Industry: All Industries

The Future of Integration: Digibee’s Take on Price, People, and Productivity

Posted on October 17, 2023 by - Uncategorized

Discussion with Matt Durham, Head of Strategy at Digibee providing valuable insights into the critical aspects of integration – the complexities of pricing, leveraging the skills of your people, and choosing solutions that positively impact productivity.

In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, sits down with Matt Durham, the Head of Strategy, to discuss the Three P’s of integration that organizations need to carefully consider as part of their integration strategy: price, people, and productivity. The conversation dissects common and confusing legacy pricing models that often lead to unexpected costs. It highlights the savings and simplicity that comes from choosing an integration solution that doesn’t require specialized developers, but rather empowers every developer to build, deploy, and manage integrations. The discussion also focuses on the significant advantages and impact cloud-native solutions have on productivity.

Full transcript

CAIT PORTE

Hello, and welcome back to Integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, CAIT PORTE. And in this episode, I am joined once again by Matt, Head of Market Strategy here at Digibee. Welcome, Matt.

MATT DURHAM

Thanks, Cait. 

CAIT PORTE

The more that we’ve talked to market leaders, customers, prospects, the more that we’re learning about the importance of the three P’s, I’ll call them, of integration. Price, people, and productivity. And as a reminder and disclaimer, all data that we’ll reference today comes from publicly available sources, like a company website or analyst research. And the white paper that we’ll reference and discuss today includes all references to any information discussed here. We’re obviously, as I said, not going to talk about the three P’s of marketing, product, price, and promotion as much as I would love to, but the three P’s of integration, if we can even maybe coin that term.

Matt, you recently wrote a white paper on the topic, and I’m very much looking forward to dissecting that today. There’s a ton of really good data in that white paper, and while we won’t have time to get to it today, definitely check out the link below to download the white paper or give the link in the bio and summary of this episode a click.

Let’s start off with pricing. Historically, enterprise software vendors, they’ve made their pricing deceptively challenging to understand, starts off really simple, easy to digest, easy to understand, and then suddenly turns into a guessing game or a chess match. And ultimately, I have, as a buyer, and our buyers have felt really confused with the whole process. I’m sure that you’ll get to this, but also hit with unexpected costs during that implementation phase. That’s a big one. “Oh yeah, you can have this, but it’ll cost you X.” 

Matt, I’d love to hear your view on where your research led you around pricing and what guidance or advice you might give to software buyers.

MATT DURHAM

Sure, Cait, thanks a lot for the introduction and the opportunity to be here. And I think it’s an interesting question because actually on one level, traditional software licensing seems sort of simple, right? You pay a perpetual license, and then maybe you pay, probably you pay annual maintenance on top of that. And that seems simple, “X for the perpetual license” and “Y for the software maintenance.” But the reality is, in order to get to that perpetual license cost, there’s a lot of complexity. And I think that’s worth really teasing out because the reality is that a lot of iPaaS vendors are still pricing based on that, what I would describe as a legacy pricing model. 

So, the most fundamental part of that is always capacity. So, the way that perpetual licenses have long been priced is based on the most utilization that a server will need to execute the job, or the jobs, that that software is doing. And when virtualization came into the market 15 years or so ago, that complicated things for software vendors. And so now what we see in that, it was harder for software vendors to earn as much revenue based on that because it virtualized the environment. There are a lot of vendors still that are active in the iPaaS market that are still pricing based on virtual cores. So, what that means is the prospective buyer has to size their utilization and typically at the maximum amount that they will ever need.

The classic example of that is you’re a retailer, let’s say a very large e-commerce vendor, that has a spike in sales on Black Friday or on special sales events. And that’s when you’re gonna have the most utilization, you have to price to that amount. Even if 99% of the time during the year, you’re only executing at 10% of that, or whatever the figure is. So, that’s already complicated, but let’s accept that at the end of the day, that’s just still it’s one number, vCore, right? Okay, well then on top of that, many of our competitors require their customers to choose the type of edition that they get. Do they want the “A, B or C” edition or the “silver, gold, platinum” or the “Chevy or a Lexus” edition or whatever, however they choose to split the sort of good, better, best, right? 

That’s another choice that has to be made. And those additions come with certain capabilities and of course they vary by vendor. Then on top of that, there are decisions that have to be made about even additional capabilities. So, for multi-product companies, as opposed to a platform vendor like us, you might need to pay more to get that second, third or fourth product. That’s not actually, it’s really not a platform, it’s a bunch of products and on and on and on and on. And so this becomes, and then, sorry, one more thing, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more, I think, is I already mentioned maintenance, which is another cost that has to be incurred. Then there are costs not associated with the software itself. So the implementation fees, right? So, how do you hire either a consulting firm or services people from the software vendor to implement the solution? There’s a lot of costs associated with that. So, there’s costs, on top of costs, on top of costs, on top of costs.

