Transcript for "Enhancing Procurement's Digital Footprint | Proven Strategies for Adoption and Efficiency": K. We'll just give it a few more minutes so more people can join, and then we'll get started for today's session. Great. For everyone who's just joining, we're gonna give it a couple more minutes, and then we'll get started with today's session. Alright. Alright. Thank you everybody for joining today. Really excited for the session that we have planned for you and, appreciate you taking the time. So we'll get started. The topic of today's webinar is gonna be elevating procurement's digital footprint, where we unlock smarter, faster, more efficient procurement processes with adoption and automation. So I'll be hosting it. I'm Rom Chopra. I'm the cofounder and CEO of Zipline. Been in the software industry for a little bit of time, but really focused on improving digital user experience and test automation. Really, what we're gonna focus on today is having a conversation around the strategies, the stories, the anecdotes of what has worked and what hasn't in digital transformation projects with the lens specifically on digital adoption, digital user adoption, and test automation. So to join me today, I have John Dixon, the former chief procurement officer of AstraZeneca and principal of JDPA. With over about forty years of experience plus, he's led digital transformation procurement product projects, and obviously been a part of, leading AstraZeneca's procurement strategy and transformation initiatives as his most recent state. So wanted to bring John to the table and have him share his thoughts. John, over to you. Thanks, Jerome. Appreciate it. Hi, everybody. Pleased to be with you today to talk through what I think is one of the key, fundamental issues, facing procurement as they move forward with their next generation evolution in terms of how to harness technology in the right way, how to replace what you've had as your legacy systems, but also how do you, kind of engage the business, how do you engage the IT community, and how do you engage users at the individual level. So just maybe a little, oversight to to my journey. So prior to 2018 when I joined AstraZeneca, I worked in a number of senior procurement roles across multiple industries. So I was with GlaxoSmithKline, Diageo Drinks, Heinz Food, BP in the oil and gas arena, as well as Rolls Royce Aerospace, and, a little bit of work with network rail in the public sector. So a broad, range of industries, all facing many similar challenges in terms of transformation and positioning of procurement. And then I was fortunate to step in as a CPO at AstraZeneca, guided procurement through, Brexit, through the COVID vaccine, which was obviously a huge challenge, for the organization, but positioning procurement, front and center, with the organization and, also in terms of transforming the function and also deploying, Cooper, which was a radical shift away from the traditional, purchase to pay platform that we had put in place. From 2020, I've obviously worked in that organization deploying digital tools, including, digital adoption, platforms to support the Kuba deployment. And then, subsequent to coming out of AstraZeneca where I needed a much much needed retirement and, a a bit of time on the golf course, I've set up my own organization, JDPA, and I'm there to advise, procurement organizations, consultancy firms into how they pitch for for, business and work. Great. Thank you, John, for giving that context. To give you a little bit of background, I actually bumped into John at the Coupa Inspire, EMEA conference in London in 2023, and that's where we connected and and resonated with the thoughts of what we're doing. And I shared the, platform and positioning. And John has helped us tighten it up and understand more of how this relates to the chief procurement officer strategy, and that's where we're gonna dive deeper in today. With the themes that we have in mind, this is what we're gonna cover. So we're gonna look at procurement transformation and trends, the digital adoption and test automation in action, and then the role of AI and procurement efficiency. How does AI play a role in what we're doing in Zipline, but also just overall in procurement? Then we'll have the closing remarks and summary and q and a session. So just to give you some housekeeping rules, there will be polls that we're gonna ask throughout this, webinar. We're gonna start off with the poll right after this slide, and we're also gonna be, asking you to click on the poll and engage, and then we're gonna share that feedback and share the results as we go through the webinar. If you have any questions, you can always ask in the q and a channel. There's a q and a tab there, and we'll take those up towards the end just from a timing perspective. We won't probably be able to ask answer everything that's asked in the chat. We might have to follow-up separately, but just ask your questions and then we'll moderate towards the end. So just wanted to give you the housekeeping. Alright. So let's get into it. We're gonna start with the first poll just to set the context and understand who is on the other side listening. So if you see in your channel where it says poll, the question is, where are you in your procurement journey with Coupa, iValue, SAP Ariba, Workday, or other systems? And then there's a few options. If you could please go ahead and just give your vote there then we can share some of the results. I'll give it another twenty seconds so that everyone has a chance. Alright. Fantastic. So I'm gonna now share the results and I think we have some winners. Fully implemented but facing adoption or process challenges has the highest number of votes. So, John, we're, right on the talk track for today. I think it's very relevant for the audience that we have today. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think, that doesn't surprise me, and, obviously, we'll get into some of those challenges. Absolutely. Okay. Great. So let's continue now. John, over to you. Sure. So so this isn't obviously, a picture of the total procurement, technology landscape, which is incredibly saturated and and very complex. But these are some of the the top platforms, obviously, that we'd see around not just the procurement space, but also other enterprise business systems. And the reason reason I wanted to show this slide was not as a particular kind of selling pitch for any of these these platforms, but to talk about in the context of digital adoption platforms and also test automation, it doesn't matter whether we're talking procurement specific today. It's a broader issue in terms of the impact on enterprise wide, systems. Because procurement inevitably are involved in the purchase or negotiation of, the provision of those services. Procurement's involvement is very important that they understand the impact of not just buying the system, but also the impact on the user community within within the organizations. And I think that's why sometimes procurement fall down a little. They kind of lead with just the functionality, but don't think about what the impact on the business is, particularly within the user community. And I think the context of of DAP and test automation is critical here. Next slide, please. So I just wanted to paint a picture, of some of the transformation and trends. This is this is my personal perspective, and I'm not suggesting for one minute it's the only perspective. But I do think that if you think about the next generation, the organization is is shifting as we speak today. And I think the challenge for any procurement function is how quickly do they evolve, how quickly do they make the right decisions in terms of platform selection, And then how do they consider deploying it in the organization? So as we see the shift in landscape, it's moving at incredible pace. And when I think about observations of of conversations that you see in LinkedIn as an example, you see a lot of failure to put the business first, a failure to really understand the impact on the user of what procurement does. So it shows all these end to end platforms, these end to end processes. But the more complex the end to end process is, I think you'll find yourself turning off the user community. So the more you can kinda streamline those activities and those decisions, I think the better. So complexity is there. It's it's part and parcel of what we've dealt with for decades and will continue. And I think procurement needs to make sure that the choices of the platforms they utilize, helps the organization understand and navigate the procurement life cycle end to end. There's a desire for more efficiency within organizations as well as effectiveness. How do you drive innovation? How do you drive agility? But also how do you have ease of use for the people that are at the sharp end of the stick? I mean, we have a lot of people in the user community who really don't want to be engaged in the procurement processes that we have in place. They wanna be doing their work. So coming from a scientific community such as AstraZeneca, the science folks wanna do science. They don't wanna be involved in onboarding suppliers. They don't wanna be involved in, you know, how do I process, a purchase order? How do I do a goods receipt note? So the more you can improve the efficiency of these process and make it much more intuitive, then I think the better. One of the key things for me is the relationship with the chief information officer is shifting. And if you think about their agenda, then they don't want to be building huge organizations, because they're coming under budget pressure. Often, they've done all the outsourcing to low cost countries that they want to do to to run their analytic and data support. But the relationship with the CIO is absolutely critical here. They want to push more functionality and activity and task into the hands of the user. So self-service is gonna be one of the key dimensions of the way businesses operate, moving forward. If we don't get this right, then we find ourselves in a situation where we're constantly having to retrain the same people because adoption isn't a consistent thing. People will use some of these platforms once every three months. And every time they come and use that platform, then they need to be reeducated or navigate help with the navigation or guidance through that end to end process. So without that, you tend to be building up a cost of time of the user community having to be retrained and then the pressure of a self serve of a service desk as an example, having to do that training. Software updates are consistent. You know, if we think about some of the, the platform partners that that I've had, you know, Coupa, SAP Ariba, there's a constant flow of software updates. If those software updates change the functionality, then ultimately, you have a very confused, user community who struggle to keep up with those updates. And you have downtime. You have much more, frustration within that user community. And frustration then tends to reflect on the credibility of the procurement function as a result. We have thousands of support tickets flowing into service centers, and this is one of the challenges that CIOs have. How do you lessen, those support tickets, make it much more effective and much more self sufficient and intuitive, will be one of the key challenges moving forward. The next slide. So if you think about today, we have the complex systems. They do overwhelm users, and then there is this shift towards the self-service procurement in the trends of the future. Well, as I've said, we have a high volume of feature rollouts as we look to update and upgrade platforms. And what's making it easier is the fact that a lot of these platforms now exist in the cloud. So you can manage a geographically diverse and multiple user community in a much more consistent fashion. Manual training and testing, which slows down the rate of change and the transformation that you need in these processes, is now being replaced by a demand for urgency, speed, efficiency, and visibility. It's hard to catch in real time and and and kind of disrupt the downstream processes and data dependencies when you do not have that kind of control or oversight to changes coming into the organization, whether it's a a a a new deployment of a platform or an upgrade moving forward. And costs are gonna continue to be critical. Manual errors are gonna be, much more visible and therefore highlighted in terms of the performance of the platform itself as well as the the decision in the first place to to make the call on that platform. And I think when you look at today, one of the things that procurement need to do differently is to stop looking at procurement processes from an internal perspective, our own dimension or our own aims, and really think about, well, how do you shift then everything in the service