Value-Based Product Positioning for Vendor and Customer Success | Interview with Mark McGregor, Experienced Freelance Marketing and Strategy Professional

Ryan Purvis 21:55:32
Hello and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to grips with a digital workspace inner workings.

So, welcome Mark to the digital workspace works podcast, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself?

Mark McGregor 21:56:06
So Thanks, Ryan. Well, thanks for inviting me. First off, I mean, I know it's taken us quite a while to actually make this happen. It's actually yours. Yeah, I didn't want to say that. You're right, I can certainly recollect a year or two, there's so much has changed since then. So maybe it's made it even more interesting now from the early days when you started it. But anyway, my name is Mark McGregor. For those that don't know, me, I've been in and around the computer space now for about 45 years, in a number of different capacities, whether that be in project management, computer operations, and recruitment, running software, businesses, product marketing, product management. But more importantly, to where we're talking about today, for the last 20 years, has all been around Process Management Process automation in its various guises. So whether we call it BPM whether we look at BPMs, whether we're looking at as change management, and of course, all of those things feed into that key topic of digital transformation.

Ryan Purvis 21:57:11
Great. And we've known each other probably since 2010, I think, because that's what I joined in global 360, which wasn't BPM company. Yeah, a lot has changed. And we'll talk about in a sec, but maybe just give us a into what you think the digital workspace means to you. And then we'll go into that stuff.

Mark McGregor 21:57:30
Yeah. For me, and I think, yeah, we probably share some frustrations, it really means fundamentally rethinking the way that we work. And then to take advantage of new digital technologies, and in enabling us to do things that we never thought possible. You know, I get really frustrated that, and I'm sure you've seen it with many of the podcasts and a lot of the stuff that you've learned these. So often I hear people talking about digital transformation. And they're actually not they're just digitizing, they're doing what they always did. But using automation. Well, that's not, that's not a digital transformation. I mean, fundamentally, I guess it's really about saying is about business transformation, enabled by digital. And then when we look at the workplace, there's just so much that it can mean to all of us.

Ryan Purvis 21:58:25
Yeah, I must admit, I think digitalization is part of digital transformation, I don't think I don't think it's the same level or whatever. I think it's just a small piece. And I think a lot of the stuff that we did, set back in the global 360 days, where value was a big thing around building, what you don't get when you looking at business process automation, you weren't caring about the necessary to the leave on the expense process, you were caring about those core processes that ran the business, you know, contractor building or, or something like that, where if you made it more efficient, you save the business, even more money or you know, pick it up more efficiency and effectiveness. I mean, you can avoid risk as well. I mean, that's that's pretty much why we started value is to do all these things.

Mark McGregor 21:59:05
Yeah. But if you look at those value gigs that you guys were doing, and you're the value consulting stuff, which I think was a really great way of looking at it. Yeah, it wasn't about taking your existing process. And then using the fancy automation, it was about saying, hey, no, you're right. But we don't just want to automate the expense process. Yes, the value, whether it's the Client Onboarding, whether it's underwriting, whether it's loan origination, is about saying, Okay, well, now we're going to look at this, let's rethink what the process should look like. So if you think about those really successful customers, they didn't just ignore the process analysis. And think about it was one of the things that made you guys a little different around that value consulting, which isn't, hey, you just give us your existing stuff. We're going to show you how to go automate that and you know, I can say it now because they don't exist. But you know, if you think about it, when open Tech's bought both, that was part of the, the mismatch and the arguments between the global people and medicine people, because the medicine people was, nevermind, that analysis, crap, let's just give us what it is. And we'll automate it and away you go, you're going to be happy. Whereas the global 360 value approach you said, Well, hang on, let's take a step back. So if you think about it, it was more about digital transformation and less about digitization even then,

Ryan Purvis 22:00:29
Yeah, no, you're right. And and I remember those clashes. I mean, it was ironic in the sense that I knew friends that made a storm and we've got merged together and all that we had those conversations in Baltimore. You know, the thing was, you know, those those low value processes the expense claim process, they were they were, they were no better, more valuable automated than they will do manually. If you think about it, because it was really the same thing. It's just in a different place. But having a bigger discussion of the customer to change things, and then having a number associated to you. I remember doing this analysis with one of the airlines back in South Africa, where cost of an invoice went from costing like 10s of 1000s of dollars to costing like $2. Because we changed the whole process. And we use, you know, OCR and business rules and all that stuff to fire this thing through. And then I remember doing the same thing with it with with one of the motor manufacturers, and we actually discussed with the CFO and renegotiating his contracts with his suppliers. Based on the common the repeating process, he was getting off repeating invoices to say, well go tell them you'll pay them the same amount every month. And at the end of six months, you'll just do a true up. But then they must keep delivering the stuff I was the factory stops, and at the factory stops. It's a half a million dollars to restart it. And I had like three in a month or something. So that alone salt solution if they ever did.