And it is a challenge and it’s not, I would say, the most transparent or customer-forward way to approach licensing. So, the big advice I would suggest for software buyers, whether they’re the actual, the buyer who’s actually going to be using the technology, or whether they’re part of a vendor management organization typically in large companies that have those, is really to push for simplicity. 

And of course, ultimately, the beauty that any SaaS vendor offers, including Digibee, should be, and is in our case, very simple pricing. This is the price, you pay it, this is how we get to it. And it covers all of those considerations.

CAIT PORTE

It’s a really nice summary. And there were a couple of nuggets in there. I want to pull on one around capacity or utilization. It’s a tricky one to answer. I think that one of the things we want to recommend is understanding your capacity or potential future capacity before negotiating on a price. Can you expand on that a little bit?

MATT DURHAM

Yeah, and actually, before I answer your direct question, I want to actually even answer another part of it, which is that, again, remember in traditional license models, the capacity is owned by the buyer. I’m buying the hardware that that software is going to run on. I’m buying the databases, the operating systems. And yet, the software vendor is still charging based on capacity. Basically, how many versions of this am I buying, right? Now, maybe that’s reasonable. Wait, maybe that’s unreasonable. For a long time, I’ve said that the beauty of that model is that the incremental price of the second piece of software to the provider is zero. So it’s all margin for vendors, right? So I understand that model, and I worked in that model for a long time.

In a SaaS model, and we’re looking at path capacity, and you’re absolutely right, we want to understand that before we even get into pricing discussions, because it’s a big deal, right? We, as a SaaS vendor, are paying for the utilization of the hardware and the supporting software to run our iPaaS. We’re paying a hyperscaler for that utilization. We’re not running our own data center. And so we have costs that we have to pass on to our customers. And of course, we have a little bit of margin on top of those costs, as any company would.

But those costs for us are fixed. So, the more capacity we use on behalf of our customers, the more we have to pay. And so it’s important for us as a vendor that we understand that capacity, and clearly also then important for the consuming organization as well. And that’s, I think, also another really nice thing about the SaaS model is that it really does foster a more collaborative approach to that reality, right? So, in the former approach, the costs are all on the consuming organization. But in the SaaS model, the costs really are shared. And so no organization wants to incur any more costs than they need to. And I think, as such, most SaaS vendors do everything that they can to keep those, let’s call them those operating costs of managing the hardware, or I should say, the hyperscaling environment that we get. Because the more of those costs we incur, as I said earlier, the more costs we have to pass on, and we don’t necessarily want to do that. So I think that’s fundamentally what’s different about the models.

CAIT PORTE

I think we could talk about pricing for probably an entire episode. But I think there’s some really good information there, particularly about the difference between traditional pricing model or legacy, and these SaaS models where it’s a little bit more shared. And most companies are transparent about that, including ourselves.

Let’s talk about resourcing. Really important thing to think about when buying a new piece of software, something that we go through all the time on the revenue side of the business, “who’s going to use this”, “how they’re going to use it,” “who do we have to staff it?” Legacy vendors have required historically specialized developers or resources, not only to ensure that the buyer’s on board the tool successfully, but so that they can continue to use these tools effectively.

What’s the main difference between a legacy vendor versus Digibee when it comes to the time and cost commitment around resourcing? 

MATT DURHAM

Right. Yeah, I think everything you said, of course, is right there. And I would point out that, again, it was a core model of the legacy pricing approach, or I should say the perpetual licensing approach. Most enterprise software vendors had a model where they would charge roughly 20% of the perpetual license for annual maintenance. And then, depending on the part of the software market that those vendors were in, there was an assumption of how much of the, again, the perpetual license costs would also be charged in services for implementation, often by the vendor itself, sometimes by system integrators. And that, again, that percentage would vary a little bit by the market, by the specific, or sub-market, I should say.

And again, the beauty of the SaaS model is we remove perpetual license and maintenance. Those are combined into a single subscription fee. But straight to your point about what’s different about Digibee compared to many of our competitors, and certainly the legacy pricing model, is we take a very different approach to how we target our users or who we think our users should be. And very simply, we think our users should be every or any software developer who could contribute to writing integrations. And that’s distinctly different from requiring specialized integration developers who obtain and maintain certifications on the variety of legacy vendors that we compete with.

Those certifications have costs associated with them. They drive, actually, the costs of the developers themselves up, because it creates some uniqueness in them, right? They have a specialty. And so, the average cost for a specialized integration developer is higher than it is for the average cost of a developer. And so at Digibee, our core operating principle is that every developer can use our technology to build, deploy, and manage integrations. That’s a fundamentally different approach. And in fact, Cait, we don’t, as a standard practice, we don’t even offer certifications on Digibee. So if, Cait, you wanted to become a Digibee-certified developer, you really wouldn’t be able to do that because it’s our idea that that’s a capability that you, Cait, as a developer, should be able to have without any specialized training from us. And I don’t want to overstate that. Of course, you have to learn how to use our platform. And we offer training that’s really great. That’s also, by the way, part of the cost that we share with our customers. But, it’s a relatively short cycle to do that. And it doesn’t require, again, those ongoing commitments to certification just on us.

