costs into whatever you sell. um But in terms of their experience, that's you know that's a very important ah important thing um to
00:29:16
Speaker
to really understand and what are you doing if work goes back to what we were we were we were saying at the at the start. If you look at it in pure surveying terms, and you know what are we what are we trying to do at GoReport? We're trying to create more time for the art of surveying. right So we're trying to remove the busy work. We're trying to remove the duplication. What we're definitely not interested in is automating the survey production. We're automating the publish of the valuable insight and guidance. and Because we don't think surveyors should be spending all of their time wordsmithing, or maybe not wordsmithing, but fiddling around with formats and um branding on that on a regular basis kind of thing. ah what What they should be doing is getting their their point across to what their c clients actually be paying them for. A client, whether it be residential or commercial, the surveyors are not getting paid to collect the data in real terms. They're getting paid for the for the insight and guidance and and you know actionable insight that that the end user gets. so
00:30:12
Speaker
and If you're spending all of your time on data collection and bringing it together and aggregating it, which gets exponentially worse, the larger up you you go in terms of the size and scale of the projects that you work on, and then you know that's that's not a good outcome. um So you want to automate that and and give more time for the surveyor to really show their value. yeah Yeah, likewise. if For us, it's automate all the admin that goes around the job and and you can focus on surveying and speaking with customers. I think more personal, like or ironically, not less personal. Yeah, yeah that's that's very true. The you know the difference between the the the output being the product as opposed to the service that you're offering. um you know We have, and you know like I said, the the you know the residential on the commercial side, you know on the commercial residential side, there's obviously, you are are you
00:31:02
Speaker
are you assisting with the buyer or seller of a property to make an informed decision? That's the purpose. um It's not about, you know, you know, i tremendously have figured out all of these defects. It's about, are they are they able to make the next step in their journey? And it's the same on the commercial side when it comes down to it is oftentimes it is, you know, we do not have unlimited budget, whereas more what are the things that we can invest in that makes the biggest difference to our business and to our to our customers? um And that, you know, the surveyor plays a hugely important job in that decision-making process. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Conclusion and Teaser for Part Two
00:31:41
Speaker
I think that um nicely wraps up what digital transformation is, um understanding the context, I suppose, around reviewing what your problems are and then sort of, yes, what misconceptions might come in. um I suggest join us for part two, where we're going to discuss how to choose the right supplier for your business. So ah tune in for that.