Summary

• Lasse Rindom, Chief Digital Officer at Baker Tilly Denmark, says it is critical to think about scalability, governance, and maintenance of citizen IT projects at the solution design stage instead of treating them as an afterthought. His year-end predictions about enterprise automation are a humorous way of pointing toward the ground realities of the enterprise automation world.

Key Takeaways

• 1. Tackling the 'unsexy' stuff of enterprise digitalization as a precursor to AI; scalability matters more than scale in RPA projects; Lasse Rindom comes up with an organization-wide framework for decentralized management of RPA projects. [00:00-00:18]
  • Proof-of-Concept vs. Proof of Value — 0:15
  • Lasse's year-end satirical predictions about the enterprise software world on his LinkedIn Profile — 2:35
  • Coming up with an organization-wide framework for decentralized management of RPA projects — 4:30
  • Bad/cliché questions RPA vendors/consultants ask when starting to come up with an RPA solution. — 10:50
  • How to adopt Low-Code/No-Code apps and even RPA from the SIPOC lens (where LCNC resides in 'I' or Input part of data flow and RPA resides in 'P' or process part of data flow — 14:20  
  • Language gap between IT and business — 18:10
  2. Lasse's background education as a history major, evolution vs. revolution, the danger of posing complex problems as simple, shoemaker's kids have worn-out shoes, and why LCNC makes sense (17:42 — 00:39)
  • Lasse's interesting background as a Master of History and did it help him take a more holistic approach to his field of work. 17:42
  • Why does Lasse believe in evolution instead of revolutions? — 21:40
  • What did a history lesson about witches tell Lasse about the importance of being able to acknowledge different world views? — 25:35
  • Why complex problems should not be posed as simple and the danger of doing so (Brexit as an example)? — 28:50
  • Why does it make so much sense to have more Low-Code/No-Code apps? — 00:38
  • Baker Tilly Digital — 00:39
  3. SMV. Digital grants program, a valuable 'licensing model' Lasse carved out to globally implement RPA capabilities in ISS A/S, and his year-end predictions about the Enterprise Software world [00:44—01:09]
  • What is the SMV Digital program for the Danish businesses that can apply for a grant of DKK 25,000? — 00:44  
  • An interesting 'licensing model' for enterprise-grade RPA projects — 00:53
  • Lasse's predictions that he shared on his LinkedIn profile, we discuss two of them; EU Low-Law and the definition of Citizen Developer (CD), and RPA gets to scale, finally. — 00:59
  • The Low-Code/No-Code pitch, where does it fit into an organization's data flow? 01:07
  • Sign-off — 01:09

Introduction

There's a lot of dirty effort and tedious effort in process management and digitalizing your input data, which is not sexy in a world where you could do AI, right? Or you could look at AI. So, you get these POC departments those just proving concepts that we know work.

We know this works, but we don't have the data for it. I remember people doing POCs on RPA and in the end, I was like, this is IT. IT is the automation of data flows at its core. And you can automate IT in some way.

That's not the thing you want proved. You want proof of; can we do this in a lot of places? Should we invest in these licenses and these people to do this? Or maybe we should not hire five guys to do RPA but five guys to do low-code apps, or five guys to do our process.

My opinion is dead, right? Maybe that's the effort we need to do but no one wants to do that because the other company is doing robotics. Let's just make some robotics so we can say we're doing some robotics, right?

Sharjeel (00:01:15):

Welcome to this podcast, Demystifying Innovation by Agile Point. I'm your host, Sharjeel Sohaib. The goal of this podcast is to reveal the best ideas that companies are using to become more agile and innovative in the enterprise world.

We talk to the ones who are at the forefront of changing the way work gets done in medium to large companies. We interview world-class thinkers at the cross-section of business and IT. Every episode is packed with inspirations and action items that you can take and implement in your own enterprise environment. Check out the show notes at the bottom. Today, I have Lasse Rindom with me.

He is the Chief digital officer at Baker Tilly Denmark, which is part of Baker Tilly International, an Accountancy and Business Advisory Network, having 126 member firms in 147 countries. It's the 10th largest accounting network in the world by revenue. Though accountancy firms are known to be rather boring for ordinary folk, Lasse has a unique personal style and a way of pointing towards the true north in an argument. For instance, his opinion and experience about intelligent automation, RPA and digital transformation is different from others.

Sharjeel (00:02:36):

At the end of each year, he makes some predictions about the software technology world, a rather amusing way of explaining how things are happening in the tech world as opposed to how they're being marketed by the technology vendors.

Even if you skip the whole podcast, do check out his predictions for 2022 that he has on his LinkedIn profile. I'll read out two predictions that I found really interesting, largely pointing to bigger realities that everyone knows about, but hardly anyone talks about.

His 5th prediction for 2022 reads, "The EU adopts low law as a principle. We were super inspired by the democratization in IT and decided to get a more democratic flavor by introducing the same principles in EU law, says President of the European Commission. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is the first to be rewritten, and now only consists of two lines. Don't take shit and don't be a prick. Assuming these two operate on top of prebuilt components and common frameworks understood by everyone and developed over centuries".

Now, this is of course, a piece of satire that has a tinge of reality underpinning the sarcasm.

Another prediction he makes, and the one that I really like is this, "RPA gets to scale, finally".

It's time to listen and learn.

Lasse Rindom (00:04:09):

My name's Lasse Rindom. I am the Chief Digital Officer at Baker Tilly, Denmark. I used to work as an automation consultant both for implementing solutions at clients and also for teaching on an RPA tool.

A couple of years ago before I moved to ISS (https://www.issworld.com/) which is a 500,000 employee worldwide facility management provider where I was the, the technical lead for the global automation setup and focused around RPA as well, where we did an agreement with a vendor for maintenance and development and also with Automation Anywhere for tool. So, we rolled something out big there and we worked on a big global framework for what we call decentralized ISS organization where every country could choose for themselves to some extent what they wanted to do, and where we sort of had to make, you know it focus on how do we get to scale what we can't scale.

Lasse Rindom (00:05:11):

So, it was very much about scalability and that's become a key point for me, saying always, you know, we need to focus on scalability more than scale. How can we move fast with business needs instead of having to push these automation and smart tools down the throat of everyone saying we need to have a lot before we have scale? I think it's not about scale, it's about capability more than that. And that's something I've been saying for a long time.

RPA for Small Businesses

So, after that, I joined Baker tilly Denmark, where I worked as a chief digital officer, and we are focusing on bringing these smarter tools and smarter ways of working into the SMB space where we primarily operate. So, I've gone from a clear enterprise pitch over the last five years into a, SMB pitch which is something I wanted to do.