CAIT PORTE

I’ve been looking at CRMs and different CMSs. One piece of advice that we’ve gotten from advisors is choose something that doesn’t require you to have a specialized resource to utilize because it’ll hold you back. And, that advice extends to sales and marketing software, to integration software, like we’re talking about. Anything, you don’t, as a business user or owner or buyer, want to be held back by that specialization. So, I think it’s a really good point to highlight that it exists in this space as well.

MATT DURHAM

Yep, absolutely. 

CAIT PORTE

Not surprisingly, let’s go to our final topic, but we’re all trying to do more with less, which is quite a challenge. We talk about the benefits of cloud-native architecture here at Digibee. In terms of productivity, cloud-native architecture has proven to be differentiating and impactful for our customers.

In the white paper, you talk about end of life, upgrade paths, and how painful it can be to move for a team trying to move quickly because it’s a required step. Why does it matter about the architecture of a platform versus the way that Digibee is?

MATT DURHAM

Let me say one, a couple of quick words about cloud-native. So, cloud-native is a very loaded term that there are literally competing definitions in the market for cloud-native. So, we are cloud-native. We’re very confident in that based on the commonly-accepted definition. We’re also born in the cloud, and that’s a distinction. So what I mean by that is our founders, when they founded the company, they began developing the solution based on hyperscale technology, as opposed to based on a server that was sitting in their office or whatever, and then later deployed to a cloud environment. And, that’s kind of the reality of many of our legacy competitors. They were developed in a client-server world, and they’ve been refactored to run in the cloud. And, that creates some technical limitations for some of their scenarios.

You talked about end of life also, and I think it’s really important to talk about that. End of life, probably a better term is end of support. End of life, and I say that because end of support is kind of the technical term, and there are probably no organizations in the world that are going to run software that’s unsupported, particularly integrations. Let me say that again, that run integration software that’s unsupported because it’s so critical, right? And so your organization might run unsupported software for something that’s not mission-critical. Although unlikely, but you’re certainly not going to run it for integration. So end of life, end of support, let’s, we can use those sort of interchangeably.

At Digibee, and for any SaaS vendor, there is no end of life. There is no end of support, right? Because there’s no versioning per se. The version that you’re on, is the current version, and the version that you’ll be on tomorrow, is the current version. And whether a vendor practices the continuous delivery, model of software updates, or whether they ship updates on a scheduled basis, monthly, quarterly, whatever, the fact is that all of their customers are always on the same version. And, always on the current version. And there’s real value in that.

We’ve talked about this before with the challenges of upgrading on-premises integration technologies and how really, really painful that is. So, there are clear benefits in leveraging technologies that fully take advantage of the benefits that we get from working with hyperscalers. And there’s simply the benefit of never having to upgrade your software, right? So there are the really cool technical benefits in terms of vertical scaling and horizontal scaling and immutability and, and, and, and, and… boy, just not having to upgrade. That, in and of itself, is super, super powerful.

CAIT PORTE

I can barely remember to click the button on my Chrome browser to upgrade it. I’ve got that little red notification, you know, five days out of seven. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to upgrade legacy technology with a team that is already saddled with a heavy backlog.

MATT DURHAM

It’s tough work. It’s tough work for sure.

CAIT PORTE

Well, Matt, once again, thanks for joining.

For those listening, please take a look at the link in the episode or visit digibee.com to download your copy of the white paper on Price, People, and Productivity, comparing Digibee to a legacy vendor. That’s it for this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.” 

Enterprise Integration MuleSoft vs Digibee: Price, People, Productivity

Tips for Selecting Your Integration Platform (Episode 26)

Posted on September 5, 2023 by - Feature

With host Cait Porte, Chief Marketing Officer at Digibee

 In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, is joined by Head of Strategy, Matt Durham, for a discussion on the crucial task many organizations face in selecting the right integration platform solution. Matt provides valuable insights for making an informed decision. The conversation explores key considerations, including defining your company goals, leveraging research from trusted resources, understanding your integration tool users, and aligning your technology resources with your organization’s broader needs for now and the future.  

Full transcript

CAIT PORTE:

Hello, and welcome back to Integration Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte, and in this episode, I am joined once again by Matt, Head of Strategy here at Digibee. Welcome back, Matt.

MATT DURHAM:

Thanks, Cait.

CAIT PORTE:

Today, we’re going to talk about how to select an integration tool that fits your business. IT professionals, similar to marketing professionals like me, are always being sold new and innovative technologies with the promise that it’s going to make your team more efficient, get things out more quickly, be lower cost. 