Mark McGregor 22:01:47
Yeah, that's a great example of that. I mean, there's the we know it's a mythical story. But the theory is of the four guys when the Ford had the tight with Mazda and the purchasing guys going and say, Well, you know, how do you do it? And wow, how do you get it down from 50 to five, and they work through see what Mazda are doing. They get it from 50 people down to five people. And then one day, they're talking with the Toyota guys and the Toyota guys say, What do you mean, we don't have anyone in purchasing? This? What are you mean, so Well, we know when a car rolls off the assembly line, there are four wheels, therefore we have to pay for four wheels. We just do it. We don't need all this invoicing in person. Yes, we have a contract negotiation. But it's your to exactly to your point. As a supplier, it's your job to make sure there's sufficient number of wheels at the front end. And then every time a car rolls off the back, we're gonna pay you because we don't need the rest of the stuff we already know.

Ryan Purvis 22:02:44
Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I mean, that's an awesome way to think about it. Because we, we almost create admin, sometimes, because we don't actually rethink the perspective, or change your perspective on it. So that really liked as an example. So what kind of work you're doing now? They mean, what's the kind of consulting that you would be doing with the customer?

Mark McGregor 22:03:03
Yeah, well, I've been doing a mixed bunch. I mean, most of my stuff over the last few years, a little like we were doing the 360s really been working with other vendors. So either helping them in terms of the product marketing, and that touches into where you're going, which is moving more into that persona, I still find that there are way too many vendors selling features, and all the bits and pieces and actually not understanding what someone's doing with it. And actually, I don't even wear and particularly in an agile world, you know, people say, oh, yeah, well, we use personas. And you know, we're using journeys. So we've got all that nailed. So we don't need anything. And then you dig in and say, great, but you're in product development. So you're developing a user persona. Yeah, you're developing a user journey. This is not the buyer journey that marketing needs to do. So yeah. It's great that a user in a call center loves your product. Bad news is they don't have the budget, the author the authority to go buying your product. How much do you understand about the pain of the guy that runs or girl that runs the call center? What's their pain points? And they go? Yeah, well, that's too difficult. What we do know is that you know, Fred, and Freda, they just love using our stuff. You never get to speak to Fred and Freda, if Joe and Josephine aren't saying, Wow, I have a productivity problem in my call center, or I have a call rate drop out, or just if you don't identify the business problem. I mean, exactly to where you know, come back to that value. So I've been spending a lot of time I mean, recently, I've been working with people like Apromore I've worked with people like iGrafx. I did some work with LeanIX in the enterprise architecture space. And of course, you know, anyone listening, the thing that I'm most associated with, I'm most proud to be associated with is the work that I did was for three and a half years working with Gary Decker at Signavio. And helping them get to that point where they they got their exit. I mean, I didn't get rich on it. I had a very good contract. They they looked after me nicely, but it wasn't there for the exit. But, you know, I felt proud of the fact that Garrow, Mike Colin Stein credit, a lot of the story that I created for them, because enabling them to get the growth that got there but I also, earlier this year, I did some work with a company called CEMEX. So they're looking at putting in a lot of process management. So it was kind of interesting working with them as an end user, because I don't do a lot of end user consulting. So that was kind of refreshing. So yeah, so lots of good fun.

Ryan Purvis 22:05:52
Good, good. What would be your approach? I mean, how would you come in? Because that sort of same thing. And as we talked to you about personas, and they, it becomes almost too blurry between the different perspectives of the persona, if you like, I mean, how would you educate somebody into what they need to do?