of the business? Moving forward, we have to put the serve the business number one in everything that we do. Next slide, please. So when you think about what are we trying to do as a procurement function, again, our own aims and and targets should actually be secondary to the the the business that we're trying to support, protect, and help achieve their own goals. So the three dimensions here are how do how does the selection, if you like, and the deployment of the platforms that you have connect the business aims, the corporate aims, and the objectives of that business? How does that connect to the way that the users deploy it at the micro level? So individuals who are using processes on a day to day basis, they aren't actually thinking about, well, how does this fit in the big business corporate world, objectives? But there is a connection between a business who wanna be much more streamlined, do more for less, and how do they connect with that wealth of user, numbers that they have globally dispersed, to make sure that they're as effective and efficient as possible. And then as I've said before, the way you bridge IT into this conversation is critical because the CIO, who often sits at the executive level, will be a huge commentator of whether procurement is delivering for the business. Next slide. Just wanna pause there, John. What we found is having conversations with, you know, CIOs, chief procurement officers, VP of procurement excellence, etcetera. They're mentioning to us that they're having committees, governance committees, internally gathering for all the different inputs of other parts of the business and where procurement is now having a seat at the table as you're mentioning, but application user experience is a very high priority and and topic for them. Can you dive a little bit deeper into, why that's the case in terms of where chief procurement officers are now being able to have that input where before it wasn't really a necessity? Yep. That's a great great observation. And if I reflect on the AstraZeneca success, we deployed Cooper over a three year period. We did it during COVID. Okay? So we didn't have the ability to connect to a classroom of people who we were trying to educate on how to how to use, this new platform. So it's all remotely done, which meant that we needed a core governance capability within that program, setup, if you like. So the the infrastructure that we set up made sure that we had our a team as part of that governance. Now that a team wasn't made up of just procurement people. We had user, representation. We had the systems integrator, KPMG. We had Cooper. We had finance who were a key, sponsor. We had IT. So we had all these functions who were really, integral, if you like, within that governance structure to make sure that we were doing all we could. And what was critical was how did the user receive this platform? Now we we at the at the outset, we didn't deploy a digital adoption platform, and it became very apparent very quickly that the assumption that all our users were technology technologically very sound was was was, an incorrect one. Yep. So this is why we put a a dApp, which sat albeit on top of Cooper. It still looked and felt like Cooper, exactly like the zip line, technology does. And that was something that helped us reduce the number of stressy moments that we had early on, Yeah. Within each market, and and that helped, tremendously. But that governance is incredibly important and reflects on on what we see on this slide here. Absolutely. And the other part to mention is that, you know, I really like this quote from the conversation we had earlier about procurement has to provide smooth and consistent application experience. So it touches upon both the adoption side. Right? Making sure that your users are finding the experience as easy to use when they come to the system. And as you mentioned, the tech literacy, also the frequency of them coming back to an application is different versus also thinking about the lens of test automation, focusing on what you're mentioning there with the consistent application experiences. If I come back, I wanna make sure that the process that I did yesterday still functions in production today. Right? So it it's a double edged point of view, but it all goes into that narrative of how do I justify, how do I increase ROI on my technology investments because I'm deploying these techno technical assets across my organization, but there's so many constituents that are trying to come in and actually use the system. So Yeah. I think that that's a really good point to mention about the bridging is obviously evident, but sometimes in organizations, it's not really orchestrated in that way intentionally. But now I feel like organizations, just because they have those governance committees, are are putting this not as an afterthought, but a proactive approach so that it's it's top of mind for any purchasing decision and software selection choice that they're making. And I I also think you have to consider for us, we had a three year program. We had 12 markets. So I had 12 largest markets in AstraZeneca deployed across the globe. What we what we had in year one, the UK market was obviously impacted throughout the course of the three years by updates that were being brought in by Cooper to improve the experience. Now what we couldn't afford to do, and this is why, the digital adoption technology is critical and the test automation is critical because we didn't wanna leave the first market behind. We have to kinda bring them up to speed with the deployments of the updates as we went through that three year cycle. I think we should move on. Next slide, please. So we have another poll. So we're gonna ask another question to the audience. Good. So the poll question is, how does your team currently manage procurement training and testing? Obviously, based on the last slide, we saw the bridging of the different user experiences. So wanna know your thoughts of what's current state look like for you before John gets into the details. Good about twenty seconds as well, just because this is a little bit of a longer one to read. K. Great. I'm gonna close the voting now and let's share the results. So the question was how does your team currently manage procurement training and testing? And here's the response. Overwhelmingly, manuals and PDFs for training and manual testing for validation, John. Yep. Again, no surprise and it's you