Today, Matt, we really want to figure out how are we going to select an integration platform for your business. And it’s a loaded one, right? We’ve got certainly a number of things that we can unpack related to this. But how might you start out answering that question? How do you select an integration platform?

MATT DURHAM:

Right. Well, as you and I talked about, Cait, recently, it’s a big question, and as you just said. And, there are companies like Gartner and Forrester that, to a greater or lesser degree, base their entire business on this question, right? But we’ll try to address this in the few minutes that we have. 

So, this may seem self-evident, but I’m going to suggest that it doesn’t always happen, which is why I want to mention it, of course. And so the first thing is, I think, the buyer needs to understand her goals or the buying organization needs to understand its goals. So, again, that may seem really self-evident, but I’ve certainly seen enough RFIs and been involved in enough sale cycles and opportunities where I don’t think the goal was really clear,  or the goals (plural), were really clear. 

So we’ve had some success at Digibee in helping customers who have required integration technology because they made another purchase that was very strategic for them. And, so I’m thinking specifically about a new e-commerce suite that several of our customers have purchased in the retail protocol. And that was a very strategic, very important action for them. And then sort of on the heels of that, they needed to purchase new integration technology to accomplish all the downstream things that they wanted to, and needed to, with that e-commerce suite. 

So, I mentioned that because we, as working for vendors, and working as part of a marketing organization, of course, we want buyers to pay attention to our outreach. But ultimately, the outreach needs to be met with a need. So, what are some big examples? Well, there probably is some sort of a digital transformation initiative happening somewhere in the organization. Perhaps there is a decision to retire some legacy systems and to purchase, as I was just describing, in an e-commerce example, a new modern kind of core piece of software for the company. Maybe there’s an acquisition that’s happened and there’s a requirement to integrate systems. Whatever, it’s not just understanding what the high-level strategy is that’s critical. But, then it’s also really important to understand how that strategy is going to be achieved. 

So, I think that’s fundamentally the first thing, is a clear understanding of why these conversations are even happening. And I think it’s incumbent on any seller to discover those things. So, no one should buy anything other than maybe a postcard when they’re traveling, just because, just because, right? So that’s the first thing. 

I think the second thing I would say is, (did you want to ask me something else or?) OK, so – and I’m going to qualify this a little bit because of Digibee’s example – but, you know, as you know, Cait, I’ve worked with Gartner and Forrester and IDC and those sorts of companies for decades. And, I think that they’re a very good resource for this sort of question. So, what should I do if I’m going to buy some enterprise software? Well, I’m probably going to talk to Gartner and Forrester and the other firms because they know a lot about them. They know a lot about these things. They publish research reports about them. They talk to the vendors. They talk to the customers of the vendors. They talk to the competitors of the vendors. And it’s not to say that that anyone should necessarily say, should ask Gartner, “should I buy X or Y?” And Gartner “says Y.” And then you go buy Y. That’s not the point necessarily. But it’s another important and valuable source of data. 

There’s a caution with that, though, I want to say, I want to mention. Again, it’s been my experience that it’s very common for organizations to build shortlists based on the vendors that are leaders in a magic quadrant or sometimes leaders in a Forrester wave. And, I don’t think that’s a great practice. And I would say very confidently that Gartner and Forrester would agree that that’s not a great practice. 

So, first of all, you’re missing out on companies like Digibee that aren’t included in the magic quadrants, in the waves, in our case, because we don’t yet have enough revenue to be included. So, they all have requirements for inclusion. And, you know, we’re a high growth company and we’re approaching that bar and we’ll be at it in the future, but we’re not at it yet. So, it’s a good source of data, or they are a good source of data, but they’re not the only source. So, those are a couple of the things I would start out with. There I have some other thoughts, but I don’t know if you had anything you wanted to ask about – as relates to those.

CAIT PORTE:

I think it’s really important to highlight that while you, I mean, I equate this to going out to a mentor for advice or guidance. Sometimes the mentor may know about things that you are not necessarily aware of, in having that conversation. You know, just think again, job searching, if we want to equate the same thing. Right? I go out. I talk to a mentor. They bring me a suggestion on a company, an individual, a source of information that I may not have been aware of. So I think, you know, spot on. Right? The first thing we want to do is understand our goals and needs. 

And, the second is back that up, get a mentor to help you out. And don’t be afraid to look at some of the ones that may not appear in your traditional sources for information gathering. Because I think you’re going to find, you know, especially given our relationship with Gartner, that they may know about a lot more than what meets the eye. Right? There’s more to the why there.

MATT DURHAM:

Agree.

CAIT PORTE:

The next thing that we had talked about was who’s going to use this? And this is really near and dear to our hearts here at Digibee because we think about that as part of our strategy. But, when you’re thinking about, well, who’s using this and what are they doing with it? How does that – how does that resonate with you? And what might you add there? 