Lasse Rindom (00:06:01):

I wanted to see how we can make sure that these smart technologies also leverage in a lower tier environment, and also to some extent based on the assumption that if it doesn't work there, then maybe it's just hype, right? There's something real about dirt and concrete and whatever you're doing. You don't just do tech based on the stock emission, but you do it based on, this has to work because I'm paying out my own pocket.

Sharjeel (00:06:33):

And did you observe that it really works over there as well?

Lasse Rindom (00:06:36):

Some of it does. We are doing some things on RPA where one of my key points is always that you need to make sure you have maintenance set up for it. Even though it's low code, you need to make sure you're maintaining it because IT breaks and RPA breaks because it's built on top.

I've talked about that in other parts as well, but so making sure that there's maintenance set up. I think that the focus will have to be a lot more on the application level, also on seeing how can we cover our cy park in a clever way. And I think that's more focusing application-wise, focusing on the data all the time, and then not so much focusing necessarily on how you want to automate it, but discussing what data do we need? How do we want to process it? what do we want to learn from it, and gain from the data in the end. And then we don't have to talk about RPA all the time.

RPA is very much a last resort. And that's what I've also realized, it's very expensive. Even though we've made very attractive price points, I think I did my utmost for it. And also, with a scalable setup with foreign low-cost consultants and everything. So, it's still expensive for a lot of these SMB clients. I've seen that also in the enterprise that some of the costs you're doing for an RPA bot in the end, with everything, everyone sitting there monitoring it and the software and the servers, and if you really take everything into account, you could just as well have hired a guy.

Lasse Rindom (00:08:09):

Except if it's a really big process, then you're saying that why are we then still doing it with our pay bots. If you have like billions of documents, why are we not just making everyone give us the data in a different way? If it's the same kind of data that can be processed by our PA, it's a question! So, for me, it's the question with these things. You had this crippling fear, that was also the case in enterprise that every time you put up a bot, it was something that could have been done with the human being instead. But in the SMB space where people are paying out of their own pocket and not with this stock eviction. They say Hey, I'll just hire a student helper to do this instead of buying a bot that will cost me a thousand euros a month.

Importance of Data

Sharjeel (00:09:05):

I get that. True. So, when we were having a chat yesterday, one thing stood out regarding you, that was that you always talk about what data do we have? Partly my understanding is different than yours. Definitely yours is more your hands-on. Don't people start with a project, like here's what I want to do. I need to do this process faster, cheaper, or they're frustrated with the process and that's where they start. You talk about data, so help me understand what do you mean by that? Start with data.

Lasse Rindom (00:09:43):

Data to some extent, right. I think CY gets a supplier input process output customer. So that's the whole value chain for the process. And maybe that's because maybe I'm slightly autistic here, but for me, it's all about data. It's a data flow. And also, if you look at some of these, more philosophical, like the one who wrote Sapiens Harari. He also talks about; the development of human society is always around how quickly we can exchange data and generate data? And, to some extent, let's apply those glasses to everything, because IT and tech is nothing but data. Business is basically not just about data, but a lot of the things that we can actually automate with these IT tools are about data as well.

Lasse Rindom (00:10:39):

So, if we start to identify our data flows, we can say, where do we get our input? How do we process the data, and what do we want from it in the end? Then it sort of becomes the data discussion instead. And I think I went into that way of thinking by being a consultant for RPA for so long, because it was always asking people what processes do you have that are manual and high volume. And also, the worst one, what processes are tedious? What do you hate about your work? And the poor employees sitting there with the boss in the room and they're like, oh, I love my job. I have nothing that's tedious, I hate nothing, I love it.

Lasse Rindom (00:11:17):

Or, if they're like, Yeah, I hate this process, and it could be easily automated, then sometimes you have the happy path that's just telling you yeah, everyone's the same. And then when you start automating it, there's just nothing but exceptions. So, you have the one not saying anything, the one being nothing can be automated because everything I do is special. And then you have the one saying that everything can be automated and it's not true. So, you have these and at the same time, there's also cultural things. Some countries, they have very strict process maps, and they only work according to procedures.

Lasse Rindom (00:12:06):

But in Denmark at least, we have a tendency to not work according to procedures. Even though we have them written down, we don't follow them. And if we suddenly even have them written down. So, it's like, what is my process? Do I even have a process? How do I understand my process? It's difficult, right? And I've seen that also in large organizations where you have been through your process excellence and learned in your 10 years, they still have, they have the processes written down, but no one ever reads the SOPs. They just do whatever they think makes sense. So, this means that asking about the process is actually a very difficult thing asking the process. They don't know what the process is, or they'll give you something that you can use for anything.

Lasse Rindom (00:12:47):

So, when I started doing this, saying that, okay, what applications do you open? What do you do when you open your computer? So, okay, I open up this web application, open up this system and go to this site to get these documents. Why do you do that? Because I have to pick out this data and put it there, and I have to do this and do this calculation, and then I have to make this report, send it to my boss, and in my email, I get all these things input, there it is. Your data flows based on the application landscape, so you look at what they open, and what do they work in? And then you can say maybe I can make sure that the thing you take from your outlook, put into your Excel and then put into this system web application.

Lasse Rindom (00:13:28):

Maybe you just automate that specific flow. So not the process, which is called your complete accounts receivable. But just this simple part of your accounts receivable process that I can identify based on what you're actually doing. And it sounds very much like I get that a discussion where you're talking about the process mining thing which it is to some extent right. But it makes people also realize it, it's very easy dialogue. You don't need to invest in a big process mining thing.

It is very easy to ask people these things. What are you actually interacting with? And then, that's where you have it. I did that for RPA, but this is obvious also to do for low-code apps.

Lasse Rindom (00:14:12):

You just ask so okay, you get this on paper, okay? And you get this in unstructured emails where people write different things. Couldn't we standardize that data input a little bit more? So very much focusing, the tools in the CY Park. So, the low code application will be on the on the I put. Then the RPA or data procedures or whatever calculations you need to do it. And then the outcome will usually be either putting it into a system or some kind of reporting that will make you know more in the end, right? And make better decisions.

Culture

Sharjeel (00:14:45):

Yeah. That's really cool, because a thing that I pick from your discussion is that, you brought up a culture thing, and I guess that must be different in Germany, if I'm not wrong.

Lasse Rindom (00:14:57):

You said Germany. I tried to avoid it.

Sharjeel (00:15:01):

All right. No, but it boils down to what's not written out there. And, because how people like you can bring a good process or a good technology or a good solution to me. But if the culture thing does come into play, if I'm not open, if I'm used to doing things in a certain way, I'll definitely resist. But there are people who are open to it and, I'm glad you brought this up because these are the unsaid things.

