Introducing Valuu: Revolutionizing How Organizations Plan, Track, and Deliver Value

Ryan Purvis 08:41:49
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.

Heather Bicknell 08:42:20
And I'm good, how have you been?

Ryan Purvis 08:42:22
Yeah, it's very good. Thanks. Been a long time. It feels.

Heather Bicknell 08:42:26
I know. I was just thinking. So I went to Portugal for vacation about a month ago. And I think we talked. We haven't talked since then. So it has been a little

Ryan Purvis 08:42:37
bit. No, no, we haven't ordinarily on holiday.

Heather Bicknell 08:42:41
Yeah, that was that was just for, for fun.

Ryan Purvis 08:42:44
Very nice. Which part of Portugal were you in.

Heather Bicknell 08:42:48
And we went to Lisbon and then we went over to Madeira, and then to Porto, and then back up to Lisbon. So it's my first time there. Have you been?

Ryan Purvis 08:42:59
Oh, yeah, there's been and we normally go to Esther real and Qashqai, which are about half an hour an hour out of Lisbon. On the coast. Now beautiful, part of the world.

Heather Bicknell 08:43:13
Yet as we started miss the guest, the beachy coast, it was May so it wasn't just warm, but not peak beach season, I guess. The back and point,

Ryan Purvis 08:43:25
temperatures are coming, that's for sure. Because we're now 29-30 degrees today. And normally, the mainland is a couple of degrees higher. So they will be in the city five now. You might have dodged the bullet there.

Heather Bicknell 08:43:44
But if you're trying to dodge some crowds, really? before it got super, super busy.

Ryan Purvis 08:43:49
Yeah, that could be a thing too, for sure. No, good. So would you go back? I guess that's always that important thing?

Heather Bicknell 08:43:56
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's always more to do we have like a week. So just a really a couple of days in each city. There are some beautiful hikes on Madera that I really wanted to do. But we got the weather didn't agree with us for our hiking plan. So we had to cancel. So that was kind of a bummer. So had to go back at some point just to do some of those hikes.

Ryan Purvis 08:44:19
Yeah. I mean, is there enough time, that's the reality, especially when you look as much like online. And as much as an AI could help you. You'd still get there and still not do everything you want to do

Heather Bicknell 08:44:31
anything new or exciting with you?

Ryan Purvis 08:44:34
Well, we are well, even the approaching the release of the value, SAAS platform, and the training. So we haven't talked about that yet, on the podcast, so we can talk about that today. And some new stuff associated with that, which has value execs. So maybe it's worth going through all that stuff. Because I've hopefully people are seeing all the activity on LinkedIn. And we haven't done things to the email list as much as I'd like to have by now. But that'll that'll start coming. I've written quite a lot of content for that now. So that'll start coming. But yeah, we talked about that.

Heather Bicknell 08:45:07
Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I don't know if you've introduced Valuu at all, yet, officially on this show.