MATT DURHAM:

Yeah, it’s really an important point. And I’m glad you brought it up because classically integration platforms have been used by a highly skilled team, a highly specialized team, a dedicated team, typically. “My job is to write integrations. That’s what I do, to write and maintain integrations.” And our thesis at Digibee is that that’s no longer a sufficient model. So, I would argue in terms of selection to understand whether a technology vendor can serve the requirements of your broader development organization. And maybe another way to say it is, can the platform that you are considering for purchase, can it be used by a wide range of developers in your organization? As opposed to the two or six people who are deeply trained on integration technology and integration technology only? 

The reason that’s important is, if you pursue a strategy where integrations are written as part of your sort of standard work, as opposed to by this highly specialized team, you will be able to burn down your backlog. You’ll be able to have a more efficient development organization and a more agile development organization that can adjust to needs. As opposed to – what is classically a scenario – which is relying on a small team where things tend to bottleneck very, very quickly. 

And, one of the super cool things about Digibee and one of the things that we were really proud of here is that we can get developers really proficient on our platform in a matter of days. Whereas with traditional integration platforms, training and certification can take weeks, months, or sometimes even longer. We actually don’t even offer certification because we don’t think it should be used. We don’t think it’s required in our case. So, I think that that’s a really important thing to look for. 

And one more thing I want to say about it, Cait, before I pause is if you have, if you, Cait, are the buyer and you have that team of dedicated integration developers, that doesn’t mean you should exclude a modern platform like Digibee because, of course, those people, those integration specialists will be able to use our platform. And frankly, they’ll probably be able to use it really, really well because they understand integration as a sort of as a topology, if you will.

CAIT PORTE:

We say this a lot here, select a tool that’s going to work for you, not the other way around. And, I think this conversation really highlights that because when you look at the average tenure of the people on your team, you know, people aren’t staying at companies 20, 30 years anymore. They’re staying at companies, single digits, right? Two to four to maybe six years, even saying six years is a long time these days. And, as you think about that growth, you need technologies that are going to help empower the teams that you’re bringing on if you’re expanding and growing and you want them to use the technologies that you have in place. Or as knowledge departs the organization, you have the ability to educate internally without rushing to get a deadline before someone leaves. So that’s a huge one is, who’s going to use this? How are they going to take advantage of it? And, are we going to have the flexibility once that person is potentially no longer here?

MATT DURHAM:

Absolutely. Great.

CAIT PORTE: 

Well, Matt, once again, you know, selecting a tool is challenging, to say the least. I’m constantly looking up articles on “X tool versus Y tool” or “why would I select X?” What are the best benefits? What are the “gotchas?” I’m sure that bloggers make tons of money off of writing these types of content. 

I think if we were to boil down today, it’s, you know, what are your goals and needs and how are you going to use it? What mentors or research tools can you go to to get that advice? And then ultimately, well, who’s going to be using it and how does that scale with my business going forward? 

Thanks for joining me, Matt. I’m sure we’ll see you again. That’s it for this episode of Integration. Redesigned. 

Digibee iPaaS: Continuing Education for Users (Episode 24)

Posted on July 24, 2023 by - Uncategorized

In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, sits down with Digibee’s Head of Education & AI Fabricio Inocencio, to discuss the exciting world of continuing education for Digibee – including Digibee’s own learning Academy. Fabricio shares his passion for delivering useful content and a friendly learning experience for users, primarily focused on enabling developers first and foremost. His job consists of evaluating how to deliver useful content for our customers, how to deliver a conducive user-friendly experience, and how to grow our adoption and community.

Full transcript:

CAIT PORTE:

Hello and welcome to Integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte. And in this episode, I’m joined by Fabricio, the Head of Education here at Digibee.

Welcome, Fabricio.

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

Thank you, Cait. Thank you for having me here.

CAIT PORTE:

I’m very excited for this topic today. So what does it mean to be head of education? What does that translate to for you?

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

I can divide my work in three buckets. The first one is how can we deliver useful content for our users in using the platform? So everything related to development content, courses, tutorials, and everything related to that. A second one, is related to learning experience. How can we deliver useful, friendly user experience and mostly a learning experience that can make their job in learning easier. The third one is more related to user adoption. How can we grow our community to attract more users and foster the engagement in order to use the resources that we are providing to them?

CAIT PORTE:

I think it’s really important when we think about the specific type of people that we’re targeting with the platform, which are developers, how are we servicing them? Right? And so when we speak to education, it’s so important that people understand not only the work that they’re doing, but the tools that are being used. So when you think about, we brought you on board to help with redesigning the educational experience for Digibee. How did you do that? Right. How did you think about redefining and redesigning the educational experience for Digibee?