Lasse Rindom (00:15:35):

But the thing is, if you come with the tech or you come with the process, you'll have I think 80% saying no or being afraid of it. If you come with the process approach, that's what I said, you'll have either something you are unhappy with or you'll also have a lot of resistance. I think you could have some 50, 60% resistance in my assumptions based on the Danish approach. People will be resisting that as well, because they don't, they don't know what you are actually asking for. But if you do the other thing, and say, Okay, you do this, this, this, why not? And they'll be like, Oh, yeah, it's easier. Because you're to some extent sitting down and it's facts on the table.

Lasse Rindom (00:16:20):

And the funny thing about IT, is that so much of our ways of trying to ask the business is not based on fact, but based on, we think they want to be asked about processes and people and all these things, right?

But really, they want to be presented with facts as well. And ACB just asked myself, what is the common fact we have? Well, apps and data, that's the common language. And you can easily talk that language to business as well, because they have them, they actually work in apps with data. They just don't call it data; they call it something else. Okay.

It's a difficult approach as well. If you go on a very large scale, you have to buy a list of this big new system for a student application thing.

Lasse Rindom (00:17:06):

And, then it becomes difficult to ask this kind of question. But it's a good way to always keep in mind you have to ask these things. I put in a comment on LinkedIn the other day that, one of the, one of the funny things about IT is that it's at its core binary. It's like a true false. But every time we implement it, people ask us, how well can we do this? Will this make sense? And we'll all be, always be like, yes, well, depends, maybe, I don't know. It's never binary when implemented, but it's its core binary. Yeah. I'm always amazed by it, it's something different. An unexpected error happens and be like, what? How is binary code, can an unexpected error happen?

Lasse Rindom (00:17:50):

I once had a computer in 2005 where when I moved the mouse, it made a sound in the sound plaster. So, the speakers, I just moved the mouse and it said zzz, I was like, What? But, so even at the binary level, we have these things. But it should be something where you can say true false. But how do we get beyond that? It's really difficult. And I think we need to bring the language of it to the business and finding this common ground where we actually talk the same language and application is one of those.

Sharjeel (00:18:27):

Yeah. I remember you talking about like, the business should be willing to think a little bit more like IT, and then, IT should be a little more lenient towards the business.

Lasse Rindom (00:18:38):

Yeah. But, how do you do that? And that was one of the things I, I never just accept, we should be able to blah, blah, and then go on. I want to find a way to sort of fix that or bridge that. And that's why I've said it multiple times now, the applications are actually common ground, they just look at the interface, but what's behind it. But then you can identify the process flows, the data flows.

And that's why I say the data is at the core of everything. You just have to tell people what they call input, and they don't understand what an input is, but that's actually data to you and everything they do with it, when at least in an office job, it's a data flow. It's different when we go into the world of IT, it becomes a little bit more blurry cause you're suddenly working with real objects that generate data and why do we want to know these things? And what is it we want to know about?

Sharjeel (00:19:25):

Yeah. You start working with things actually.

Lasse Rindom (00:19:27):

Yeah, exactly. It's completely different.

Lasse's Educational Background

Sharjeel (00:19:30):

And you never know like a thing is a human.

Okay. Lasse, I just want to go back to my question. Let's start with your background, although we dive right into data. But let's start with your background because that sounded interesting to me. So, tell us about your master's in history and how it has served you in your current and past roles.

Lasse Rindom (00:19:57):

That is the million-dollar question. People always ask me, how come you, your master in history and you're working in tech, right? And I always, always go back to the Chris Rock quote from one of his shows where he says that "you are told you can be anything you want, but really you can be what you are good at when they're hiring". So, to some extent, that also, grabbed me and I started working in something and I was a little bit distressed about it because I didn't know why I suddenly just ended up just working for money and not working for something I wanted to do. I felt like that until I, I saw that I dived into automation and coding that way, and also the consultancy side of it, which I enjoy.

Lasse Rindom (00:20:38):

So, then it opened up and, I learned to love it. And, I do love it, and I love all the people I'm meeting. And I've also been able to incorporate some of the things that I took with me from my master in history. So, I'm a pure history and a little bit political science. So, what it means is taking a look at the longer trends. I did a very sociologically historical inquiries all the time during my studies, also a master thesis, which was a comparison of the early modern Ottoman court, society and early modern French society and how that affected the state.

Sharjeel (00:21:24):

And, I'm sure that must have helped you bring even if you don't talk about it explicitly, but that must have helped you have a second lens on things when you kind of try to do that.

Lasse Rindom (00:21:39):

I'd love to say that trying to be a little bit humble as well. But I love to say that that's what I try to do all the time. I love to look at, well, where are we coming from? And how come the last thing we did 10 years ago is not also called, smart low code as I don't believe in revolutions. That's the thing that happens to historians. you don't believe in revolutions. You believe in revolution and it's just something that we give you a big reaction right afterwards. So, after the French Revolution, it gave France even more autocratic Napoleon afterwards. So, they were better off with the king and with Napoleon, he was even more autocratic.

Lasse Rindom (00:22:18):

So, to some extent, you always get this, this I don't believe in revolution. It's an incremental development all the time. And that's also what I'm trying to ask in IT, saying that the ER piece we had 20 years ago was the big thing. That's where maybe we could say we had something that could be called at least an accelerated development where we got data digitized. But a lot of companies are still lacking in that area. So why are we talking about AI now when we haven't even fixed the whole digitalization agenda? We still have paper unstructured emails, which are not good data. So, we need to make sure that we sort of had this big idea, this big explosion of digitalization 20 years ago, but it's not done just because of that.

Lasse Rindom (00:23:06):

So, we need to make sure that we follow it through? And a revolution is something that takes generations also in IT, because we are impacting something. We are not impacting the data. We're impacting people who use the data. And, we have to remember that when you have something that has a big impact, you have to ask yourself, what are you impacting? And that's the people, and people tend to be generational. They think generational. You'll have a change of mind every 20 years because then new people will come in. I also know that some of the things I've met, some of the resistances I've met, they will not be there in 10 years, because then you'll have a new generation sitting there as leaders in companies and as SMEs, who will be thinking differently and would've grown up with something different.

Lasse Rindom (00:23:54):

And that will apply to everything we do. Everyone, you always heard these 100 years ago, these old people sitting there today being like, oh, the new generation is ruining everything. While the only thing they're ruining was, bringing along democracy. I'm reading a book about Danish history right now before I go to bed. And it is funny. They were like, oh, no, but the king needs to have influence. And, then they died, and the new generation was like, no, hell no. It's just that there are things that we think are troublesome. It's not troublesome for the new generation necessarily. So that was a little detour.

Sharjeel (00:24:34):

So, I'd like to pick on this; as you said, you're reading a book about Danish history, so I'm sure you haven't finished that yet. And so, did you like it, like what's, what's the takeaway until now from that?

Lasse Rindom (00:24:50):

In the Danish history? Yeah.