Ryan Purvis 08:45:14
No. And that's funny, because I actually did a recording with Tom yesterday. And at the end of the conversation, he asked me like, What, so what's going on, and we did the whole thing. So it's quite funny how that was the that was probably they'll probably the first episode goes out. And then this one. So I mean, firstly, digital workspace works won't go away, this podcast will stay. I think we have a good brand, we have, you know, good feedback from people. And you know, it's still a topic that's fun to talk about, and lets us discuss various topics. value will basically become the parent to that, from a brand ownership point of view. And there'll be some new value, content that will come out, focused on more on video based stuff. So YouTube, so we'll probably keep this format audio, and then we'll do a video based show through through value that'll be deployed primarily on YouTube. And then because we already paid for transistor with the ability to have multiple podcasts, or just do the audio, there as well. And that'll be interesting as we have a completely different format to this. And I don't wanna say anything more because rather than people having to do it, and so value is something that I've done for years in many, many roles and in my advisory capacity where I've come into a business where they're trying to do something and they just can't get there for whatever reason, they need a driver, they need to understand what the actual thing is. They need to figure out why or what to do first, so through the years, and you know, we're talking multiple decades now. So getting old, I put together sort of a methodology that I use. And that's what we will be putting out as part of the training is the sort of valuu max methodology there, what is it about, it's about getting to value and what is valuable, that's going to depend on what the thing is, and what the business is, it's usually at any cost driven, you know, you're trying to save money or get a return on investment from a business, I use value as opposed to return on investment, because we just don't know what the thing is until we start doing it. Or was it a risk mitigation, a lot of what I do mitigation, bad governance, you know, putting a business away from what they were doing, where they want to go, because they have a risk of of collapsing if they're carrying what they're doing. Or it's something you know, that led by any for the organisation, if you're in banking, there's a lot older Holland regulations, or financial services or regulations that also drive things to a large extent. But basically, that's the crux that we help businesses to find value in their initiatives, specifically, digital transformation. So from a brand point of view, we're calling that value advisory. And that's myself and whoever else we need, that brings in skills knowledge, to help a customer. And those will tend to be project based, or initiative based pieces of work within the very training, which I mentioned. So there will be some courses that we've put together, we've got about eight or nine, listed in about six, six, a belt. So those will start coming out now. And those are things that I come across people that I've worked with come across a lot. And we just feel like they're important for people to know. So for example, how do you build trust, you're working with a customer? How do you get their customer to trust you or you're an internal team lead or manager or whatever it is. And you need to get people to trust that trust, you've from a relationship building point of view, but also from a delivery point of view to get funding for your project or your initiative and like that stuff. So there's just these techniques you can use to, to help do that. And I was talking about this morning, some of the stuff is like common sense. But until someone puts it together for you and sort of explains to you how it all fits together. Not everyone gets it sort of it's like common sense to everyone. And there's a phrase, a common sense is not common, that kind of speak to me when I say that. So the other thing that ties as a foundational level is our SaaS platform. So that's going to come out now, we're in our MVP stage with a lot of plans with this thing. So this is very much the entry level. And this is this is the methodology systematised. So we use objectives key results as one of the key steps in the process. So this will be this will cover that aspect. And then it helps you to prioritise and to plan and we've got a couple scenarios that we've baked into the product. And a scenario is a problem in a solution. Because often what I come across is, and I say everyone's the same. But it's like playing poker, you can play many games of poker with variations, which is not using the deck, a deck of cards, or multiple decks of cards. But the permutations are there. So the scenarios are like that you can have a game with the with the known suits, with the known ones that give you a greater chance of winning. That's what the scenarios are. And the scenario is problem solution. So we will articulate what a problem is, and then we'll articulate an action plan to address that problem. So what could that be in information security world, you could be doing an ISO 27k certification, and we'll have the things you've got to do from a from an objective point of view, Key Results pulling us templates. And then we'll have a scenario that you need to also go through in order to make sure that you've applied things like if you are assessed business like we are, we'd have to do penetration test on our product, and on our websites and like developing a business you have, you'd have some of the things you have to do. But that's where the SAS product gives us the ability to do scale. And when I say scale that, you know, that takes advisor work that we'd be doing which is usually, you know, initiatives over time to allow anybody to go and do their initiatives and use the platform. And the idea is that we are giving this primarily focusing on the consultant the managed service provider, the system integrator, the customer success the pre sales person, because part of what we do is is the business case, piece, so we help a customer to figure out what the business case is the doing the initiative, and then at the end, we help them to realise the benefit from it, which is important because that point during the project if you're not going to realise the benefits, and that's why I sort of label out those things because you're a pre sales person working with a customer. They need to understand not only the potential technical capabilities or more concern for the customer, but also how does this actually add value in an environment that will come back to the risk or the or the cost levers, which of them Usually, and then from a customer success point of view, whatever was sold has to be delivered, and ensured that the customer gets the same thing. So what often happens is, the old story sells or go sell something and customer success has to go and deliver it. And we don't do that. How did this come about? So the product connect that thing up a little bit, we're not trying to solve that problem, per se, but I think we will see an improvement there without a doubt, and then you get onto the SI, the managed service provider, the consultant, who is going into a customer, and they're helping them to continuously deliver or deliver on these initiatives and prioritise the work. And we give in as part of the product has the capability to create templates and reusable components. So those organisations will benefit from repeatable patterns that they can get to provide consistent service to their customers, but also one that is capturing the expertise, that adds value as well. So if you do the same, again, every company is different, there's different variables. But instead of trying to reinvent the wheel each time, for the first thing, which is copying, pasting from other projects, like slide decks, and Excel spreadsheets and all that kind of stuff, you building off the templates that I've tried and tested, we think there's a there's a, there's a speed to market, there are a bit of service. And then the last piece, which I'm still finalising a little bit on is the value exec piece. So these are people that through my process of of positioning value talking to people, or the experts that are looking for opportunities to help a business. And we will facilitate the introduction basically. And those people and there's a there's a lot of them will be available to to assist and get and then we don't get involved in the commercial agreements. So there's not a tonne of value driven, advisory driven thing. It's a connection through our process where a customer can say, Here's my problem, here's what I'm looking for. And we will connect them up with an expert that that's got those skills. So let's say your business that you know, hasn't hasn't explored machine learning, or how machine machine learning could be positioned in your business, and you've got a CTO, or you don't know CTO, or you're going to CIO don't whatever it is, you could bring in this person on a strategic level to say, how do we do this, they don't have to get involved in the operational stuff per se, but they could be there to coach the CEO, coach and CEO, or work with the CTO hasn't got the bandwidth or the expertise in machine learning to see the value of where to put those things. So it's very much a strategic engagement. And then depending on on how that goes, then bring in a consulting firm or, or an outsource to come and actually do the, the augmentation that might be required or help hire the people that that are required. So and then from from our point of view, it's it's, you know, from the platform, anyone on the platform would be able to request these people, again, through a through a process to say, look, I'm using the product right now. And I wouldn't run this ISO 27k certification, because the controls are changed. I need help from a fractional person who's going to be our guide through this or I need help or an advisory thing. So so we'll be partner driven to a large extent, and we've got a few partners that we're working with to just to be available. So it's going to be a marketplace, largely to help customers to see value. So it's exciting.