Mark McGregor 22:06:13
Yeah, and I think this could be to your point, this can work for someone looking at solving a problem internally, as well as externally. If you if you think about it, when we were doing this stuff with a global and we're doing the seminars, you know, I talked about the fact that in the a lot of the Centers of Excellence approaches, whether it's BPMs, or process mining, their accidents looking for somewhere to happen. There's a bunch of technologists in love with their solution. And they're rushing around the business saying, Well, you could you should, okay, well, we don't do what we could. And should we do what we need and must. So there's a bit of a flip. So even whether you're working internally, or looking from a vendor point of view, I come back into sense, what problem do you solve? Yeah, who has that problem? Why is it a problem to them? How do they currently get around it? Because we'll forget the fact that these are operating businesses. So they've already found a workaround. It might be kludgy. It might be expensive, but they've already got a workaround. So we're actually not going into green space. So okay, hows and whys. Why is this or yours a better solution to that problem? If we can't answer those questions, whether we're trying to promote our ideas internally, or whether we're a vendor trying to sell a product, then we don't have the story. And, you know, we went through, I went through it a lot when working at Gartner and work as an analyst. And it's so frustrating that so often people can't expose yet we'll never mind that, let me tell you about. So if you aren't clear on what problem you're solving for him, and then usually what you get process mining is a bit of a good example, in this instance, well, we can solve this or this or this. Okay, great. So you can solve everybody's problems. Who's the everybody that's gonna buy more? Yeah, that's right. So drill into a specific, specifically why you're interested, right?

Ryan Purvis 22:08:15
I mean, I discovered so we built the SAS platform, and I was having this conversation with an old colleague of mine. And I was saying, you know, we can I know your business, I know, we could solve this, this, this and this. And that's not to say we're in anything platform, I just know that we can solve these things for you. But like, what's the first thing that you want to solve? Any any job? Well, we only need to solve this thing where it was, but I'd like to be able to do things. So it was it was, you know, fortunately had that conversation in the right way. But I had a conversation that week before that, where I was on every one thing, we can do a lot of stuff, you know, all the stuff, etc, etc. And the guy that I was talking to said, no, no, no, no, you need to do exactly what you said, you need to be so specific to the point that it's almost a user of one that you're solving it for, because the use of wine is it's an emotional thing. And then we'll filter down so you're going to do it for the CIO or the CTO or the CEO or whatever it is solid for them. And then it'll go into the organization as well.

Mark McGregor 22:09:09
But yeah, I think that you know, touching on there is also it gets scary. Process mining, I'm just going to stay with that one, because it's the easiest one. Now is the one we've done the what problem and who's got it, what we potentially realize is that it's $100,000 problem. And we now say, Ah, we're trying to sell a million dollar product. Ah, could this be why we're not being overly successful? Because too often what we see is that actually, we're using sledgehammers to crack nuts. We've got these really neatly packaged, well identified really clear problems. But they don't justify the cost of the solution. So then you have to flip it the other way and say, right, you know, I mean, I, I often joke whether it's process mining, Enterprise Architecture, Process Management, that people say, Oh, well, you know, it's hard to sell 100 000, 250 000 Whatever, say, You know what, it's really easy. I guarantee that your boss will go for it. So then I was no budget, there's no way to know you're approaching it wrong. If you want a million a year, whether it's a subscription or for capital, all you got to do is to show how you're going to save or make 10 million. Yeah, if you can do the business case for that. There isn't a CEO and CFO in the land that are not going to be willing to invest. The problem comes when you want them to invest that half a million or a million for an indeterminate return, now I'm looking at saying, Oh, well, I'm really not sure. I mean, in the enterprise architecture space, when I was at Gartner, you'd frequently get a call, say, Mark, we're looking at products, but we've looked at everything in the Magic Quadrant. And they're all too expensive. Who else do you recommend? Because my boss is only going to is only going to invest 20,000? Shall we say? 20,000? Can you say? No, no, they're not investing. They're saying, I don't know what the value of this product is. I don't know what you're going to give me. But unlike you, Ryan, so I'll tell you what, I'm gonna gamble. Yeah. 20,000. So let's not confuse the investing with the gambling. Because we're getting to the point, I don't know what you're gonna give me back. So okay, our risk, this is what I'm willing to risk. And then we come down to very small numbers. And as you well know, more often than not, we don't get a decent return. So the cycle goes round is what we tried it, it didn't work. Well, you didn't try the right product to solve the right problem. You basically set yourselves up for failure, not for success.

