December 13th, 2022
Q: How much AI do you use in your processes?
A: We are focusing just on the ways of working. So there are no tools involved, other than good practices. Okay, but the companies, The companies, you know, they usually have tools, you know, to support them in the market research or, some com company benchmarking, etc. So if that's at hand, the team will use that dose, right?
But, we are focusing on the interaction between the people and how we can improve that. That's, that's our, sweets book. Supplemental to that, procurement is renowned for corruption. How do you get around that, squaring it against the agile value for transparency? Yeah, so my usual answer to that is, you know, there is no secret sauce.
You know, we face the challenge also in the traditional ways of working. So, what do we have instead of traditional sourcing? As you know, we're usually procurement is kind of a single warrior trying to do their best to select and, you know, contract with one of the vendors and, we now have a cross-functional team.
Right. So, we can minimise risk from different things. You know, we have to pull diversity at the table and sometimes we have risks from a technical point of view. Sometimes it's a commercial risk. Sometimes, it's, what you just said, you know, corruption or whatever locked-in situations very often.
Right? And, so it becomes a task in the team. How do we get around that? And also within, you know, the boundary conditions of the law, right? And our compliance and so forth. But to drive. So it's, Agile is self-organising. So you don't have the capability of putting people in to watch the watchmen.
So what I'm driving at is if you're doing Agile, it's the wrong way of doing procurement. And if you're doing procurement, it's more of a traditional way of doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll give you a stupid solution. Maybe, you know, we run a lot of these big room workshops in the meanwhile, virtually because of COVID and, and, and the restrictions. So the only, you know, a very simple thing to make, to make it traceable and, and, you know, have the full transparency and that draws just record sessions. Sure. So then, now you still can't, you still can't, you still can't prevent that, you know, the companies or somebody, you know, is having some off, off-site conversations, but this is, you know how it works, right?
Sure. Lockdown startup is helping governments and bidders. get around the problem of transparency, which is massive for the government at the moment in the UK, because, one of the House of Members of the House of Lords has resigned because they got too involved in the procurement process, look what's happening in the European Union today, because people are getting too involved in influence and favouring. I was going to ask sort of, sort of on, well, probably similar to that, I'll, I'll segue in from, things like, the archetypal people who would then lean into this, are they very different from what we would say would be like the normal massive service integrators that would trip off the top?
Are the people who engage more, who get through that first part of that process, are they smaller, more niche? Maybe like we talk about in Studio Safe App, we would talk very much about innovators and early adopters. That would help cross the chasm. The people who don't lean in, and don't make it past that first filter, are usually like the conservative people, the bigger people who don't need to be involved or see themselves as not needing to be involved.
Is that like the archetypal filter? Well, I can't say that, you know, our approach, you know, it's, this is not something for the big five. We had the big five simultaneously in the same room, for one of the cases, I think it's more dependent on the buyer's current culture, right? Or they kind of just say, the ass guys, and, let's go for one of the big five and, you know, they can't make a wrong decision or selection. It's completely up to the team, right? You know, what are the criteria? And we help them, you know, and we encourage them to extend the selection criteria, even for the long list, also to include the culture, the hand and culture fit aspects to it, right? So do we have some experience with them and do we expect a fit or is it completely out of bounds?
It also becomes a selection criterion in the big room. So, we have had cases where, you know, they were, the pricing was good, the solution was good, but the Han and culture fit was just, you know, not there. And, so that became a no-go. And, it's just because, you know, solving complex problems, you need to have this fit, right?
And so, this becomes more and more important, while the business fit is still important too. , what, what, what, this collaborative approach, also offers new opportunities. Give you an example. In Australia, we had a case where we invited 10 vendors because we knew nobody of them could do the job alone.
So now we invited them and told them, not one of you will win. More than one finds your ally. So we delegated the complexity, you know, of this hand and culture fit, but also complimentary services, to the vendors. Right. And we just facilitated that and, and, you know, set the tone of what are, what's the expected outcomes and so forth.
So it's a, yeah, it's quite, we are just, we are still learning, you know, about new possibilities. Which is, you know, one of the main tenets of Agile, I suppose, and Lean Agile. It is, it is. Well, let's keep learning and learn together and learn as we do it. It's, it's, it's brilliant, it's been, yeah, fascinating.
Q: What was their perspective of that whole process? Did they come out of that and enjoy it? Or were they left feeling a bit bruised? Or how was that?