Lasse Rindom (00:24:52):

I'm rereading the democratization period, marking the 1800s right now. So, I'm just rereading that, and I'm going very slow. It's very nice. Before I go to bed, I just read a little bit about the politicians and what they're thinking, but it's not a big thing. I like to have these parallel views on things. When I read something historically, I always would say, what if I were there? Would I think the same? And try not to be arrogant, saying they were stupid. Oh, why were they saying that?

Lasse Rindom (00:25:30):

Oh, that was just something they said in the old days. But saying, Okay, if I were there and, today, I could resonate that same thing. I remember one of my histories in history professors once said to me when I had a course about witches in the 15 or 1600 with

witch hunts. And I said, ah, but why do they believe they're witches? Well, I said something stupid. I was a young student. And he said, Listen, they were witches. You have to understand that these people were witches; if you don't get that, you won't understand this society. And that's sort of what meant something to me. They made, okay, you have to understand that it's a different worldview and different settings, but that, that also gets it.

Lasse Rindom (00:26:08):

You have to understand the different worldviews of different people and also the different developments they've been going through. So why are they saying this? What have they been through all the last ten years? Why are they resisting your change now? Well, that's because they tried some change two years ago that didn't work out well, but put extra pressure on them or someone was laid off. You have to understand the history of, of just individual people, but also organizations and what they've been going through. And also, just adding a bit of, the thing with hype tech is that it has a tendency to say, now we've found the holy grail, and then next year, we've found the holy grail. And we keep on going.

Lasse Rindom (00:26:49):

But what about the thing we had five years ago? No, no one talks about that. It didn't work. I always tried to look a bit longer on it. And then also, like we do with them, we wrote a little bit about it yesterday with the low-code no-code. Everyone's like, we cannot fix the whole world. But the thing is, you don't want to fix what's already fixed, what you fixed with the older, what you could do before. You don't want to fix that with your no-code Low-code. You're not going to build an RPA system with your low-code no-code. I wouldn't recommend that. So, what you will be doing with your no-code low-code today will be doing the things that were over complex before.

Don't Underestimate Complexity

Lasse Rindom (00:27:35):

So, the things that were over difficult to do are over time-consuming and costly. But that doesn't mean that it will become easy, and cheap right now. Now it will just be complex, costly, time-consuming. Maybe it'll just get rid of the over thing. It'll be something that's viable to do. And that, I think that's important to remember that we are not going to rebuild the world with our low-code no-code tools, the things that work. We're just going to build the things that we couldn't do before. Meaning that we're building on something that's complicated, complex, or difficult to do, but now it's within our reach. So, I'm just trying to say that we should try to avoid in IT, and this is IT now I'm pulling on every string I have. That, because I'm also interested in tons of other things, is to say that things that are complex, we shouldn't position that as simple.

Lasse Rindom (00:28:27):

We should just say that it has become viable to do better now, but it still requires effort. If you want a big impact, you have a big cost no matter what. On some side, maybe it will take you five minutes to develop the solution, but you will have tens of thousands of hours of change management afterwards because everyone will be changing the way they're working it. There is a cost to impact all the time. There's nothing that's easy. And we should not tell people that things that are complex are easy all the time. Now I get political saying that the EU is something you can vote yes or no to. No, it's not. It isn't.

Lasse Rindom (00:29:12):

You don't ask people that. You don't ask people yes or no. I live in a welfare society. I make this point always to people. So, people voted no to the EU Britain, right? But yes, to Brexit. I don't know what you want. So just imagine should we have the entire public sector in Denmark and save the money, yes, or no? What would people answer? I know a lot of people will say, yes, that's half of it. Save the money cause I'm in Texas. But then you took all the complexity and just put it into a yes, no question. And that's the same thing with IT. We should not take all the complexity because we know it's complexity behind it.

Lasse Rindom (00:29:51):

You have a low-code tool that can do some things, but it cannot do anything without the rest of the data flows without the rest of, maybe you have to make some gateways to data. Maybe the data you need to interact with is actually in very complex tables, and you somehow know that, but you're still selling. Oh, this tool is easy. Yeah. But the entire project, the entire thing that you're trying to do, it's not easy. It's complex. Both because you're dependent on some data and some reports into some people. You need to understand it, and you're changing the lives of people that it's. It is complicated at best, complex, and at worst.

Sharjeel (00:30:23):

I think that it's a really important point. And I love the thing that you mentioned because it never gets talked about. I'm not talking about the political thing, but then, the way this happens in tech as well, or it as well that you pose pretty complex problems as simple problems. And then you get yes or no against them to get the buying or, to reject something. And then you end up with a worse-off situation.

Lasse Rindom (00:30:57):

Just end up with people that are even more scared of doing the next thing. I wrote a post a month ago about AI, where you see all these consultancies saying that AI is easy. It's easy. You need data scientists, and we can help you with that, or data engineers can help you with that. And then the tool. Oh, by the way, you also need historical data that's structured and digital. No, that's like the small-in-little subtext. And five years of historical structured digital data but we don't have that because we didn't digitize it that way.

So, no one has that. That's the problem. Every organization has master data, data integrity, data taxonomy. That is the big problem of every organization. I don't think you can mention any organization that doesn't have the problem. Saying that AI is easy; you just need the thing you don't have. It's like, yeah, okay, fixing climate change is easier. I just need a renewable energy source that will go on forever and doesn't cost anything; then I fixed it. But that's putting it a little bit on the edge. But to some extent, that is exactly the point that we are taking something that we know is complex, and we're just posting it as simple because my little part of it, maybe 2% of this work, is simple.

Lasse Rindom (00:32:19):

But the 98% of the work that the organization has to do to make this work well is not simple. So, ask ourselves, what do we have? That's why I'm always saying that, okay, first of all, we need to see, is there some data we can digitize better? Can we make it better and stronger? Can we get some LCAPs together, some structured data? Before we even think about anything in artificial intelligence, we need to first fix the basis for so many organizations before we go to that step.

Because if you do something AI, people will be expecting more AI and they'll be just disappointed that nothing works. Your POCs don't, don't prove a concept, right? Just prove value all the time.

Sharjeel (00:33:01):

But someone might be taking a counter-argument saying we must first define the goal. That is, we need to have these insights and we need them in real time. And then first, we establish the goal or the end state, and as a result, we'll fix all of the data. Do you see that happening as well? Or is it not a viable route?

Lasse Rindom (00:33:30):

No, but you need to know where you want to go. You need to have an idea about it. You must have an assumption about where you want to get to. You need to also have an idea about the concepts. But what I'm trying to say is that there's, there's a lot of dirty effort and tedious effort in process management and digitalizing your input data, which is not sexy in a world where you could do AI, right? Or you could look at AI. So, you get these POC departments those just proving concepts that we know work.