Ryan Purvis 22:11:42
Yeah. Yep. And I mean, it's funny, because I mean, I don't know if you know, what my product does my product is exactly that. It's the it's the calculation of the value. Why would you do this thing? And it's not the same? I mean, when I first designed it, it was a big calculator. I mean, I mean, I say that affectionately, but actually realized that it needed the workflow as well, the before and the after the the checkpoints, the benchmarking, all those things. And there's, there's pieces, there's more to it. But basically, it is a thing, why, why would you do this thing? And why is it important, and then we did it through through a value so that monetary or a risk or cost, time or productivity feature to it. And then when you're doing the actual initiative, we're measuring it all the time against what you budgeted to actually put the actual business case. And I liked your one 1 million to 10 million ratio, I'd actually had a three to one. And I think as long as you've got multiple, I think it's important, that's important, please.

Mark McGregor 22:12:37
Well, I mean, I think the old finger in the air number was six or seven to one is the traditional CFO ratio that he might expect. And I just figured this a while, okay, well, you know, if you use a 10 to one, then you know that you've got something that's going to be pretty compelling. I mean, I think the crazy thing for me is, I confess, I should, should have looked at a big calculator. But you know, it's also a great example of where people get so myopic. So, you know, you're bound to have these conversations, but we should be having this conversation and me saying, Yeah, and it's fantastic, Ryan, that so many vendors recognize that this is a vendor problem, not just an end user project, program and realisation value problem, actually, they they're struggling to build the ROI, for selling their product, gee, while yes, it's great news that you know, six or seven significant vendors have all decided to OEM and badge engineer your product, right. And so that's fantastic that they will woken up to the fact that they're, rather than focusing on adding more features our Microsoft Office, which the average user doesn't use, you know, we talked about the digital workplace as your starting point, if you will, the main thing in this digital workplace is we've got a whole bunch of stuff on our machines that we don't use, we've got a whole bunch of cloud software that we just don't need. And vendors are still continuing to develop more and more and more, as opposed to well, actually, let's step back and do the provide this calculator, which is actually going to show someone how the value is going to be also what the value could be. Yeah, how they're going to realize it. Yeah. And then check point. I mean, to your point about true ups, and I think a lot of vendors would be a lot smarter if they could work to true ups. And indeed, a lot of end users would be better to do true ups, and they find they spend less money, because actually, they're not using the stuff as much as they think. But a calculator like that, is that okay, well, we can actually demonstrate that it is worth having extra licenses or fewer licenses to deliver the value. So I guess I'll have to look harder.

Ryan Purvis 22:14:54
Yeah, no, it's fine. I mean, yeah, I'll definitely show it to you. And I think the the thing that we often and we're actually so we talked about sort of how we talk about it, so when I built the product, it was built for digital transformation, programs, initiatives. But then the more I looked at it, and the more I sort of started hearing things in the market, and then the rest of it, actually started seeing it more as the pre sales. Yes. And the customer success renewal pot, because what was happening is I was getting involved in a whole lot of things with customers were going to churn, and we were following the same methodology that I had put in the product to get the customer to see the value or do the renewal and, and that's where the sort of three, the 3x 3x Plus thing came from. Because you know, for whatever figure it was, as long as you have three or four times over, it was it was good. And we were using very simple parts of the calculator to do that math. And, you know, it was, it was always going to be subjective. You know, in the sense that we were using numbers to calculate some stuff, but because I had no numbers before, yeah, it gave them something to go, Oh, okay. So we do this thing, we will probably see some return that we hadn't actually ever measured before.

Mark McGregor 22:16:05
Well, I think that, you know, that's an interesting thing in terms of the curve. So if we think about it, that says, whether we look at five, seven or 10 times x, as the initial acquisition, build a business case, get above the noise. And of course, we can say that two or three is enough. And it might be but when you go to the board meeting, there's lots of other things competing. And they also might be two or three, so it's not going to squeeze through. But if you know that if you get to that seven to 10, then you're going to be getting someone's attention, because it's going to be you know that you're going to be solving the right problem and the visible problem. Now, to your point, particularly in our SAS world, we know that the selling doesn't stop when the deals done. Yeah, exactly. Because you're already looking at saying, Well, this is a one year, two year three year contract, I've got to be showing the value. Great. And now I've got to be continuously proving the value to get the renewal. Now, at that point, maybe that it is enough for it to be dropping down to a to maybe a three that says, oh, okay, well, we've already invested, we've scaled up, we've got people that know this product now. And yes, we're still getting a return, therefore, we should still renew. So we don't need at that point to be getting the seven to 10, it would be nice. But we don't need it either as a vendor to justify why you should keep investing me, or as a COA or champion inside the organization to keep getting the budget isn't Okay, so maybe there's a two speed scenario there. One to get the deal to to keep the deal?

