What’s the BUZZ? — AI in Business

Automation In A Multi-Vendor World (Guest: Alexander Leonida)

February 16, 2023 Andreas Welsch Season 2 Episode 2
What’s the BUZZ? — AI in Business
Automation In A Multi-Vendor World (Guest: Alexander Leonida)
What’s the BUZZ? — AI in Business
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Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Alexander Leonida (Founder SilkFlo) and Andreas Welsch discuss why taking a multi-vendor approach for process automation is so popular. Alexander shares his perspective on multi-vendor strategies and provides valuable tips for listeners looking to provide maximum value to their business stakeholders. 

Key topics: 
- Understand multi- vs. single-vendor strategies
- Determine fit for your organization
- Learn about citizen development trends

Listen to the full episode to hear how you can:
- Gain leverage with suppliers
- Adapt multi-vendor approach to company culture
- Manage shadow IT via governance model

Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/live/TH4tqx7XeP0

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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.


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Andreas Welsch:

Today we'll talk about managing multi-vendor environments and you know who to better talk to about it than someone who's been helping others do just that. Alex Leonida. Hey Alex. Great to have you on.

Alexander Leonida:

Thanks for having me, Andreas.

Andreas Welsch:

Hey, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and what you do.

Alexander Leonida:

Yeah, sure. From the UK I started off in banking and finance funnily enough, and got to the point where I just really fell in love with tech. Started doing some hackathons and everything, and eventually went into consulting in the intelligent automation space. Started off with one of the big four. Had some fantastic experiences. Started my own consultancy for a while and then yeah, that's what led me to become a founder.

Andreas Welsch:

Awesome. I'm really glad to have you on and hearing from your expertise. We talked about some of these things and I know you are quite passionate about multi-vendor. If I put my old IT hat back on, I'm all for a single vendor. So this will make for, a good conversation today. So for those of you on the stream, if you're just joining us, drop a comment in the chat if you're all about standardizing on one vendor or if you'd rather have the best of each. But Alex, should we play a little game to kick things off? What do you say?

Alexander Leonida:

Definitely

Andreas Welsch:

This game is called In your own words. When I hit the buzzer, the wheels will start spinning. And when they stop, you'll see a sentence. I'd like you to answer with the first thing that comes to mind. In your own words. To make a little more interesting. You'll only have 60 seconds for your answer. So what do you say? Are you ready for What's"the BUZZ?"

Alexander Leonida:

Yeah, sure. Why not?

Andreas Welsch:

Fantastic. So let's do this. If AI wear a color, what would it be? 60 seconds go.

Alexander Leonida:

Okay. I'm going to say white. Purely because it can take many different forms and it's usually requires a hell of a lot of inputs in order to generate valuable outputs. White being the color that contains all of them. I'd say that's where I'd go with that question.

Andreas Welsch:

That's awesome. Thanks. Really great job doing that on the fly.

Alexander Leonida:

Thanks.

Andreas Welsch:

Good job. Going from there, right? Where it entails all of the colors. So now it's my job to find a good segue in into multi-vendor. But that kind of leads us there too, right? There're multiple colors. There're multiple vendors in today, we want to talk about multi-vendor strategies and why that's a good idea or even needed in today's automation environment. But I thought before we go there, maybe let me ask you, what does a multi-vendor strategy even entail?

Alexander Leonida:

Yeah it's self-explanatory I guess. It's the use of multiple software vendors, whether it's one particular vertical or across the spectrum, to generate or create some business outcome. In this case, I guess we're talking about automation and AI.

Andreas Welsch:

Fantastic. So for those of you in the audience, if you have a question as well for Alex or myself, please feel free to drop it in the chat and we'll take a look in a few minutes here as well. Alex like I said, self-explanatory. What do we mean by multi-vendor? But again, if I think back to a couple years ago when I was in IT, and we were really trying to standardize and consolidate as much as we could, only have one vendor or very few vendors and to reduce dependencies and incompatibilities and complexities and the whole shebang. So has all that changed? Are we all of a sudden embracing multivendor? What's so popular? What are you seeing? Okay.

Alexander Leonida:

That's an interesting one. There are different schools of fort. It all depends on the company and the culture within that company, the strategic goals of that company especially within the IT department. I would say, who'd lead that strategy going forward, right? And, all the architecture, the tech stack single vendor had its day, and I believe it still does to some extent. It just depends on how far you are in that maturity spectrum. I would say for when you're getting started, you see a lot of companies, especially at the smaller end like low revenues or low headcount adopt, say few select vendors just to keep things simple at the beginning. And then as you get larger and expand or even mature, you'll find your different departments, for example, growing and they're using more and more vendors for the same thing or on the same technology vertical. Currently, I would say it's growing in popularity purely because it gives companies, especially nowadays with the with the quality of technology available, a whole wider range of capabilities. By, having many different vendors, basically can have best of breed. A few other reasons would be vendor independence, so by using multiple vendors, you are not stuck with one particular For all of your needs. This could help avoid things like lock in and allow for more flexibility in terms of negotiating prices contracts even support. There's also increased innovation and adaptability I'd say. With multiple vendors and obviously the right management of those vendors and the right governance in place you can bring new and innovative solutions to the table. New ways to solve the current problems that you're facing or problems within different departments and keep pace with the latest technology trends and advancements. Cuz as we all know, some vendors don't necessarily keep up with the times. And then guess, yeah, a couple of o other options would be cost savings, more leverage when it comes to negotiation and certain. Pricing models of those vendors might be beneficial for one use case and others might be beneficial for another. That's, a good point. I want to ask you f few more questions there, and I remember when we. Had our preparation call already a couple months ago. One of the topics we had talked about there was multi-vendor doesn't mean you have multiple vendors for the same type of technology. See multiple RPA vendors or multiple vendors to do intelligent document processing. What do you think there are, what are you seeing? To what extent does multi-vendor. Yeah, I'd say both this way and that way. So, yeah, vertically. Definitely I've seen, especially in my experience, a lot of companies with multiple RPA vendors. I think in 2020, Gartner had a report saying some of the their respondents had their client more than eight. different vendors for automation. Obvious. And it's, quite impressive. To be fair. I'd be I'd be impressed if I had to try and manage all, that'd be a nightmare. But yes. Yeah. I think it, it's one of those things where yeah just growing in more, more growing in popularity, I get the point about having more flexibility, optimizing your cost having better features available for specifically what you need. But doesn't it introduce complexity and at, the end of the day, either your automation department or your IT department that needs to manage it, or yes. Do you maybe not even transfer the burden even to the business user who needs to know three tools to do one. And that's what's an interesting one as well, actually. You can have different vendors for different verticals and different horizontal, you'll find a lot of RPA vendors now are branching into different categories. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the best option to go for say one vendor not just rpa, but others as well. Cuz again, you might be missing out on a particular, for example, IDP tool, which might have a accuracy rate of more than, I don't know, 95, 98%. AI in particular really works well when you focus on a particular niche. I haven't seen many companies who claim to have AI capabilities do well in every single use case. They usually are best when they are narrowed to certain things. Say, one that's fantastic for invoices, another that's fantastic for driving licenses and so on. But yeah, when you bring the end user into it, it does add complexity. There's no going around that. For those of you that don't know, shadow it is when certain technology solutions appear in the company that aren't really approved by the IT department, right? You'll find it's usually because the IT or business users aren't properly serviced by the IT department in a way that their needs are being met and so they seek other solutions or they are sold other solutions. In fact, I think RPA, if I remember, was sold to business units and then IT had to try and catch up I guess it's still the case. So it's, a tricky one. I just had seen a yeah, question coming in Increase cost and more coordination, how to handle companies in that situation. I think that's where experience and maturity come into it. As a smaller team, it's extremely difficult to handle, I'd say small team, maybe like three people. Extremely difficult to handle multiple vendors, especially when it comes to certain verticals. The increased costs. This isn't always necessarily the case. Certain vendors have pricing models which might be prohibitive for particular use cases, and others have more flexible pricing models, maybe on a per usage basis or on a per transaction basis. That's where a really skilled team comes into it. So the more complexity, the more vendors you would use. You'll need to be able to hire a really good team or, build a really good team and keep them on board because you are gonna need, say one person who's fantastic at this tool, another person that has experience with three tools. And there are complexities in that aspect. The increased cost can be negotiated, especially if you are using multiple vendors from one particular vertical. The coordination aspect is where you're gonna need to standardize your governance. And that might be where bill Doe comes into it. And I think Andreas has a great podcast on that episode on that. Definitely check it out. So yeah, building a CoE definitely definitely useful. It's basically a group of experts who are targeted in one particular area. And the goal is to educate the organization on best practices and such with coordination and more coordination. That's where best practices and governance and ideally visibility are needed.

Andreas Welsch:

So building off of that. On one hand you had the CoE and you need different skill sets and different resources in that CoE. When you look at something like shadow IT or citizen development, the more embraced and more guided version of this. How do you see that then work if you have different products or different technologies, different vendors. Do companies have one tool that is super easy to use, that works great for citizen developers? And there's another one that's maybe more for pro developers, a bit more advanced or who do that even full-time. What are you seeing?

Alexander Leonida:

I think you pretty much just hit the nail on the head. I guess going back to your experience, right? The ideal scenario for it is that you just have one tool. You're easily able to govern it. You're easily able to create best practices around it. And it's just easier for you to manage in that aspect. When it comes to business units, each have their own needs, each have their own abilities and skillsets. Finance may not exactly be as fantastic as marketing at a particular thing or vice versa. So a multi-vendor strategy in that sense gives flexibility to those business units, allows them to choose the tool that's best for them. You'll find that, again, managed properly with visibility into the end-to-end workflow, you should easily be able unlock even more value.

Andreas Welsch:

That's awesome.

Alexander Leonida:

But again, going back to the CoE thing, that needs to be more. You need the right training. There's obviously complexities around that. It's not as easy as a single vendor, but then that vendor that you might be using and tied to, for example the sudden on the pricing side, increase 38% next year. And then, what happens if or is not very end user friendly. So having that flexibility is where in today's tumultous markets the inflation, all these macroeconomic events is key going forward. At least that's what I think.

Andreas Welsch:

That's an awesome way to summarize it. On the topic of summarizing, can you summarize the three takeaways from today's session for our audience?

Alexander Leonida:

Multi vendor approach, it depends on your capability. As a company, your culture as within your company. If you out maybe it's, not the best way to go unless you definitely find tools that use cases. I think the real to understand the benefits of the approach vendor independence, cost savings, increased leverage, like negotiation ability in terms of the the end users as well to cater to their needs, what we're trying to do at the end of the day, provide more of the business. Yeah, when it comes to shadow IT, just make sure that you're able to govern it to end cycle. So have some kind way feedback loop between them and your center of excellence that I suggest everyone to try and create. And yeah, just gut ability is key from ideation to management and tracking to analytics and just make sure you've got governance rules and a single way to do.

Andreas Welsch:

Thank you so much for the summary. So folks, we're getting close to the end of the show today. I'm really glad you were able to join us today. Also, you, Alex, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.

Alexander Leonida:

Thanks, Andreas. Any time.