know, people shouldn't feel bad about that. That's that's the nature of where we've got to. And, that's where, you know, we probably need a shift and acceleration to a a different solution if possible. Perfect. So going forward now, let's talk about current state. Yeah. So, I mean, adoption today, if you think about deploying, and I can reflect on this as part of that early experience with AstraZeneca. You know, we had static training. We had documents. We had, access to the procurement academy that helped us kinda walk through the the early phase deployment of of Cooper. But we found that users were just forgetting steps. There was more tickets post launch than we wanted. It was less than what we had before, but before was not really a comparison because people were going outside of the process, in its entirety. So that lack of control or or maverick procurement spending, which we've all faced in the past, was definitely, present, early doors, for us at AstraZeneca. You know, that real time help, having somebody there, Even if you submitted a ticket, you didn't necessarily get a response straight away. We didn't necessarily have a a dial in call center. We just couldn't afford the manpower or the cost of doing that. We would have to have outsourced that, which wasn't ideal either. So everything was kinda bubbling up really. And when you think about as you started to move forward and updates were coming in and updates are brilliant. So updates shouldn't be seen as a negative thing. And I think this is where we need to kinda seize all the data and make sure we're improving the processes rather than just riding along with with, on the top of the wave, if you like. So, you know, testing without a solution, you know, you're using spreadsheets which have to go. I mean, you know, I love Excel, but it had its day. We've gotta find a different way of moving forward. So we're getting these error prone regression testing where we couldn't really assimilate any data to help us improve the processes. And, you know, we were at the at the whim, if you like, of the external provider, to make sure that they were convincing us that this was the right thing to do for our core platform. Now I'm I'm a good fan I'm a great fan of some of these systems providers, but the more self sufficient a procurement function can be, the better. And then when you've when you see the workflows, the workflows break, and then you happen to react and respond to it rather than, you know, be able to predict it through use of analytics or data that we were, collecting, through that, that that approach to, testing, migration, if you like. Next. So this, I guess, is one of the questions that that we're asking today is, you know, why do we think that, digital adoption platforms and test automation should be on every CPO's radar, for the next two to three years? If you're a salesperson, that's really one of the key pillars that you're talking to your potential procurement clients when you're trying to sell some of these platforms. And, you know, we've touched on some of the the elements already, but if we could go to the the next slide. So if you think about where we where we found ourselves, we knew that we had user adoption issues, prior to the launch of Cooper, and we knew very quickly that we had adoption barriers after rolling out Cooper. So the decision to kinda move towards adapt was aimed at bridging and reducing these kinda noises in the system, if you like. And it and it worked it worked tremendously well. It had its challenges. I mean, it's not a a solution for all, and I think that's why the selection of the partner is is very important. So we deployed Adapt to support the Cooper rollout. We were able to, kinda make more visible and transparent some of the user confusions as a result because it gathered probably the the the solution that we put in didn't collect the data we wanted to be able to make the improvements. And I think, yeah, some of some of the decisions that we made in terms of whether that was the right platform for us, we we potentially would maybe have made a different decision at the time. But making sure that you understand the confusion so that you can fix it once and that you can look to generate communication to the user community. Because often you found across 35,000 users, there is multiple, multiple times where it's the same issue. So being able to garner that data and utilize that, like, almost like a reverse engineering, was was important for us. And then we reduced, support tickets by a significant percentage. I mean, well over 50% of the support tickets were were were reduced through, through the deployment of DApp, which was good. So, traditionally, similar to what the poll said, you know, we have manual processes. We were doing user training, sometimes one on one. So if somebody shouted loud enough and they were more senior, then you were getting involved in some user training. And, obviously, with the delegation of authority in the procurement cycle, some senior executives were being involved in in the Cooper deployment, which, again, the credibility of the procurement function stood or or fell by what an executive may think about the deployment of this this, new platform was which was gonna change the world if you like. And and the same for the software updates. So, you know, consuming time and resources, that's probably gonna be one of the critical dimensions of any process selection moving forward. You will not get a business case through a CFO if you are not showing real time improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of of the business units that are are utilizing these processes. And I also think that, you know, when you think about putting the business first moving forward, the business in reality, the processes of procurement are often a necessary evil for many of them. You know, we had scientists who didn't wanna do goods receipting. Now how do you pay an invoice if you've not got goods receipting? And because they were scientists and they were driving the the organization with, discovery of new medicine, taking them on was a difficult challenge. So, you know, being aware and conscious of of not having users consuming time on some of these things is incredibly important. And then, you know, the the the users who are using these these platforms, if you've got a new joiner, you know, people would say this is very important from an onboarding perspective. Absolutely. But it is a longer