Heather Bicknell 08:55:19
That's, that's a lot going on. Sounds really exciting. It's so much you just unveiled out there. But no, that's that's awesome. I guess the so the training piece, is that on demand, then?

Ryan Purvis 08:55:32
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, this is, this is the thing that I'm actually just trying to finish off this week, we probably gonna go down the route of on demand to begin with. And then if there's a need to do more like in person, whatever it is, then we'll figure that one out. So at the moment have undermined and I feel like that's probably the best model for most people they want to be able to watch. And it's meant to be short. That's what I'm trying to do like an hour a day sort of training. And you can do all the courses probably in an hour, hour and a half. But they're meant to be short and punchy. And then what I'm thinking of and I'm actually interested in anyone would want this or not, and they're welcome to reach out to me directly or however, is there's the training course. But then there's also like, how would you apply in my business conversation? Well, how would you apply to my situation? So that's almost the you know, I am Joe Bloggs, I have this issue I'm trying to do, I'm trying to build trust in organisation, you know, how would I do it here? Can I have some help coaching whatever it is, for, you know, including the deeper thing where you know, some of the stuff we're doing, like from a risk mitigation point of view. You know, I don't even know how to define my risk, how to quantify the, you know, the true cost of that risk. How would we do that and then that would be a pretty long discussion, but the intention is to is to start giving people knowledge I'm not on an on demand basis.

Heather Bicknell 08:56:52
Cool. And do you see like, mostly, I guess what do you think this is something where, you know, maybe a consultant or a managed service provider would, you know, sort of like a product lead growth SAAS where someone would, you know, adopt value to help amplify their role to do better in their role? Or is it more of a direct business to business where, you know, rolling out to a team to use this model? Or, or could it be both,

Speaker 3 08:57:22
I think it's going to be both. So. So when I'll be honest, but you know, when I was looking at this years ago, I felt that going to be build it from scratch was going to take too long. And we could totally do it myself, I suppose to share this kind of knowledge, and see if it resonated, and we see that it is resonating. And building out the platform was always something that that I wanted to do. And the thing that always made me nervous was going straight to a customer, like an enterprise, because sales cycle would be so long, and how would you fund it and try and sell it at the same time, because you got to sort of be in six months to a year, selling it to an enterprise. So the model we're going with is pipe mullite. And, and then that means, you know, working with consultants in this piece, size, etc, etc. To use the product with their customers, and basically be led by, as we a lot of things we want to build. So we know, I mean, I've done all these roles. So I know what I want. But it's going to be led largely by what is working, not working with somebody comes product lead in that respect. And customer customer centric, primarily. Because even if you're the MSP or the SI, you still need to make sure your customers seeing value. And what we're trying to do is make it as simple as possible for the customer to know what to do that also for the for the consultant to also know what to do. So, you know, we try to remove that friction often, which is, with all this data, we've got all these resources. But you know, we don't know what to do next. Well, you know, you've got these things. Now I can tell you with this information you should be running. Whenever Whenever the problem is to solve their desktop transformation, removing users from Windows 10, to Windows 11. All migrate or you do mergers and acquisition. These are the things you should be looking at. And that's where the level of what we will provide as core templates and scenarios as scenarios versus what what a partner would do. So we'll provide some base ones, and then a partner might have their own templates that they would provide to their customers, which helps them again to accelerate that rather than value further. But ya