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

Perfect. Interesting question, Cait. And we start with the beginning that it’s a different user. So if we see educational resources in general, we used to put education as an end. People study to get a certification and then do something else with that. Actually, we want to help our users to use the platform, not necessarily to get a certification. So in this case, education is more like a mean rather than an end.

And there are some implications that we need to take into consideration. For example, we don’t want to measure how much time they spend in the platform, actually in the platform, I mean the learning platform. Actually, we want them to use the Digibee platform. And the learning platform is just a resource for them to help to not be stuck or to get evolved their skills using in the platform. So we thinking about some strategies that we are using.

We are using the approach more “just in time” rather than “just in case.” For example, we do not provide a lot of content for them for just in case they can use. Actually this should be more just in time. And we need to take into consideration concepts like cognitive load, limited attention, and things that we want to put in place to provide a better learning experience for them.

CAIT PORTE:

When we were catching up earlier, you mentioned that platform selection was very much dictated by our user base and you referenced those things just before. Thinking about the difference between a student teacher type of engagement versus self paced learning for developers and people learning the platform. So that the end result, as you were saying, wasn’t just a certificate, but it was more “I want to use this platform over and over and how do I find the information when I need” it versus all at once for this certification.

How have you measured the impact of the success that we’ve seen from the platform? Because it feels like the change has been successful. But how are you going to look at the success in terms of metrics?

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

Oh, perfect. And it’s interesting because in the context that you brought related to how the users they learn, we need to take into consideration that we may have users that are using the platform in a linear way, learning things from scratch and in a nonlinear way that they can use the platform whatever they need. So we needed to think our metrics in a way that we could measure how the learning platform had been useful for them, considering those multiple approaches.

So one first metric that we put in place is of course the new users, how many new users we are bringing to the platform, giving our client space. And this help us to understand how we are creating the awareness and attractiveness of the platform for them. And once they are there, we measure their user stickiness, right? So we compare daily active users with monthly active users because we understand that if they are going frequently accessing the platform, probably we are helping them in the daily basis. So it’s more lifelong learning approach, it’s an ongoing basis approach. It’s not a thing that start and there’s an end, it’s a process. So we need to provide resources that can help them in a journey, not something that’s going to have an end.

And finally, and this is the most challenging, is how can we measure the learning effectiveness? And it’s not necessarily by grading, right? It’s not necessarily to see that grades. And we came up with how could the learning be useful? If the learning is useful for them, they are using the platform by their own. So we measure pipeline, how they are using and creating integration pipelines in the platform by their own, not with any help. So this is what we call the self sufficiency metric for how they are totally autonomous in using the platform. And we measure and you understand the co hosts that are using the platform and how they are progressing in deploying new pipelines without any help.

CAIT PORTE:

I think for those listening, thinking about implementing an education platform, overall it’s helpful not to just look at “hey, how many people use the platform and how many people have taken courses or completed activities or searched for content?” But in are you seeing an improvement in the amount that someone is using your product or service as a result of having better education and better tooling to support the users? So, I love that. That’s an area that we’re focused on.

When we’re thinking about licensing software based on Digibee’s experience and your past experience, what’s the biggest impact of having an educational experience like ours when you’re licensing software?

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

Perfect. I think that every product team aims to foster adoption, right, the product adoption and in our case, software. And by not knowing how to use the software, it’s a great friction for that adoption. Right. And there’s different learning curves that users can overcome this learning curve in order to start to grow in their skills in using any software platform or product or mainly digital product. So in this sense, we can think that a product team, if they have offering a software that it’s easy to use and is not complex, it’s very simple to use, maybe an onboarding program can be enough to help these users to overcome this learning curve so they are able to explore all functionalities of that software.

But in our case, despite we are a low code platform and it’s a platform that is easy to use, there’s a lot of capabilities, there’s a lot of complexities that can be solved by using the platform. So, the learning resources are really important to help the users to go through this learning curve as soon as they can in order to use all the capabilities that the software can offer.

CAIT PORTE:

Very well said. What are some of your favorite educational experiences? I know mine, we were talking about this, but I teach part time myself, so I’m familiar with a number of platforms but we talked about a bunch. What are some of your favorite ones?

FABRICIO INOCENCIO:

In this case, because we are focused on delivering a self-paced platform, I really like the platforms that can add a lot of technology features for interactivity and a way to try to replicate at most they could the relationship that students may have with an instructor.

So in this case, we get inspired by some ad tech platforms in the educational industry, for example, Pluralsight and Code Academy, that they focus more on tech as a general and also DataCamp and Dataquest that focus more on data science teaching. And they are really interesting platforms, providing those features related to interactivity, live, self grading or feedback that can provide this self paced rhythm for the student but also trailhead from Salesforce. That interesting way to organize the content with some gamification features that we are getting inspired as well. So I think that those are five interesting examples that I can mention.