Ryan Purvis 22:17:48
Yeah. And I think I think, yeah, I can honestly, in an inverse in some respects. So some technology, you might bring it in, you'll get a higher return pretty quickly. I think about like, I do a lot of end user compute stuff. So you'll see a lot of stuff a lot of value upfront with stability, just being able to root cause analysis, to get rid of bad drivers, corrupt software, faulty software, all that kind of stuff. So you'll see an initial improvement there. And typically, what the measure there for a lot of people is tickets. And I hate that as a measure. That's what everyone uses. And the reason why I hate it is because tickets aren't actually an indicator of the true problem, really, because in most cases, a user only logs a ticket when they've got time, if they're logging them at all. So it could be seven or eight days, too late. And we did this work with IBM 20 years ago, to do this analysis with Watson. But it is an indicator, the quality of the ticket is actually the indicator, what is the information you have inside the ticket that helps you to diagnose the problem, that's a much better indicator. So instead of worrying about whether the tickets going up and down, it's more worried about whether the ticket was useful or not, is that which I think is the metric. But the point I'm trying to make is that in that first, maybe two years or three years, you'll have a very high return, because you will sort out your stability, your solid, your hardware issues or software issues. And then on top of it, it'll sort of Peter off, and you'll start doing automations, which will give you a different kind of return of value. But now that's a more efficiency effectiveness. thing, we're so you could have your 789 10 up front, and then it'll go down to a to three over time. And it'll kind of stabilize at that two, three, probably for 10 years, depending what you're doing. But you'd have to keep doing new initiatives, you know, all the upgrades because you have to always replace it.

So you have to replace every three years, you'd see this little blips of going to three up to five, then down again, and then carry on like that. So it actually would be an interesting thing to graph out over time. Once you've got that we have the data. So we could probably in a couple of years of people using the product. We'll start seeing that. Yeah.

Mark McGregor 22:19:45
I think anything. Yeah, that that'd be fascinating. And just true to the stuff that I know that you do and have done for many years, is also for people to understand that it's not a binary and understand the numbers. So let's suppose that we go to a one to one or less than one return. It doesn't mean to say the products bad. We've actually got to go do root cause analysis that we lost the trained people. Are we now using lesser trained people? Yep. Oh, are we using them? Have we stopped looking? Oh, yeah. Actually, don't just assume that oh, we're not getting the return now. Therefore, we should ditch it. The question should first be we're not getting there. Why? What's changed? Now could be could be in our digital transformation, that we've totally transformed that area of the business. And it is redundant, and which has great, save the money. Yeah, it is possible. But it is also possible that you no longer have I know a champion, you no longer have the skills and COE, someone's forgotten, and it's just drifted, and you just need to bring it back into people's awareness.

Ryan Purvis 22:20:58
Ya know, and I think the other thing is, you know, there's obviously a lot of focus on the monetary returns. But sometimes that ROI is actually based on a risk thing. You know, what have you mitigated now, you could have a situation where the risk to the business is kind of critical that you could shut the business down. But you don't want to Nessie put that number on the table. So you just say it's a critical risk. So you can't really do our ROI calculation or ROV calculations are preferred to us. But you do put it up there to say this is this is in the business kind of stuff. Which then we're not talking multiples, we're just talking about 100%, or zero, because either gonna, you know, avoid it, or you're gonna be taken out. And you think of all these ransomware things we're not prepared for, you could shut the business down, I mean, most going through it, DHL went through it. South Africa was just coming, they were using pen and paper, they couldn't even they had taken months to reconcile the pen and paper back to electronic quantity and backup. So these are things that are part of our method is to try to those things. And and I'm not trying to bring in ESG. Because I think that's also a factor. I don't know, I'm not quite sure if it's a multiplier or a divider in the in the method.