We know this works, but we don't have the data for it. I remember people doing POCs on RPA and in the end, I was like, this is IT. IT is the automation of data flows at its core. And you can automate IT in some way.

That's not the thing you want proved. You want proof of; can we do this in a lot of places? Should we invest in these licenses and these people to do this? Or maybe we should not hire five guys to do RPA but five guys to do low-code apps, or five guys to do our process.

My opinion is dead, right? And maybe that's the effort we need to do but no one wants to do that because the other company is doing robotics. Let's just make some robotics so we can say we're doing some robotics, right?

Experience as Chief Digital Officer

Sharjeel (00:34:50):

Yeah, I get your point. Let me move to another thing, like what's the best thing working as a Chief Digital Officer, and what's the most annoying? Like, give us a picture of the extremes, including what's the best thing, what's the most annoying thing.

Lasse Rindom (00:35:07):

Well, the best thing is being able to talk strategy and talk on a higher level. I love that. I love to be able to say, what's the big picture? What do we want to do? Where do we want to go? Why does this matter? How do the tools fit into the different boxes? That's the best thing. And combined with having a great team, that you can work with to inspire you and laugh with you and everything, I love that as well and then, the worst thing is administrative tasks are not automated yet. That is by far the worst egg. I talked to someone else in the digital space the other day, and he, we said that it's funny that, that we both hate these tedious administrative tasks and also that we on the internal side has some restrictions on what we want to do because IT is outsourced beyond us, right?

Lasse Rindom (00:36:04):

So, there's someone gatekeeping what we can do. So, it's like that the shoemaker's kids have worn out shoes. So, to some extent, I also heard that one of the biggest, data and BI analytics companies in Denmark, they have terrible BI reporting on their inside, on their own work, their own hours they're delivering, they have crappy reporting, but the reporting they're building for clients, like top shelf, is awesome.

Sharjeel (00:36:43):

Ah, I have seen that happening. Companies are doing cutting edge work for the clients but not being able to implement the same stuff internally.

Lasse Rindom (00:37:00):

But when you have a client relationship, it is based on a defined transaction usually. And the defined transaction is easier to excel at. You're delivering this, it will work and the client will be happy here. But when you're doing it on an internal side, you don't define the transaction well. You usually start off with something and then some other people; you'll get some stakeholders in from the side and everything. It's a little bit easier when you're paying money out of the house to structure your stakeholders and say we bought this. Okay, so don't complain. All right, I'll accept it. But on the internal side, there'll be this constant nagging.

Lasse's Current Assignments

Sharjeel (00:37:38):

Yeah. Okay. So just for the years what high tech stuff are you currently working on that you think is really awesome and that has the most amount of business impact?

Lasse Rindom:

I think that low-code apps are something that's going to grow a lot over the next couple of years. I really hope so. It is both a hope and also from a strategic point of view, it just makes so much sense that that area should grow because there's so much that's not digitalized and structured. We need data structures because everyone wants to do it. I hope that they realize it, and we start saying, let's digitalize everything we are doing. Let's get rid of the Outlook inbox. Let's put that into either some ticket systems or into a structured data that gets in. Every inquiry is structured data. Let's see how far we can take it with killing it.

Sharjeel (00:38:38):

So, Lasse, I know Baker Tilly is a consulting firm. Doing digitalization in a product firm might be, easier, but how did you contribute to the digitalization of Baker Tilly Denmark internal functions, like assurance, and for the clients because your clients are also in the services sector? So how do you, how did you contribute over there?

Lasse Rindom (00:39:06):

I think and I can't say it's the same everywhere, but the thing I've realized is that it's an auditing company, an accounting company that is still at its core with a digital branch that is growing where we are. It's always about, what works for us. It is something that they are able to also tell clients about. So, I need to have the partners in the auditing accounting division to tell the clients what they could do smarter with these things. It's very much about getting the use cases that work. And for me, there's been a lot about, just structuring a better approach to data management and repointing getting a little bit out of Excel, which is of course a tool that accounts and audits as well.

Lasse Rindom (00:39:49):

And then also focusing more on when we do something with an automation RPA that has a big impact, we need to, make sure we have a maintenance plan for it. So that's what we've been constructing. We've been constructing it so that we can use it on the internal side while also being able to offer it to clients. So, getting license agreements that are not dependent on legal entities, but we can be able to use it on clients as well, so they don't have to get, entire server bases and everything. And that has been some of the core focuses. Also, making sure we have scalable services, finding sub vendors in low-cost countries where we can scale our services without having to hire in 50 people initially.

Lasse Rindom (00:40:36):

Also getting us on a, a Microsoft route, I think that's some of the things I've been discussing is that we are one of the biggest ones in the SMB market where you have the big four five that always, focus on big enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. We are focusing on the SMBs and what we're also one of the biggest ones that we are the 10th largest search writer in this space globally.

So, we don't need to be the one that comes with the new small tool. We could be the Microsoft partner for these clients. So that's something that I'm working on that I think is interesting. I also think that, the Microsoft agenda at the moment is very interesting because they are expanding everything on pay as you go basis.

Lasse Rindom (00:41:26):

I think that's something that most people have when they have just an M 365 something, most people and most companies have that. And then, adding power, power apps, power automate is just a click and then you have it there. I think that's something that is going to change a lot in the SMB market where they don't have the money to pay big upfront fees for getting started. They don't have the money to pay for customer success management.

Digital Arm of Baker Tilly

Sharjeel (00:41:53):

Okay, you talked about the digital arm of Baker Tilly, so what's the digital arm of it? What does it offer?

Lasse Rindom (00:42:03):

Well, we offer consultancy on your systems where we are focusing a lot on the Microsoft stack with the Business Central. We offer consultancy work on low-code apps on BI and analytics, and also on automation. So that's what I said, I'm focusing on the input, the process and the output. The input for low-code apps and applications and processes also applications and automations. And then you have the output, which is what I call reporting or data analytics.

Sharjeel (00:42:35):

Baker Tilly has a rich history. So how does digitalization come into play and how did you push it? Like have you developed some services that are now being offered digitally or consumed digitally?

Lasse Rindom (00:42:52):

We have every country that is doing digital. Well, we are expanding in a lot of countries, but they are doing it with different focuses in a lot of these countries. The US is obviously really big to have a lot of digital capabilities and it's just different fish. But for instance, I'm working with both the Netherlands and Canada on delivering cybersecurity services to my clients while we are then delivering something on data to them.

So, we are sort of using each other to expand our capabilities on a worldwide level. So, it's something that we are growing and structuring and talking a lot about how we can get even more of these common footing on the digital services. Then strategic reasoning behind. It is actually quite simple. It’s that you have an auditor, which is something you have to have by law.