CAIT PORTE:

They’re so good and we would be remiss not to mention stuff like Salesforce and I think platforms like Google for Google Analytics and other training that they have. I mean, there’s a wealth of knowledge out there and packaging it up between those platforms has been inspiring to watch.

Fabricio, thank you so much for joining me today. We very much value having education at the forefront of what we do here at Digibee.

It has been a pleasure and I am sure we will have you back for more as we start working on more education that we share. That’s it for this episode of Integration. Redesigned. See you next time.

Lowe’s Integration Success: How Digibee Transformed Shipping (Episode 23)

Posted on July 10, 2023 by - Uncategorized

Interview with Duncan McFadden, enterprise platform support for ServiceNow at Lowe’s, discussing how Digibee’s iPaaS transformed their shipping logistics.

In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, interviewed Duncan McFadden, enterprise platform support for ServiceNow at Lowe’s, to discuss how Digibee’s iPaaS transformed their shipping logistics. By partnering with Digibee and implementing a modern shipping integration solution, Lowe’s saw improvements in error monitoring, logging, and email notifications, resulting overall in better performance and reduced manual efforts. Duncan also expressed his intention to utilize Digibee for future projects, particularly in inventory and asset management, which are crucial aspects of Lowe’s operations.

Full transcript

CAIT PORTE:

Hello and welcome back to integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte, and in this episode,I am joined by Duncan from Lowe’s. Duncan, welcome.

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

Thank you, guys.

CAIT PORTE:

Duncan, we’ve worked together now with Lowe’s for a little while. Why don’t you tell everybody what your role there is over at Lowe’s?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

So. My name is Duncan McFadden. I handle enterprise platform support for ServiceNow. I’ve been doing it for roughly four to five years now. Whether it’s been from just handling enhancements and defects to now more handling the actual platform itself from like, license structure, platform upgrades, and all that kind of support.

CAIT PORTE:

So Duncan, thank you for joining us. Tell me what prompted Lowe’s, when you think about how Lowe’s is working with ServiceNow and integration, but what prompted you to look for an integration solution?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

So at the time, we were just about to start working a defect related to all of our shipping integrations, where a lot of stuff was just getting like, random errors. At the time, we weren’t really logging anything just because we had nothing really set up from IT, at least from that background. Honestly, we weren’t really looking for an integration solution. It just happened to be due to the friendship of other individuals that they started working for Digibee. And we were able to look at that solution holistically and start to work something together. 

CAIT PORTE:

So tell me a little bit more about this shipping situation. We know that Lowe’s provides amazing customer service. I’m a Lowe’s customer. There’s one around the corner that I hate to admit that I frequent so often. We’re always doing home projects, but when you think about this from a consumer standpoint, obviously we care about shipping notifications, but was there an impact to consumer behavior here or was this primarily internal logistics? What was going on? 

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

So this would be just internal logistics. Related to movement of IT equipment. So when you think about, let’s say, like, the phones, like, your signature captures that obviously you’re doing your payment methods through, any of those kind of items where we’re moving stuff. It’s a different FedEx account than what you’d see from like a consumer level. So, we’re just not sure if there was like a disconnect there. But we were using kind of like. An old version of their integrations, which was like soap based. Granted, again, it was built in 2017, but obviously Digibee was able to help us move to a more modern solution of the shipping integration.

CAIT PORTE:

It’s interesting to hear 2017 referenced as, like, a long time ago, but you think about technology changing every day and new things coming out. We want to have our companies on the latest and greatest of technologies without the legacy holding us back. When you think about before and after and what the outcome was in using Digibee to power these integrations, what are you seeing now as a result of that implementation?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

So, I think in the past we could say there was at least a 5% to 10% plus disconnect when it comes to sometimes showing like delivered statuses. Sometimes, I mean, the status would not even show anything. It would just show that the tracking was just sitting there, doing nothing. One, we’re seeing those, from like a logging perspective a lot better, because obviously you can see logs tremendously better when it comes to Digibee’s platform. As well as making sure we know that those alerts are happening. So obviously all that stuff is being sent back to our platform and we’re able to see some of that stuff through email notifications. It does seem that we’re getting a better, or at least a lower rate, of issues. I would still say there’s probably like a 2% when it comes to –  but I want to say this is more like a FedEx-related question. But yeah, it’s definitely working a lot better. Again, obviously to speed to market of not having to do some of these extra logging tables and doing some of that extra work just to be done from our side was nice. And yeah, I mean, the tool is really easy to show someone what’s going on.

CAIT PORTE:

I love there were two things that you referenced there. One of the things that we talk about is the ability to drive down your backlog. So Duncan, has there been anything that you’ve been able to see as an output now that you’re no longer worried about this shipping situation where, “hey, yeah, those notifications are going out, we’re not seeing as many errors. I don’t have to react to feedback or questions or monitoring or issues.” 