Mark McGregor 22:22:09
But what I mean, again, is going to depend on the size and shape of the organization's I mean, these days, you know, without he's a condemning your will probably them if you look at some of the investment funds, nevermind the fossil companies, but look at the investment funds, where people are perceiving that banks are lending and venture funds, investing pension funds, etc, in what's perceived as non ethical, of non ESG businesses, is actually has a direct share price impact.

Ryan Purvis 22:22:43
That is interesting, I hadn't actually seen that. I'm actually part of a group with a few people that, that we talked about this a lot. And then they, they're in the positions of being decision makers, with buying hardware and software and all the rest of it. And they are making huge efforts to define sustainable vendors. But actually hadn't realized that they actually reached the point of affecting share prices, because that's actually,

Mark McGregor 22:23:06
Well you looking activist investors. Yeah, I suppose, though, you know, is for some organizations, I mean, the most obvious one, if you look at the pressure that the activist investors are putting on the pension funds, around shell and BP, for example, it could be any other oil company, but just looking here in the UK, a massive pressure for the banks to stop providing banking, and it's okay. It's a far more complex subject. Yeah. than some people see in the world is quite as simple as some people see it. But that's not saying is that we can't do things to make make things better, shall we say? So I'm gonna sit on the fence on some of that stuff.

Ryan Purvis 22:23:57
I'll be honest, and you know, you get yourself in trouble. And people listen.

Mark McGregor 22:24:03
I'm going to sit on the fence, because can we do better? Yes. Can we just jump off the cliff of some of these things? I don't believe so. I don't believe people are looking at the full consequences of some of these actions in the simplistic way. And, you know, going back to the early part of this conversation, is one of the reasons that I'm quite happy just doing little bits of piecemeal work, because the whole work environment now is I'm happy that I'm a dinosaur. Because I quite frankly, I struggle with a lot of the, shall we say? Whether we call them rules, regulations, whether it's ESG, political correctness, etc, etc. The world in my opinion, the world has gone mad.

Ryan Purvis 22:24:45
No, I think you're right. I mean, I'll give you a bit of a tangible, tangible example. So South Africa is undergoing severe power problems, which are mostly due to incompetence of the ANC. Let's, let's not sugarcoat it. But they also have taken these these very stupid decisions to take money from the US and the Europeans to go and build renewable power. When it's going to take years to build the power and it's left to deal with the current problem. And the only way to solve the current problem is to build coal power stations and refurbish that which is what is happening. But, you know, the, the interesting thing about it is the Europeans the US have forced the African countries to go renewable, but they haven't gone to renew. And the likes to India and China have definitely not gotten renewable. So are you really ever going to solve the problem if the main polluters or the main producers of all the problems are not changing? No, you're just all you're doing is making a liquid, you're putting lipstick on a pig? I mean, from that point of view, I think the answers are pretty obvious. And I think I think there's stuff you can do just as an old person. But I don't think you can, if you worried about stuff, the higher levels, necessarily, because you can't control it personally, you can just influence it. But the voting will be what we spend your money.

Mark McGregor 22:26:02
So you touched on the South African, I mean, you know, that spent a lot of time down there over the years. And, you know, I mean, Eskom was one of my clients as well, you know, so very familiar with that. And my uncle actually ran pretty well ran a company in South Africa that was doing a lot of work on the power stations. He predicted a long time before that there were going to be problems and outages because the maintenance, we will be cut back. But the joke used to be down in South Africa was that I'm the white guy from Europe that dares to talk about empowerment, black empowerment. In South Africa is like you can't go there Mark as you can, because it's really simple. Smart people don't like working for dumb people. And there are some really smart black people working in some amazing organizations. And this was years ago down there. And quite frankly, they don't like working for the dumb people that been parachuted in. This has got nothing to do with color, everything to do with personalities, and personality types. So it's regardless, it's cronyism, you have a problem. The color of the people that are cronies doesn't really matter. Because if we go back into the days of white rule, then there are going to be a bunch of incompetent people in a number of places that were every bit on the take, but their color was different.