Lasse Rindom (00:43:42):

So, it's a commodity. Everyone can do it as tons of auditing firms. It's also sort of a commodity that is a nuisance to some extent. People have to buy it. So, it's not like Hey, I'm so happy I need to buy my account. You have to have it. And that's why the thinking there is just we want to be the auditing firm that delivers more value than just auditing. We want to be able to give them more. That's also why a lot of the firms are explaining on both legal. There's tax, there's digital, and that's also consulting also on generational changes and all these things.

So, we are sort of trying to make it a full suite like Deloitte and UI are doing for enterprises, saying, how can we cover everything you need to do or think about? How can we become your primary advisor? That's the same thing that we are trying to do on a global level with the SMB market, saying, how can we become the one stop shop for the SMB market?

Sharjeel (00:44:47):

Great. There was a program called SMV Digital in which you were involved and it pays out grants to implement technology. Can you elaborate on that? Like what's that program and was there any benefit that you see companies reaping out?

Lasse Rindom (00:45:03):

Oh, the Danish government has said that the SMB companies can apply for grant for digitalization. And it's something that's working for a lot of companies out there that are gaining a lot from that. So that's something that I think has an impact. We also have some clients, a couple of clients, not many yet, but some clients where we have been working in this scheme with them. So, both on helping them apply, but also helping them implement when they've received the grant.

Sharjeel (00:45:43):

Yeah. I'm sure the program can be a tool to help them get this step in the door.

Lasse Rindom (00:45:52):

I know that there was an opening in October or maybe November. I can't remember the date, but they wrote out afterwards from the grand office they had two main grants; One for digital advisory and consulting services, and one for implementing a system. And the implementation of a system one was much larger than the advisory consulting. You can get much larger grants there, but they had openings there afterwards. They hadn't received enough, relevant applications for implementing. So that also says that, people want to get consultancy advisory services on what they need to do, but then having a secure project they want to implement, that takes time. It just takes some time.

Lasse Rindom (00:46:43):

See now also in January here, that, those companies we talked to last year, they were talking. But then they put it in their budget for next year, and now things are happening. So, it always goes on these yearly things. Now you'll see that the fruits of what we did last year will come now and then next budget, and then goes on like that. But I think that for the SMB market, getting access to advisory services, consultancy services that are independent, and that's a key point with this SMV Digital, is that you're not allowed to sort of recommend them to use your services afterwards. That's not part of it. You have to be independent, completely independent when you advise them.

Lasse Rindom (00:47:25):

It’s difficult to be completely neutral. How are you even completely neutral? I don't know every tool in the world, every vendor in the world but getting access to that for SMB is important because it can seem in a world where you, if you just tap into it, go to any kind of conference, you'll hear about AI and you'll be like, What? And you'll hear about NLP and everything and even low-code apps and you'll be like, why do I need it? The problem with low-code apps is that whenever I show people, they're like, Yeah, looks cool. I don't know where to use it. Because it's so difficult to get an idea about where to use it. So, you can be talking, we had a conference on a seminar called Digitally. I ended up being like let's call it digitally. It's a good name.

Sharjeel (00:48:18):

No, no, that's wonderful.

Lasse Rindom (00:48:20):

Where I talked to clients afterwards about their experiences with our digitally, and I had a lot of people saying it was great, obviously it was a great event. But then we also had someone saying that, it was a little bit too high flying for me. I needed something concrete. I needed to hear what should I do now? What's the product? Where's your product for this? And this, especially on something like we had someone talk about cybersecurity on a high level, and people were like what do I need to do on a direct concrete level? So, it's like I get that and I will work on that. And then I called someone else and then started saying that this, I think there was too much product in it.

Lasse Rindom (00:49:01):

I wanted something on a higher level. So, it's really difficult to figure out what is it that they someone wanted a higher-level inspiration. Someone wanted concrete products action points. And it's always difficult to find, the sex sweet spot. And that's also the difficulty when you go to these seminars, these conferences. But now you're sitting there listening to people that either too concrete about things. If I need to buy this specific product for this and this and this, but what is this? What are you even talking about pen testing?

Lasse Rindom (00:49:42):

What's that? And then if they're talking on too high level or some of the things, you always seem lost on it. So, it's always about, if I go concrete on, they'll probably be like we get that. We know that we worked in our financial system. But if I go concrete on time security, I'll lose a lot of them being like, I have no freaking clue what he's talking about. So, it is really difficult in this space to find out in bigger companies. When you go to a large enterprise, you'll be able to meet up with an enterprise architect and they will know what you're talking about. They'll understand the terms you're using.

SMB Market

Lasse Rindom (00:50:20):

It'll be a much different discussion. But if you go to an SMB market where sometimes they have an outsourced IT department. Sometimes they don't even have an IT department because they're just bottom licenses online. Sometimes they have an IT director, sometimes they have an enterprise architect. But that's only like the big ones, especially in Denmark, where SMBs are maybe smaller than in the US. So, it's a different pitch to each of those. And that's why I think the independent advisory that the SMV Digital is offering. It's interesting because then you get there and you talk to them on their ground, on their turf and you sort of break down what's interesting for you on this. And that's something that is definitely needed in the market.

Lasse Rindom (00:50:58):

It's really difficult for them to find their way in it, because they just don't have the language. My wife is a teacher and when she saw it, she showed me something called the bridge model. What we discussed was, you have to first listen to the child, use their language, then you add a little bit of your language as a teacher. And then in the end you cross the bridge. It's like a picture of a bridge and then you talk the same language in the end. So now the child talks, the teacher talks. The child uses the teacher's words, you have a conversation. That's the way it goes. And you have to remember that also in digital. It doesn't go. If the consultant talks because then the client won't talk back to you.

Lasse Rindom (00:51:46):

You have to listen. What does the client say? Say you can add some words to it so they get, enlightened and then, go on like that. In the same way it is about language, about knowing the words you're talking about. I was so happy that I had a client where I went out there and I talked to him, heard about his problems, and then I added some words to it. I said something like, you want more peak flexibility. You want some blah, blah... And we talked on. Then 50 minutes later he said, Listen, I want that. I want the peak flexibility. He said the words!

Sharjeel (00:52:16):

Yeah, that's a success.

Lasse Rindom (00:52:19):

I gave him words. It's like a reverse Babylon. That's what we need to do.

Sharjeel (00:52:25):

Yeah, exactly. So, I'm glad you mentioned this because this happens so often in the consulting area, that the best skill that can serve you is listening.

Lasse Rindom (00:52:36):

That's why, don't pitch tech. You can pitch your overall ideas about how to run your businesses and your capabilities that's easier to understand. But don't pitch technology because you are really talking from your own little ivory tower. You're just basically standing in the ivory tower, just yelling out over the country. And no one is even listening to what you're saying.