term strategy because these platforms are evolving all the time. So making sure that a user can navigate in real time when those updates come in is gonna be a critical kind of reflection, if you like, of the success of that process deployment. Definitely. Now that goes on to the two platforms that we've introduced and talked about. Right? So we set the stage of talking about how companies are doing this today, where the gaps in the current processes, and now moving forward, what's ahead. So for those of you who don't know or haven't heard about the digital adoption platform or test automation space, these are what the two technologies do. So digital adoption platform, short term for DAP, stands for taking a user experience layer or a layer of help and providing in app guidance directly on top of the user experience or the application. Now it doesn't have to be Coupa, it could be iValua, it could be Workday, ServiceNow, you name it. As long as it's a web based application, that's SaaS, you'll be able to layer Zipline directly on top of it from the DApp perspective. I'll go into specifics about the positioning and I'll go into some slides on showing some of the functionality. This is not supposed to be a demonstration, but it's gonna show the highlights of exactly some areas that we've been able to help companies for and with. And the second part of the application, suite that we have is the test automation side. So as we've been talking about it's kind of a coin that has two sides. First is the digital adoption you wanna get your users adopting it. Second is that you wanna be able to test out those processes as they go through the changes and evolution to make sure that there's system continuity and agility. So the test automation software helps you with release and regression, helps you with your deployment acceleration and overall audit control and compliance to be able to make sure the systems that you have in place are acting the way that you intend for them to be. So how this relates to some of your procurement journeys or life cycles, obviously, as John has mentioned, it's more of a spectrum based. It's not just a one time fix all approach. You have to think about it intentionally. So we broke it down into ideas of where we could help companies and and at what point. So let's say that they had just gone live, you wanna be able to bring in the in application onboarding with our app with our software. So process walkthroughs, onboarding new joiners like John was mentioning. Then you go into stabilization of the underlying product. Right? So you've you've gone live now for a few more months, you have some more stabilization in place, you kinda get an idea of where your support is gonna be needed to be bulked up or most likely bulked up. You're gonna know where your users are dropping off, what friction points because you have some of that anecdotal information or sentiment analysis. So from there, you can build out more real time in app guidance to reduce those support tickets. So as John was mentioning, if you have to get, you know, that decrease in support, you have to be able to understand what are the top questions that are being asked to your support system. So when we go into organizations, we usually do some type of audit. We'll say, look, what are the top 20 questions that are coming to your help desk? Usually, that l one level is where you see the inefficiency. That's the how to process based help. So what you can do is take those in application guides, create them to the same topics that people are asking for help for today and you're gonna see an automatic deflection or reduction in that support. Best part about it is you can scale up your user base to a different point of usage, but you don't have to necessarily scale up your costs from a support center call center like John was mentioning. Then we go into the scale and adoption. Obviously, now you have some data in place from our platform. We're gonna tell you business process insights, not just where people are within the guide and where they're dropping off when they're getting help, but also where they are in Coupa, I value a ServiceNow, Workday, you name it. What is the business process usage? So from there, it also tells the story of what does my current state look like today versus once I've actually trained these users and they're using the step by step guides or the in application experience, what is that lift? What is that ROI? Now we get into the phase of, let's say, optimization and automation. You've gone live with the application. You've gone online with Zipline. There's gonna be changes within the product that occur. Right? As John was mentioning, when they were going live, there were different phases, there were different waves. So how do you test accordingly? So some of you might be doing the Excel document, you know spreadsheet testing where you have the list of pass, fail, and expected screenshot that you put as a hyperlink, for example. But there's a more automated way to do that. Right? We're in 2025. AI is on the hype. So the way that we're putting it into picture is that you can actually tag your business processes and run them through release and regressions regression cycle with test automation. And lastly, that continuous improvement model, if you know where the friction points are in your process, you can take a more tactical approach to dive deep into understanding, is it my user experience? Is it the content within my training or the way I'm instructing users and educating them on these processes? Or is it something else that I have to take into consideration? So with the data and insights and analytics that we collect, you'll be able to kind of put it in better buckets versus today where it might just all come as one source of information when reality it's harder to sort through and really attribute what is that improvement that you need to make tactically and operationally based on this feedback that you're getting from your user community? So to sum it a lot Romy sorry, Romy. Sorry to interrupt. I love this, slide because it it reinforces the fact that any deployment of any platform is not a static, situation. And if you think about what happens before the left hand side of this, you know, I think digital adoption has a role to play in terms of planning for the cycle too. So how do you mobilize this cycle has to incorporate well, how are we gonna deploy that user experience and the evolution of that user