Ryan Purvis 22:27:29
Yeah, no, I look. I mean, I always I always joke about how the ANC learned, they learned all the tricks from the nets, but they didn't see it all that ended under Working pieces. So it's all and we're living in big houses, but I didn't see the other stuff that actually was happening. So they only know how to steal the money, but I want to make sure that there's always money in the future, which was just bad education. You know, by the by the previous party, there should have been like a handover, you know, this is how you do the corruption. This is how you keep the country goes, there's more corruption available, you know, that kind of conversation. But yeah, I think that's the hope. You know, we've been back a few times. And I mean, I get the sense from the ground up that there's there's a that that kind of thing is not nearly not nearly as emphasized as the government wants it to be. Everyone just gets on with it. They don't care. And I think that's a good thing. I think it'll just take it'll take generations to sort of top up unfortunately for me, I might grow. I might retire. It's not that my kids will probably live here. But it'll it'll sort of still beautiful country. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I love it down there. I've got loads of friends, as you know about being in Joburg, Cape Town. You know, I can I can remember the days of even as things were starting to change out in Cape Town, where everyone hated the Joburg is coming down with Joburg attitudes, because actually, in Cape Town, people have found ways of just getting along together. It was a pretty great place to be. So yeah, there's a lot of hope there. But to your point, sadly, and it doesn't care what color the money is coming down until the money filters down to provide opportunity for those many disenfranchised people, then it's just not going to knock. And the sad part is that the country has the wealth to dig itself out.

Ya know, and ANC has kept the poor man poor. And, you know, we thought we would Mossel Bay and loadshedding kicked in because the loadshedding wasn't all the way through Mossel Bay, it was like doing just one section. And then it started other sections. And the thing is, you know, if you've got means since you live a very good life, but if you don't, it means it's very tough. And that's the problem is the people on this, the majority is at that level. So when you get cold, they can't afford the electricity, the power, the blankets, all that kind of stuff. And that's the lines, he said they were with all the money, and those that he will have anyway, I don't wanna get too political because we can't get to the root on that one.

Mark McGregor 22:29:50
But we should turned it around, and let's keep it on track. And because I think it is relevant. And so, so the question comes when we look at that digital workplace and that digital transformation, how will those people that are disenfranchised, either benefit from what's going on? Or be able to utilize those to create new opportunity? I mean, how is you know, how's it and you know, that doesn't matter whether we look at South Africa, or whether we can stay here in the UK and look at some of the poorest states when you've got the the kids with some degree of means and not rich people going to school with their own laptops, iPads, everything else. And now you've got another bunch of kids in certain states in parts of the country, US UK stuff that doesn't really matter where there is no internet at home. There is no iPads, laptops. So are we actually is digital actually going to make things worse?

Ryan Purvis 22:30:52
So yeah, it's the have nots discussion. Now the interesting thing, good thing about South Africa specifically, is the uneducated, who kept educated by the government, this government, not the previous one, as much, at least, is the people today now have access to phones with connectivity, generally, in most places. And they're learning via distributed things like TikTok, Instagram, Reels, YouTube, etc. So the education is coming in an uncontrolled way for for the for the governments. You see here as well. I mean, I was in a school here a couple of weeks ago, a couple months ago now. And every kid had a phone, you know, it may not be the most fancy best one, but it was a smartphone. So they could definitely watch YouTube and they could do all that stuff. And when they got to edit with any of them, or the attitude to learn anything, that's that's obviously debatable. But I think the point is that it's accessible. And then there's a friend of mine Freddie Quek, he, he's involved with the digital poverty Alliance, and they're going after all the hardware, or various things, to distribute it to people that don't have that audit to bring to bring it up the levels because he saw what he was doing in it. And it really upset him that people don't have access to the stuff therefore the kids don't learn. If you look at something on the radio, the the wealthy is not so much about having money, it's having all the means to handle your problems, and, you know, medical treatment and technology to do thing, all that kind of stuff. And that's that's where they get the gap start as the people with the means can accelerate and people that aren't the means stay at a level, because they always at that level. And that's we have to solve. Yeah.