Operations Management for RPA

Sharjeel (00:52:57):

Yeah, exactly. I like that. So, there was a very interesting, licensing model that you talked about in your previous podcast. It formulated and that you kind of struck a contract for your RPA project where you offloaded the development to the vendor. So, talk to me about that. That sounded interesting to me.

Lasse Rindom (00:53:29):

Yeah, well we treated the RPA as ever, all the IG thing, saying that you have to have an operations plan for it. I still think to some extent we don't do that, but it's still focusing on how we can implement something that works. Just building the thing, the consultancy, the development work so the no strings attached work, is for consultancy. We coded this goodbye. So, what we did instead was say that make sure that we can scale and make sure that, a good part is a working bot.

Lasse Rindom (00:54:14):

We agreed on that. It was about making sure that the processes were built and kept on working. So, I changed the mindset of our tender when we asked for providers from being focusing on development efforts and just getting the first 10 bots, which was the initial thought that they wanted to do at ISS before it came in. And a change is saying that, listen, we need to make sure that we have someone who can maintain it, and we need to make sure we have a framework that we pulled on so that it is maintainable by this vendor. This vendor that we choose for maintenance operations will be a trusted one. So, they'll have access in our VPN and everything and we trust them. They will have SLAs and all these things.

Lasse Rindom (00:54:59):

They'll be a trusted vendor that is the only one able to operate RRP processes globally. So, for sprints, you could have anyone do it just as long as they adhere to the same tool and the same framework. So, they have to build in the documents, the PDDs, the STDs, operation handbooks. They have to fill those out and then put it through the gate to operations. So, we had a, gatekeeping procedure and that where a lot of our discussions in the tender was actually around gate keeping. How should that be performed? What if they are rejected? How do we go back and forth and so on? Because I, I needed the vendor to say, okay we take it over, you take some responsibility for this, this is what we want.

Lasse Rindom (00:55:43):

I want to buy this. I want to buy an operations manager. That's what I want. So, it's like the same ISS did in their field facility management. They don't build the facility, but they manage the facility when you have it already. And this is the first time I thought about that, but to some extent, this was a brilliant restructuring because it was very much in the vein of what ISS was all about, “maintaining things”. That's what we ask for from our vendor. So, I think that structure is the only way to go on a large scale with RPA. If you don't outsource it, you need to make sure you build this maintenance capability and that's a cost you need to accept. I've seen too many setups for automation where it's like five guys sitting there and then they don't build anything new because they constantly maintain the few things that are already built.

Sharjeel (00:56:39):

Yeah, that makes sense. And back then you were working with BluePrism, I guess?

Lasse Rindom (00:56:44):

No, we worked with Automation Anywhere.

Sharjeel (00:56:46):

Oh, great.

Lasse Rindom (00:56:48):

Yeah. I chose it based on how I had a demo from BluePrism, UI Path and Automation Anywhere where they had to build the process. I defined in front of them good consultants and also pricing and everything came in as well. I defined a process they had to build; I knew it could be automated. And then I saw the kind of how easy he built it and how logically it was and how it was made very simple. I said the big three tools, they have almost the same capabilities. So that was a base assumption. Then I just wanted to know which one was easier to work. Funny thing is that the UI path guy used 40 minutes and he built a super cool process and was also, checking if everything was open and reopening it. He was awesome. The Automation Anywhere guy built it in 20 minutes. It worked. That's it.

The UI Path guy spent 40 minutes and it didn't work. And this was a guy who was a consultant from UI Path.

Easy to Use and Maintain

Sharjeel (00:57:44):

I guess there must have been some pressure that he might have been feeling.

Lasse Rindom (00:57:49):

No, no. It was actually very simple. Everyone was like yeah; I know I did well. But he overcomplicated himself a little bit. Anyway, we're not going to talk about that. I don't want to talk about software anymore on this. I hated that discussion. So, I stopped.

Sharjeel (00:58:02):

I do like this point, but I think we can talk about the general thing. The decision criteria then came to, what's easy to use and what's easy to maintain.

Lasse Rindom (00:58:13):

Yeah. But that was at that time. I had to make a quick decision on the tool because that was not the point. The point was the maintenance tender. So, I made a pretty quick discussion, no decision on tool based on this and some pricing. And then I said, no more discussion. We move on. We need to get to the maintenance because that's the important thing. The tool is just the tool. You don't go around discussing hammers all the time. I know the market is doing that on LinkedIn and everything, but it's uninteresting to talk about hammers.

It's interesting to talk about what you're building with the hammer and what, what you need to use it for. You look at the big three at that time, Blueprint automation, UI path; they could automate processes. That was the point. That's why I do the same today. But at that time, I had to make something that told me that I could make a reflected choice on what tool I wanted to use because I had to make a tool choice. That was a reasoning behind it.

Sharjeel (00:59:06):

I think the biggest takeaway that you have mentioned was like having three things for a business case. A way of thinking about it, a way of working with it, and a way of executing. That's a brilliant framework.

Lasse Rindom (00:59:20):

We talked about complexity earlier. Not saying the things that are complex are easy and I remember the reason that we started discussing this part, and you invited me to it. Was that because you read my predictions for next year?

Sharjeel (00:59:36):

Yeah. So, let's just go through them. I see you have some good stuff.

Lasse Rindom (00:59:43):

I just want to mention one of them because I think, I don't know if we are running out of time.

Sharjeel (00:59:47):

Yeah. So, which one would you like to pick up?

Lasse Rindom (00:59:51):

That's the one that no one mentioned in the comments afterwards, but I love that. And it fits very much with this one. It's number five, right? Where I say that the EU adopts low law as a principle. Where I say that we were super inspired by the democratization in it and decided to get a more democratic flavor by introducing the same principles in EU law. The charter of fundamental rights is the first to be rewritten and now only consists of two lines.

Don't take and don't be a prick, assuming these two operate on top of prebuilt common frameworks understood by everyone and developed over centuries. So that's why I do it. I say that, okay, just imagine if we took something else that is like super complex and said, let's just make it simple stupid, right? It's just simple. Don't take, don't be a prick. We don't need anything more. That's it. Because, it's built on common frameworks. Sensor and pre-developed and everything don’t make it easier at the same time. Even though your micro works, it's still built on complex quantum mechanics.

Sharjeel (01:00:55):

True, yeah. Okay. So, I'd like to pick on the way you mentioned the true definition of the citizen developer is finally delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai somewhere around Easter. So, we do hear all the time, citizen developers, citizen developers, and some of the genuine really big names are also taking that. I respect that. But your point hit the nail.