experience over time? So it actually goes wider than than than this is showing, but I think the reason I like this, it shows the impact of of digital adoption platforms, but it also reinforces the fact that if you are a governance of a of a program, which is gonna be multi year, multi market potentially, it's not a static environment. Yeah. No. Absolutely. And the other point to mention is that when we go and talk to customers today, they might have maybe one of these specific pain points. Right? And from there, implementing one of those points, once they see the value in one business case that they're able to achieve, then they open it up and they expand opportunity to other parts of either the business or other parts of the application. So it's it is that approach of let's get in there, let's prove out value, and then let's see where else we can spread it. But from a CIO's perspective, when we look at it is saying, hey, I have two problems. I have to change management and provide scalable change management on any software that I'm deploying to justify my ROI and make sure that there is heavy investment going into that. But on the flip side, to be able to handle handle that agility like we're mentioning and and be able to keep up to speed with the changes. Now to your point John, what you, alluded to earlier, we want these software vendors to be able to keep giving us releases. We do want that because that's gonna just make our businesses smarter and be able to drive more efficiently. But it comes at the cost today, which is that overwhelming experience for the end user and the confusion and, financial risk and consequences like we mentioned from the testing side. So if we solve that, the scalability factor and sustainability needs to be talked about. So that leads me to just showing some examples of what this looks like. You can see I'm I'm looking at Coupa screenshots, but again it could be universal platform agnostic. So you'd click the widget here that says z icon or it could be question mark, and essentially you're providing all the levels of self help right there at the user's fingertips. So instead of the static PDF documentation that they have to call out for etcetera, you're able to deliver the step by step in application guides so that they're going through the process in real time and it's not a simulation. It's all live in that moment when they need it. Now as we talked about earlier on this webinar, if I come back after three months and I come from a different background from a technology perspective, like a scientist for example, then I'm not spending every day in Coupa. So the need for me to get up to speed with the changes is essential. And so you can do things once you've implemented a solution like this where you can roll out guides based off of obviously what's there and what you wanna help train users on, but also use it to highlight what's changed within the software itself. Since you last visited, here's what has changed, for your view. And that's where I'm just gonna show some examples. You have your zips, which are in application guides that take you through step by step. You have tooltips that allow you to pinpoint areas where users might be making data errors and and, finding friction, and how you can attach either policy documentation, process documentation, or other things within the content to be able to guide them in real time. So instead of having to go through every single step of a business process, they just hover over this quick help, get what they need, and they move on. So we're catering to multiple different types of users and their maturity of Coupa or whatever software they're using. So that's why we like to say, you start with a few use cases and then you expand the user experience, but there's so many different aspects that we can cover. Then we get into the data validation. After you have that maturity of a user understanding how to use a process and they're trained on a system, let's be honest, they're still gonna make mistakes because there's just so much that they have to remember from a business logic perspective. So we can flag validation rules and say, hey, this user is not enter entering this information correctly and this is how you should correct those mistakes. If you think about being able to proactively catch that, obviously, these platforms have their own ability today to catch some of the information, but can you make it role based? Can you make it designed to the user experience that then suggests this is not how you do it and here's how we're gonna train you or here's the correction of how you should fix that? So we're we're augmenting what's already there on the platform and the best part about it is we just make the underlying application look even better because we're more natively integrated. When we do our surveys and we do our research, when we look at the analytics, people don't know that it's zipline layered on top of Coupa, iValu, SAP, Reba, etc. They feel as if the underlying vendor application has just gotten easier to use. And it's thanks to the business then that you're able to sell that even further as the champion to evangelize the usage of the system, but also make sure that your user community, like we've been mentioning on this call as a theme, feels recognized, heard, listened, and acknowledged and not ignored once you're doing these changes, of your digital transformation. So I wanted to just pause there. That was the, digital adoption side. Now I'm gonna hover over into the test automation. So you have your test case recording. You have your playback. You could take examples of different types of data. So for example, if I wanted to test with different supplier, invoices, purchase order IDs, you name it, any variability that you have. It's not just static processes, it's any change within that data dataset. You can use that to drive further into your, testing procedures, so you're getting wider test coverage. And then you got your screenshot reporting that gives you the audit control of, hey. This this test case failed. It passed. So all those manual hours that you spend, you know, going separately to the system, taking the screenshot, uploading it to a folder from an audit versus an internal or external, those are now, you know, highly automated and it's all part of that process. And lastly, then when you get to your, test case scheduling, that's really powerful because now you can do all the work you need to and run these on