Jon Darbyshire - Transform NOW Transcript
Mallory KassoyJun 27, 2022 at 6:53 pm26min
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00:03Intro
Welcome to transform now, the podcast brought to you by robotic process automation pioneer ssmc Blue prism. Digital transformation has the potential to reshape the way companies service their customers, engage their employees and manage their operations. Whether you're looking to develop strategies, tactics or best practices to positively impact the future of work, or you're curious to see how other companies have successfully navigated their digital transformation programs than this podcast is for you. We're here to help you transform now.
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00:36Brad Hairston
Hello, everyone. I'm Brad Hairston with SS and C. Blue prism. Welcome to the transform now Podcast. Today, I'm happy to have as my guest, John darbishire, the CEO and co founder of smartsuite, a collaborative work management platform, John, and I will be talking about the evolving future of work and how that impacts his thinking as an entrepreneur, and a company leader. John, welcome to the podcast, why don't you tell our listeners more about yourself? Thank you, Brad. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, let me just tell you a little bit about my background, I kind of started my career. My first really big job out of school was with Price Waterhouse, I ran a consulting division for them in the Midwest, I was based in Kansas City, kind of the Midwest territory, about three years into that Ernst and Young started recruiting me to come in and run their Global Practice, and really begin to build that practice inside the states. And then to launch it globally. So did that about four years, we had about 1500 people that ended up being in that, that overall practice for us had the chance to travel the world and meet lots and lots of great customers and hear their stories and understand their backgrounds from a business perspective. And then left Ernst and Young and started a company called Archer technologies, we were helping organizations manage cybersecurity issues. And that really turned into what is known today as governance Risk and Compliance space, and sold that company in 2010, to EMC. And then, after that, retired for a few years, just kind of regrouped, ran a family foundation that we had started did that for about eight years. And then just a couple years ago, I had an idea for a new company in the work management space smartsuite. And I started that, and as of today, we're kind of heads down working on that. Excellent. So John, why don't you start us off by just giving us an overview of smartsuite. And the space that it fills in the market. smartsuite is a product that's in the work management space, we can help organizations manage any project or process inside of their organization in a single platform, kind of the genesis of of smartsuite was when I had the chance at Ernst and Young. And then in the Family Foundation to meet with lots of entrepreneurs, one of the first questions that typically came up is, what systems do we use internally to kind of manage the business outside of the product or service that they offered. And most of the time it was we were selected four or five different products with each customer or each client to do that. And the thought process was, why don't we build a platform that allows you to manage any business process on a single platform, I only have to pay for one time, I only have to onboard people one time, as opposed to having, you know, five or six different products that we're using. So the kind of the genesis of smartsuite was to solve that problem. It took us about two and a half years, about a little over 100 developers to build the core platform. So pretty big lift, it wasn't something you just build in six months at opera. And today we compete against teams kind of in the project management space, maybe like a clickup a Monday Asana, right. And then also, that's, that's really project management. And then we're in more of the process management kind of level above those players. And when it could be more directly with organizations like ServiceNow. So we're trying to fill the void between a project and a real high end process inside of a single platform. Okay, thank you for that background. So So John, what exactly led you into the software industry? After a career in consulting? I'm curious what kind of drove that, you know, it mainly started when I was at Ernst and Young, I had the chance to meet with hundreds of hundreds of clients, all different types of industry segments. And we provided a service to come in and basically help secure their systems in a particular area, mainly, so they could have an online presence. This is back in 2000. This Yeah, 97 to 2001, kind of in that timeframe, kind of what I found was that we were coming in every three to six months and providing the service. And then we would leave with the list of recommendations on things that they needed to fix. And then they would call us back in six months and ask us to do the same thing over and over again. And the reason for that was they didn't have a process to manage
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04:43Brad Hairston
these things around technology that needed to be there. So my original idea was, hey, we need to manage cybersecurity type processes in the same way that you manage other mega processes in an organization like accounts payable, accounts receivable payroll. So I took three or four months, and it took me a while to kind of put all the pieces together and figure out what those processes should be. But I took two or three months and just sat down and worked on just that. And then the light bulb hit me, I finally figured it out. And then had the opportunity to start Archer Technologies was the company that would help manage those processes.
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05:17Speaker 1
That was your move to the dark side, as they say, going from consulting to software. That's what they said about me when I did the same thing. was the first company you founded, you said was Archer, which was Integrated Risk Management? What are your thoughts on ESG? In general, and just how it seems to be increasing in importance with both regulators and investors?
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05:44Brad Hairston
Yeah, great question. I think that's the new hot buzzword. Today, almost every customer that we talked to at smartsuite is asking us about ways we can help them manage better manage that get their employees more involved in their local areas that they may be in with providing service back to the community and such and then a way that they can track and report on that, as well. And, you know, at Archer, we did something very interesting to help kind of promote that before it became this ESG concept was, we gave our employees three days off per year to get involved in a local community paid, that was just part of our overall plan. And we had a community director that actually joined the company that manage just that keeping us all engaged and involved. And that involves us working with companies like Habitat for Humanity, where we'd have groups of people that maybe 20 People from the company on a single project, to people getting involved with just one on one with the kids in the school that their their kids maybe attend that was there. And what we found it we just kind of stumbled on this film that we just wanted to be more involved. But it built a really unique culture in the company, of thinking about ways we could do things outside of work together. And it also helped the employees like build relationships from department to department, because they were spending a day doing activities outside of work with somebody getting to know them in a different type of setting. And that's really what ESG is all about today is helping keep people you know, involved. And you know, it's about diversity inside the organization as well, and tracking that diversity and reporting on that diversity. But it all starts with the connections with the community. I
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07:18Speaker 1
think I could not agree with you more, John. So let me ask you, what is your perspective just on the future of work? And how has that influenced your direction and your focus as a work management software? CEO?
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