Heather Bicknell 08:59:30
know, yeah, I think it got to the heart of it anyway. So just talk to me a little bit about the the story talk sort of about the product, or the project piece. Now, okay, Mr. OKR? Model? Well, talk to me about the like the finding value piece, like what does that look like when you get to the end of the project? How do you sort of quantify, you know, the impact there?

Ryan Purvis 08:59:54
Well, yeah, and this is why I say we're at the front of the back. So almost like two bookends. So the front piece is the business case. So what is the what are you trying to achieve? So you could be, as I said, doing a hardware optimization project. So you need to move users from Windows 10 to Windows 11? And, and why would you do that there would be a reason, there could be a good opportunity, because your hardware is at that point of you need to replace it. So it might be large enough in order that you can get a good deal. Or you're at a stage where the hardware is at a point that it's a day in the life and it's performing poorly. And you're costing your business time because your people are not productive. So there'll be there'll be something that we'll be able to put together to justify the need. And I can give you sort of a correlation, which would be, you know, usually get about the physical to VDI migration project, because VDI will be cheaper in theory, because you are, you're leveraging server hardware and you and that's not actually a good business case at all, because the server hardware is actually more expensive. And the software to run the virtual desktops is actually more expensive than buying and maintaining laptops. Your business case there is different your business case there is one daily leak protection because you now holding all your data and data centres and you're not letting people travel with it like you would with a laptop even though your laptops encrypted. There's still a risk plus your ability to support and maintain that environment is improved because it's all centralised and can automate and using it specifically using the golden image that's that's cloned, your ability to maintain and stay up to date and patch and all that kind of stuff is is higher. So that's more of the business cases you go with even though it costs more then then say managing the laptops and desktops etc. An environment. And that's also not a an all or nothing sort of thing. And these are the kind of things that you would work through in planning your initiative upfront and that's the part of the process. But let's Say a very simple way to do the migration to Windows 11, you'd set out whatever your objectives are to do that. So when and then in inside, there will be the key steps. So key steps would be one to assess your environment. And we obviously, you know, my, my allegiance here would be with lakeside, because that's the tool I use the most with us, Lakeside austrack, to go and profile all the, all the devices in the environment. And they've got some really nice tech specs that they do this already, where it'll tell you which devices are ready to go windows 11, which devices could go if there were certain changes made, and which definitely can't. And that's based on criteria and rules and stuff. And that's not from from our point of view, we're not trying to get into that stuff, other than to use that information to help us plan the migration. And then depending on what the what the, the areas of concern are, you would make decisions on what you would do next. And that comes down to. So for each key result, we would define, you'd have, you'd have discovery, which is that piece, you then have the sort of implantation transmission steps you would take to deliver new and you're always trying to set a delivery timeline, with the things I want to do this key result by the end of the half h2, and there might be a financial metric to that as well. So you'll be looking at warranties and that sort of stuff with your hardware as well. Battery replacements, harddrive upgrades, that sort of stuff, because you might have to sweat some, some devices to give you longevity while you're replacing the devices that need to be to do the migrations. And there'll be other things to consider to be on the hardware, you'd have to do some build testing, you'd have to do Windows Lynnville, you'd have to look at, you'd assume in this case, most products would still work, but you'd have to do some testing of some key products on the windows 11. Os. And then you also have to look at what your manufacturers are saying around compatibility with little drivers. And like I said, there's a bit of testing quality assurance. And this is all stuff that we put together in between the objectives and key results and the scenarios that we would suggest that you do. And then the key thing is you have the data, you know, from when you know, from Lakeside, for example, telling you what you need to know. And they will help you to build your business case to show you know, their technologies as well as the migration, you might get get to a price of and this is a made up number $100 a user to do the migration. So if you got 10,000 users, you know, it's 10,000 times 10 $100 the least and you get a number, and then you'd have to work out your resourcing, what's that resource going to cost for the project. So you get to that sort of programme view of running