a batch basis. So where Koopa is upgrading from r 40 to r 41, you schedule this as a result, you've built out your test case repository, and now you run. You have, let's say, a week to be able to test this versus, you know, a month or two months that's needed to prepare the data, get everything in order and operations, and then get the results and act on it. So we're saving significance amount of time. I'm gonna go into the poll number three because there's a lot that we discussed. Again, if you're interested in having a demonstration or having a further conversation conversation, we'll give you details. But let's go into poll number three. And the question is which one of these would provide the most value to procurement process? We've given you, options. Just take ten seconds, twenty seconds to fill this out. Great. For the purpose of time, I'm going to share the results now. So it looks like improving user adoption and compliance tracking, reducing training and support costs, and then automated testing at the highest votes where it's tied between reducing training and improving user adoption compliance tracking. Good to know that the messaging that we're putting out there and how we're talking about these challenges and problems are resonating with you guys. Now let's move on to the next part, which is I've done a great job of being able to position Coupa, I value you know, whatever product you're using. But John, the question comes out always about, hey, you've sold me on the idea that we're going from a legacy system or system in place today as current state and now moving to this futuristic view of what we're gonna implement. So you say, I'm using x and now I'm moving to Coupa. You go and justify to my your leadership all the value and benefits of Coupa. Now you come back and say, John, alright. But, how do you put Zipline as a digital adoption platform where one of your value proposition was already ease of use of the system? That's why you're moving from system a to system b. How do you now go back to leadership and have that conversation where you're able to normalize and standardize. Well, in an ideal world, you'd you'd obviously wanna include that in the original business case. So my recommendation to anybody who's contemplating putting a business case in front of the CFO, the the kind of education and training of the user is a critical dimension. I don't think it's necessarily that we missed it. I think from the outset, we we actually thought that Cooper was probably gonna be user intuitive enough for people to navigate it, and I think that's probably where we overestimated it. So my recommendation is have, digital adoption platforms in your business case from the outset. It works. The fact that it looks and feels like the original core platform is a critical critical aspect. But also the way you use budgets on a multimillion dollar project over three years, there's a degree of contingency if you're planning your business case correctly. So we were able to utilize a contingency to to bring that in, and that's what a contingency is for because things will always, crop up. Now I'm not saying this three year program worked wonderfully well all the time. It didn't. It was a particularly stressful, three years, but, you know, the way we made the decisions, we didn't really have to go back to the trough asking for more, which was good. But the recommendation is to make sure that you don't overestimate your user community's ability to to navigate some of these technologies. But but I thought it would be useful just to share some of the the metrics that we we do see when we reflect back on the business case. You know, the CFO and the CIO are looking at cost. They're looking at resource management and efficiency and effectiveness as I've said before, but also about how do they accelerate and streamline some of these processes. Now the only way you can streamline is to make sure that you almost have a a guide, or a a guardian angel sitting on the shoulder of the user as they're they're going into that process for either the first time or the fifty first time. Because I can guarantee even somebody who's using it all the time will find something that's not quite right. And I think what the slides that you showed are reflective of, different dimensions of the interim process. It's not necessarily that you would necessarily have to use, zipline for every single phase of the process. That's not necessary. That's not always the case, obviously. But then in terms of the organizations also want to kinda grow and become more scalable. If you wanna become more scalable, it's gonna be more complexity. So it's critical that you kinda harness some of these technologies to help with that navigation of the user community because it's the user efficiency which will determine whether it's a successful deployment or not. So our previous platform for purchase to pay, the reason the pressure was on me as CPO was because scientists were just telling the chief exec every time he walked around the lab that they couldn't use this platform. Mhmm. So then, you know, as we know, everything flows downhill and and lands on my head. And, you know, I was fortunate that I'd used I'd used the Cooper platform before, so I knew knew I'd used SAP Ariba before. So it it was it was just a meeting of of minds, if you like, at the right time. But the success you know, you're looking to reduce your support tickets, faster onboarding time, you know, increasing your your ad adoption of the process that you're putting in. You're putting that adoption in for a reason. But also the CIO dimension of building a monolith organization, they don't wanna do that anymore. They can't do that because they have to, propose their budgets to the CFO as well, and they're being cut all the time. So this is not easy. Business case determination is not easy for a procurement function. And sometimes I we, we only have three or four metrics, for our business case that we wanted to measure success on. And we avoided the how much does it save from a unit cost of product point of view. So we tried to make this all about efficiency and effectiveness, which which we're fortunate to be able to do. And then on the, on the test automation side, you know, chasing your tail around regression analysis and all this kind of stuff is you don't wanna be doing that either. And, you know, the compliance and the risk is very important too. So you do not wanna expose yourself in terms