Mark McGregor 22:32:29
Okay. So that's interesting, that, that really drives home that some, whether it's charities, whether it's people thinking about it, the phone as the vehicle, so I'm learning French using Duolingo, as if you think about that experience, yeah, you've got nothing significant to gain by using it on your laptop, the experience is good for the mobile device. If we naturally then come in and say, Well, okay, if we want to give people access by the rest of doctors, whether it's low cost banking, whether it's learning maths learning languages, then actually it's about making sure to your point that's available, made sure to create a great experience on those types of devices are almost like the gamification of Duolingo. Yep. Because, you know, maybe someone doesn't want to learn language, but they like the idea of earning badges and doing whatever, which causes a learning experience when they think they're playing a game. So I've got no games loaded pretty well, no games loaded on my phone. But there are a number of games out there and you think, Well, okay, well, maybe games is what people want. So how do we persuade the game makers to embed be at maths or literacy? So that for someone that thinks they're playing Dungeons and Dragons, shall we say that they're having to type type in properly structured sentences, for example, maybe a crazy example. Therefore, they inevitably are learning English. Or, actually, you got to do this calculation in order to get this next weapon or whatever. So they have to be learning. They don't want to be learning maths, and they don't see themselves as learning maths, or basic math skills. But actually, it's because they want to play the game, but they can't help.

Ryan Purvis 22:34:35
Yeah, and it actually pulled an accounting of serious games a couple years ago, and there's actually a lot on the App Store. And it's not just for training kids and that sort of thing. But there's even companies training their own staff on policies, procedures, safety, things, that sort of thing. That's where we were looking at it from. And I think it's going to come, you know, this generative AI wave we're going through right now, where you can generate a lot of code easier. And as I say, it's 100% easier because there's 20 30% easier, because you're generating it. I think that'll speed up the availability of more tools or more apps, that someone who's got an idea to solve a problem wouldn't have it wouldn't be able to do. But now because they can generate some code, at least to get to the point of an MVP or a demo for a viable product. We now get some momentum and also that a lot of people are focused on community to buy stuff. So if that person can get the demo thing, really, and put it to a community and get some people interested and then crowdfunded, maybe you end up with a solution that you wouldn't have had before. And that solution can come from the people feeling the most pain that can come from the person that's in that ecosystem that says, you know, there must be a better way. And get some go. Your right form factors important.

Mark McGregor 22:35:54
Cool.

Ryan Purvis 22:35:57
Great Mark, I mean, I think it's very good part in the I think we've talked about a lot of interesting stuff. Do you want people to get in contact with you don't be left alone?

Mark McGregor 22:36:05
No, I'm always happy to hear people. But I mean, they can easiest ways to reach out to me via LinkedIn was interested to see, see, I'm sure that people will have more to say about our comments about our friends and thoughts around South Africa. And I think that certainly get a few people talking. But, you know, for both of us, I mean, you obviously lived and worked there. But you know, I spent a lot of time down there over the years. It's coming from a place of love and hope, right? I mean, that's the thing. It's everything we've said both of us is nothing about knocking or putting down the people. It's just that frustration, that it's such a beautiful and rich country with so much potential wealth to share, that we will just love and hope to see it move on to the next stage to be what it could become.

Ryan Purvis 22:36:55
Yeah. And you hear that from everyone? I mean, that the potential is there. And that's and that's that, you know, it's just needs to be harnessed. But it's okay, the Rugby World Cups coming up, obviously some potential there.

Mark McGregor 22:37:07
Yeah, I'm not sure that England see much potential from what I'm seeing these days.

Ryan Purvis 22:37:11
But yeah, I think yeah, I mean, it I think there's still a good enough amount of players there to be competitive. I just hope that they get it right on a day. Who Tom will tell the tournament tournaments are fun. There's no way to predict tournaments.

Mark McGregor 22:37:28
Listen, Ryan. An absolute pleasure speaking with you. As ever, thank you so much for inviting me. I look forward to seeing some stuff on that value calculator and taking a look. The value of

Ryan Purvis 22:37:42
Yeah, yeah. channel, I'll send you the link or you can you can have a watch. And I'll show you some other stuff on the on the downloads.

Mark McGregor 22:37:49
I'll make sure that I put down a link on LinkedIn boats and the podcast, obviously, when you're telling me it's up there, and also pointing out that we were talking about the value calculator and that should help drive some more people that will listen and have a look. I love it.

Ryan Purvis 22:38:03
I really appreciate it. Mark. Thanks for chatting.

Mark McGregor 22:38:05
No worries. Take care.

Ryan Purvis 22:38:10
Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknell is our producer and editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DWW podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website https://www.digitalworkspace.works/. Please also visit our website https://www.digitalworkspace.works/ and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

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