this thing. And part of our data we'll be looking at is to say, well, what are the benefits of going to win as 11. And there'll be some soft benefits. There'll be some MSA software very difficult to tangibly value. So for example, you know, Microsoft would argue that going into Windows 11, means you have a much more secure environment, well, you don't really know it's more secure, unless you go and do you know, testing, or there's actually a vulnerability that's defined. So it's a start point for now. But what you should get out of windows 11, in theory is a an improved user experience, hopefully, more expedient operating system, all those sorts of things, better usability, and, and that so you can look at that from a productivity point of view and say, Well, if I have 10,000 users, and an hourly cost of their user working, is $100. And I'm just using these as easy numbers. If on the windows 10 environment, they are impacted 25%. That's, that's a cost of productivity. And you could use that the cost productivity either as $1 value by multiplying out hours and hours worked in week times by hourly rate times by 100%. And then what the impact is, is the 25%, well, you could just look at a time, you know, and this is where the strike will be useful again, because you could see how much time you're spending on a device. And you can see the impact of of the poorer performance versus the new performance. And, and that kind of gives you this ability to say, Okay, if we move users from Windows 10, to Windows 11, we buy all this hardware, we should see an improvement in productivity of 10%, which is usually about bad, right. And we should also see, we get to mitigate certain risks, like it's a bit a bit more secure, as the hardware is improved. All these things, and that should get you to a number now that that piece that we will be doing is part of us working through through the value product, sending out the plan, and then basically executing a set plan. At the end of the project or throughout the project you might do on a monthly or quarterly basis. We're checking in on those on those items we marked out for for benefit realisation. So okay, well, we said you're going to move 1000 users a month. So it's gonna take you 10 months to do this. All the users that have moved, are they seeing an improvement in their performance? Through this process? Did we remove some applications that you weren't using and we've been able to reclaim some licences Well, whatever else we said we'd do as part of our business case. And at the end, you would say, Okay, well, maybe we got a one a 1x return, which basically means the project didn't cost more than, than we thought. And we can we manage to do everything with everyone within the boundaries of what we said, or you ran the project, and you cost slightly more. We have some lessons learned which we capture, maybe we underestimated the technical issues that we would experience in applications moving from Windows 10, to Windows 11. Because it was one that we didn't test property, or whatever it is, and this is this is part of the learning curve, or the feedback loop that's so important in these projects. But you would see, you know, throughout, it's a way of tracking where you're going, and then tying it back into roll on activities, which you might have this migration to Windows 11. But you might have other activities, like using automation to improve things. So maybe, as a part of this exercise, you're building in a self help capability, which is going to reduce tickets, which is always a big one. So that's, you know, there'll be another one where you use ticket analysis, which is something that we do to say, Okay, we are seeing common patterns here, like running out of disk space, for example. And as users that are already under space a lot. Maybe she's not the, the automation is trying to clear the disk base failing, but actually the driver, they've got a too small, so you put them on a turn 50 Gig disk initially on a on a five gig or a 500 gig or a terabyte disk. And there's calculations about that, too, you know, what is the cost of buying a bigger drive, versus the impact of productivity for that user? And again, we use the data from something like subtracted to help us to quantify that, because you need something to tell you what the impact will be. But then there justifies the replacement element.

Heather Bicknell 09:08:36
Now, that makes sense. Well, congrats, again, on this very exciting launch of all these very cool things. If someone wants to go learn more about value, where would you suggest they they go?

Ryan Purvis 09:08:50
So the first version of website, which my wife is helping me fix is good value.com. And it's D tvaluu.com. That's probably a good spot to go, obviously, a lot on LinkedIn. So you will see if you if they connect with me on LinkedIn, or even look at my profile, is this a value page and there's a value exact page to go there. That's probably the best places to go. Otherwise, as I say, just reach out to me directly. And we can we can chat.

Heather Bicknell 09:09:17
Okay. All sounds good. Yeah, that's great. I think that it's exciting. getting it out there in the wild. But they say that cool. Talk to you later, is a fine.

Ryan Purvis 09:09:33
Thank you for listening to today's episode. Hey, the big news app producer 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.