of crushing your system. I mean, if your ERP system failed, you'd be in real trouble. If you all purchased a pay process failed, you'd be in real trouble. I mean, we were spending $11,000,000 in indirect spend through the Cooper platform. If that crashed and it wouldn't work because you were putting in a an update, then you'd have a real problem. Yeah. Definitely. Now moving forward to the next part, just, real quick to tail it off. We have the AI powered procurement transformation. Just parts of that we're focused on as a company is that we wanna be able to personalize and drive higher automation into the platform. So an example is that when you're building out these specific guides, if a user's come back three or four times, we'll be able to identify that this user is more like a power user, and we'll actually be able to automate the process and the clicks for them. So it will stop at only very key entry points where they have to put in extra data, but it will reduce the number of clicks to their user experience. So that's one really big example that we're going after next. And the other part is the resiliency and stability. So let's say your underlying application changes. Because we have that pairing up of the digital adoption platform and test automation solution, your guides, if if let's say Coupa or I value or whatever updates, they won't break. And if they do, you're able to detect that faster than having people manually click through these walkthroughs or these steps and make sure that it's working between releases. So we have both sides of the equation and that's where we're doubling down from an investment. I'm gonna go on to the metrics driven. Obviously, we talked about some of these throughout the call and throughout the the webinar. But if you look at it, the better tech ROI all is the, I guess, the overarching theme, and then this is how we measure that in terms of individual categories and points. So I wanna move over to our closing remarks. John? Yeah. First of all, thanks for your attention today. I think this is a key, challenge, if you like, for procurement moving forward. I think it'll be hard to get digital investment from CFOs because every other function in the business is looking for investment. So how you step up with your business case, how you make a real impact on the business, I think will define, whether or not you get the investment. The last thing is the investment that you get has to be right first time. So if you make an error in your choice of all that saturated landscape that's out there, then you better make sure that you've got some form of digital adoption security net or blanket to make sure that it works and that the users who will ultimately determine whether it's a success or not, whether they would, confirm that, it it's it's helped them become more efficient and more effective. Fantastic. And, obviously, we're gonna move on now to the poll and the questions. So we'll put the question slide on the webinar right now, and the poll is, alongside just to save time. So if the question is, what next step would be most valuable for you? So please take the time to answer. Hope this was educational and informative. That was the whole point. We wanted to make sure that you guys understand the positioning of where DAP and test automation play in this ecosystem. And as John mentioned, with the different technologies out there and sometimes hard to understand how you use certain things and what the business value is so you can justify this from a, ROI perspective and overall taking it to your leadership, if you put those points in in the whole formula it makes a lot of sense. So I'm just gonna share the results If you have any questions, please put it into the Q and A right now so that we can answer them. If not, we can obviously take them offline too, but just since we have the live audience. Okay. So no questions yet, but the response for the valuable next steps has been positive. More people want to see a demonstration and see something in action, so that's great. John, I'll ask you a question. In terms of what you're seeing of a procurement trend right now, is there something that you feel, is underrated in the community that is often overlooked? Doesn't have to be about digital adoption directly, but something that you can allude to that, you feel a lot of people are missing the mark on. Yeah. I think a lot of organizations have structured themselves around category, and develop category management processes over time. Category, strategy is critical, but it doesn't mean that you need a category strategy for every dollar spent. So how you segment your category map is absolutely key. So that would be one thing. The second thing is, part of an organization, particularly one of scale, should be focused towards engaging with the business community. So how do you become a true business partner? How do you, talk the language of the business? If you can't talk the language of the business, you'll lose credibility. And I've used credibility a lot throughout the course of the last hour. And if we are going to recognize that AI and technology is gonna change the face of procurement moving forward, we've we've definitely gotta maintain credibility to be that strategic partner, with the business, and I mean, a true strategic partner. And the only way we can do that is our ability to talk the language of the business, which means we need to recruit people from within the business into procurement and the other way around. So the organization people dimension, I think, is probably one of the things that we need to embrace, over the next couple of years. Got you. We have, this question. Can DApp support Java based applications? It really depends. We have to see the type of application, and then we can be able to comment further on it. So it's more of a case by case. Guys, we're rounding up now because we only have a minute left and I don't wanna take anyone else's time away and John has been very generous to be able to join us today. So John, thank you for joining us and sharing your thoughts. If you're interested in finding out more information, we'll be in touch via email, but you can also email me directly at roam@zipbind.com, or you can click that book appointment button at the top, and, we could take it from there. Thank you for your time. Really appreciate all the engagement on the polls, and, we'll be doing more of these. So hope to see you around again. Thanks. Take care.