Is there anything now that you’re able to get to as a result? Has that been something that’s come as a result?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

Yes! So, while we were working this with you guys, I was actually doing some other enhancements when it came to some parts of shipping and receiving. And I guess an example would be at the time someone had to manually receive stuff, right. Because we’re concerned with obviously that delivered status being correct at the time with the old integration. So, someone was manually receiving product to actually show the movement of assets to the stores. So, obviously this is more like a holistic asset management approach. But, with that, right, now that we know that the delivered

status is a little bit more refined and able to be known that it’s correct, we moved everything to be back to automatic receiving. So, obviously you’re taking – I think we took about three users off of manually receiving stuff. When you look at the hours of time spent per year, something like they were wasting probably like $15K-$18K on it per year. I mean, granted, this is just hour based, but that alone, right? I mean, that speaks volumes. How quick – while you guys were doing the integration, I’m obviously doing other work and we’re able to just push out more stuff together that way.

CAIT PORTE:

Yeah, I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast is my background is in product and product management, and so I have a soft spot for the ability to get more work done, particularly for development, because you can then say, “hey, we’re going to focus on these really crucial, more innovative things, so that’s because we have this ability unlocked,” right? So it’s not to say you no longer need those three individuals or that your time is no longer needed related to this integration, you just can now focus those resources on other more crucial things. It sounds like. 

You also mentioned that the platform allows for more visibility. Can you tell me about what you’re showing and who you’re showing it to? You referenced that earlier.

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

Yeah. So currently it’s really more like a reference point to only me and one other individual, but it’s more just being able to see those logs. With a lot of your more traditional, say, like, platforms as a service, you’re not going to have that much built when it comes to logging, out of the box. Without having to really stand up a good enterprise logging solution at that point. And then obviously, you run into a lot of factors of how big those tables become? How do we make sure security around some

of that stuff? So, actually just having it within Digibee and being able to see it easily and quickly for whatever request I want to look at does make things a lot easier. Right? Because obviously we know where the errors are. They’re going to be bucketed to wherever they are, and then we can just work to fix those issues really quickly.

CAIT PORTE:

Duncan, you’re referencing a number of things that we’ve talked about. 

Has the ability or the usage of Digibee now highlighted, “hey, I can use this in other areas?” Are there things where you’re saying, “hey, there’s this opportunity that exists at Lowe’s, or I see this challenge, or this problem, or this service is falling down where I can now insert Digibee?” 

And maybe you can talk a little bit about what you’ve seen as a result of the ease of use that we’ve talked about so far.

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

Oh, definitely! From our side, right, we’re just kind of on a hold when it comes to some integrations. But, I definitely will be using Digibee for the future. I could definitely say we’re going to be working on a pretty big project here soon related to some other kind of forms of inventory and asset management. But, when you think about inventory and asset management, that spans very large. When it comes to Lowe’s, and I mean all companies, right, they’re going to care about their inventory and asset management a lot.

CAIT PORTE:

Inventory and asset management not only matters for the consumer, matters for the business. What do we have? How much room do we have? How do we think about what’s coming in and what’s going out? Especially when you’re talking about big physical products used for home improvement. So, all that space really matters when it comes to laying out your store, thinking about your trucking, and anything that’s getting from point A to point B being available for the consumer. So, I could imagine that there’s a ton on your plate, potentially, for how can I use this technology to improve some of that or to optimize what we’re doing today?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

Absolutely. Yeah. There’s such small things that most people don’t think about asset management that it adds up really quickly. When you start looking at like, dollar amounts, it’s very crucial to keep it in check, I’ve learned.

CAIT PORTE:

Are you looking at a lot of the dollar amounts related to the work that you’re doing or having an impact on? Is that a part of your role?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

It is now, yes. We are looking to kind of watch what’s the difference between efficiency gains or if we can kind of move some of our – because we track, obviously, the amount of hours for certain work – so we’re going to track against efficiency gain, whatever, like CPECs and OPECs for a lot of stuff. So, it is a very big thing to my new team. I will say that at least the ServiceNow space has moved around to different departments and now it is kind of like a bigger focus.

CAIT PORTE:

Did you look at any other iPaaS solutions as you were evaluating and trying to solve this problem?

DUNCAN McFADDEN:

I personally did not. I, again, was very trusting of the individuals that I did work with with Digibee, and did take everything from what they said. And I mean, it worked exactly as we wanted, so there’s really no real reason to look for a different solution at the time.

CAIT PORTE:

Well, we love to hear that, right? We’re very happy that Digibee is having an impact on what you’re doing at the business. Duncan, thank you so much for spending time with me today. 

For everyone joining us, thank you so much for joining. It’s been a pleasure. Again, my name is Cait. This is integration. Redesigned. Brought to you by Digibee. And thanks for joining me.