Lasse Rindom (01:01:29):

God will finally give us the definition. It is because everyone's always talking about, as you say. And I also fell into the trap last year where I said, we need to add more citizen roles. Then one of my good friends and colleagues in automation, Frank, he wrote that, yeah, sure. We didn't have enough crappy concepts all already. Thank you for introducing some more. But I thought that, I hate it. And I know a lot of people hate that. I've talked to multiple people that hate the word developed in it.

So, if we just say citizen architect, even citizen architect is something that enterprise architects will get annoyed at. But if we become citizen evangelists, no one owns evangelists, right?

Lasse Rindom (01:02:16):

It's just the crappy word everyone's using; a different word for key account manager. I'm an evangelist or marketing guy, Mark. But citizen evangelist is, you evangelize the tech and then you understand where it can be applied, what it can be used for, and then you go to the real developers or the, or vendors, the maintenance and get it built. So, it works continuously because you don't just need ideas, you need things to keep working. And the thing with it is that to keep it working, it is complex all the time. There's nothing in it that is easy to just maintain. I haven't seen it yet.

Sharjeel (01:02:57):

Okay, So, here's one more thing. Because I've been part of discussions and I can see things where, where it's coming from, but help us unpack. Intelligent automation becomes hyper intelligent automation as automation finally enters the phase where the most reliable automation is Gartner's auto generator for new automation conceptualizations. But I love that.

Lasse Rindom (01:03:20):

Yeah. So, the good bot that kept on working was Gartner's auto generator that generates new concepts for intelligent hyper automation. What do we have?

Sharjeel (01:03:32):

We have wide automation. We have deep automation.

Lasse Rindom (01:03:36):

There’re tons of these. But also, I remember that there was a third one. There were so many concepts on what real automation is. How do the new words for the scale when we are at scale? Ambition is always like, if you don't adopt full automation, you don't. But full automation is, as I said earlier, it is all about automation. So, it's just about you adopting it everywhere and naturally, we want to do that. But it's not that simple. It's not something you say, oh, haven't you adopted it yet?

I know that there's a concept on that and those that define automation in that book. So, we can call the definition. It helps a lot but I think it's still something that is constantly diluted by the concept of it. And every time we introduce something new, you remember you had your core RPA, but then you suddenly had an unattended RPA. Oh, and then you also had desktop RPA. And people be like, well, desktop robotic automation, what is it?

Sharjeel

Yeah, exactly that.

Lasse Rindom (01:04:44):

And then you realize, the only reason we suddenly had attended automation was because that's something BPR couldn't do, but UI Path could do. That's why UI Path introduced this concept as a measure for choosing tools, because then they knew BPR would lose and it succeeded in that. Even though whenever you ask people like, Okay, where do I need to attend automation in your call sense?

I don't have any, What else? Well don't you have a call? Surely not. Don't have a call center. I've never heard anyone say anywhere else than call centers for attended automation. I know they exist, but I haven't yet seen a call center using attended automation, because it seems silly instead of having a low-code app. I think that's what I had to say today. And then of course you can read my other predictions.

Sharjeel (01:05:39):

All of these predictions in a positive way are sarcastically pointed towards something happening in the market. I think that's a wonderful way to put it because we could be, less, tightened up by, speaking up about the things that are happening rather than just pretending that everything is fine. And yes, these hypes are all real.

Lasse Rindom (01:06:02):

Well, when you write sati, you always do it with a little bit of love. So of course, I love it. I love the discussions. I love to do these and I look forward to making these predictions because I did it last year as well and I think it's really fun to take a little bit of jokes on the market.

Sharjeel (01:06:19):

And I don't want to say it on air. We might even cut it, but we have these predictions coming from all the big names. We don't need to name them. There are always, predictions. But I'd rather say in a 10 years’ time, I see your predictions, being more selling than those predictions, because those predictions never get filled. I've seen that.

Lasse Rindom (01:06:45):

It's going to be at least next couple of years to get to scale. Finally, it was the same last year. I wrote the same up here, and it finally gets to scale. Then this year up here, he gets to scale finally. I'm going to keep on doing that because that's going to be my prediction. Now it will happen and it's going to be something new Moses gets every year.

Sharjeel (01:07:07):

No, it's this wonderful way to put that thing. And I that's a pretty good discussion that we had. And if it gives people some insight into it, there's not always a way to think about doing a new project. There are always new projects out there that you can go and, create great value from but your thinking needs to be right. That's what I get from your point.

Lasse Rindom (01:07:36):

You just have to start with the basics, right? Did the whole data. That's at the core of everything. Do we, have it? Can we generate it? Maybe we should do that instead of automating the small pieces that we have. Maybe we should fix the data input instead and then automate when we have it or, just think a little bit more holistically. Don't think tool wise, think digital wise.

Sharjeel (01:07:55):

To conclude our discussion as a practitioner, like you did two good roles, like one in ISS and now in Baker Tilly. What advice would you give to, platforms like US platforms and local platforms. What advice do you have for them to put some sanity out there? How do they approach presenting themselves?

Lasse Rindom (01:08:19):

Well, I think that it is about understanding where they fit in the data flow and then making a pitch very clearly on that. Then I think also to some extent pricing is important. And I get that, that we're always pitching pricing through the CFO and he likes to know exactly what his cost will be. But from an IT perspective, I like the consumption based even more. So, what's your cost? And then put 50% of 100% on top of that give that cost to me. I don't like, especially coming from the SMB market that you always have to pay big bucks to start off and buy the customer service manager. I like to have things available capabilities available. Now that we are in a cloud era where you scale up infrastructure easily and it's readily available everywhere that I think that's something that needs in high tech to reflect on pricing to make it go.

Lasse Rindom (01:09:14):

I think that's something that's needed. I think that's where we get into market talk, but I think you're going to feel a lot of these vendors in vanilla is going to feel a lot of pressure from Microsoft on that. And also, from Salesforce and SAP and whatever they all add to the capabilities tax on a pay goal when you already have the tools. So, I think that's something you need to be aware of. That will be a demand from Cloud.

Sharjeel (01:09:44):

I think that's a great point and I can vouch for that because I do hear that in our internal discussions and the industry peers that I listen to, that's a critical factor right now, pricing it the right way.

Lasse Rindom (01:09:58):

Yeah. I hear some of the big RPA houses are having trouble after Microsoft came up with the way they're doing RPA now and Power Automate too. So, you get people to buy 100,000-euro enterprise packages upfront. Why should we do that when we can just try it out for 1000 euros and see if it works.

Sharjeel (01:10:17):

Great. That's cool. Lasse thank you for your time and it was awesome talking to you in person. I've been watching you and I'll be watching you. You make a lot of sense and you kind of point to the things that are not said.

Lasse Rindom (01:10:35):

I try my best to tell the truth. It's much more fun. Right?

Sharjeel (01:10:41):

Yeah, exactly. Thankyou.

Lasse Rindom (01:10:43):

Thank you for your time.

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