April 8, 2025 • 37 mins
Your tech stack might be holding your agency back more than you think.
Ryan Pearcy, founder of Digital Transformers and chartered accountant, has helped countless agencies untangle their systems and make smarter, faster decisions. He’s spent nearly 15 years helping service-based businesses clean up their systems, bringing finance, tech, and process together so leaders can make decisions based on reality.
In this episode, he helps Harv troubleshoot three common (and all-too-familiar) agency tech stack scenarios.
Here’s what we get into:
- Why disconnected tools lead to risky, gut-feel decisions, and how to fix that
- How spreadsheet chaos is a sign you’re due for a system rethink
- What to do when your systems aren’t quite delivering, but you’re still paying for them
Whether you’re early-stage or at 100+ people, this one’s a must-listen if your agency is still duct-taping its way through operations.
Additional Resources:
Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.
Follow Harv on LinkedIn.
Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.
This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Harv Nagra (00:00):
What is the biggest mistake you see businesses make
when it comes to their financeand operations tech stack?
Ryan Pearcy (00:05):
Number one is they don't have an end goal, so they
will pick in silos, problemsthey've got and look to resolve
that issue.
But if you do that, all you endup with is lots of different
systems that don't communicateand don't deliver the ultimate
End position, which is clearvisibility of the key areas of
our business that enable us tomake decisions.
(00:26):
So start with where do we wannaget to and work backwards from
that.
And I think that's the numberone issue that most businesses
suffer.
Harv Nagra (00:33):
Thanks for listening to The Handbook
Operations podcast.
This podcast is brought to youby Scoro.
If you're a regular listener,you know that I love talking
about business maturity levels.
Level one is where you're justmaking things up as you go.
Level two is where you havepockets of best practice in your
agency.
The real milestone is levelthree.
(00:53):
This is where you really grow upand centralize and codify your
best practice and have best inclass tools in place, and this
is usually where agenciesrealize they need a consolidated
tool to run their business.
A platform like Scoro.
From there, you can move on tolevel four, where you become a
data driven organization.
I saw the benefits moving toScoro brought my agency.
(01:16):
So where are you at?
Is it time for you to move on tothe next maturity level?
Sign up for a free trial atScoro.
com.
Or, if you arrange a demo call,tell them Harv sent you.
Now, back to the episode.
(02:02):
Hey all.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I've supported and spoken to anumber of agencies over the
years, and I've seen it all.
When it comes to Tech Stacks,there's the early stage optimism
tech stack, 10 people, 20 toolsand everything duct taped
together with Goodwill and aGoogle Sheet.
Then you've got the, we'vegrown, but nothing's changed.
(02:24):
Tech Stack.
We quoting happens in Excel,project management is in
people's notebooks, andreporting is done by squinting
at the bank balance.
And on the other end there'sthe, we've invested in a big
platform but kind of hate ittech stack where the tool
exists, but the team's stillbuilding work arounds in Notion
and Smartsheet because theydon't trust it or they never
(02:45):
implemented it properly.
These businesses are alldifferent sizes, but the
pattern's the same.
The tools don't talk to eachother, the data's a mess, and
leadership ends up flying blind.
That's why I wanted to bring ontoday's guest, Ryan Pearcy.
He's the founder of DigitalTransformers, a chartered
accountant, and aself-proclaimed Super Geek.
(03:06):
Ryan spent nearly 15 yearshelping service-based businesses
clean up their systems, bringingfinance, tech, and process
together so leaders can actuallymake decisions based on reality.
Essentially, he and his teamwork on digital transformation
projects that allow theirclients to work faster and
smarter.
So in this episode, we're gonnatry something a little
(03:27):
different.
I'm gonna walk Ryan throughthree agency stories that are
quite similar to things I'veseen or experienced myself, and
I'm gonna ask Ryan to unpackwhat's going wrong, what they
need to fix, and where theyshould focus first.
I am calling it the Tragic Taleof three Tangled Tech Stacks.
Let's get into it.
(03:48):
Ryan.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
Ryan Pearcy (03:51):
thank you for having me.
Harv Nagra (03:52):
So we're gonna be troubleshooting some tech stacks
today.
That's what I wanted to get yoursupport on.
But a few questions before westart.
There's literally thousands andthousands of tools and platforms
out there, there's new stuff forbusinesses popping up every
week.
Based on your experience, isthere a sweet spot in terms of
the number of platforms aservice-based business might
(04:13):
want to use to, run theirfinance, their operations, and
their project management, or isa more important thing to think
about how well the platformsintegrate.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Ryan Pearcy (04:24):
I would say the latter is more critical.
Harv Nagra (04:26):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (04:26):
about sharing data, building what we now refer to as
a modern ERP.
A small system that will beconnected via secure APIs and
allow you to essentially enterinformation only once.
When that information goes towhere it's needed.
Now the volume is critical.
So the volume of apps, theamount of apps you're working
in, but only really if you'vegot people that need to be in
(04:47):
each individual app.
'cause you don't wanna overloadthem.
If it's segregating what peoplework in, so you've got one app
for approvals and that's theonly thing they need to go into
for approvals, then that's muchbetter than having to go into
three different apps fordifferent areas for approvals.
So it's
Harv Nagra (05:00):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (05:01):
where are.
Members of my team interactingand what's the impact on them
rather than the total number ofapps in the stack.
Harv Nagra (05:08):
Where do you stand on the idea of experimentation?
because there's so much outthere, there might be a
temptation to see like., thehottest thing somebody's talking
about and give it a go.
what's your view is that okayand good to do?
Or do you just need to keep aneye on experience for your team
in terms of complexity?
Ryan Pearcy (05:24):
Magpie syndrome is definitely a problem.
Uh, You
Harv Nagra (05:27):
What does that mean?
Ryan Pearcy (05:28):
it's everyone's looking for the next shiny
object, right?
We get drawn in'cause it's gota, a useful tool or feature that
we've not seen before and we'relike, oh, that looks
interesting.
And that is helpful to someextent because we, we like to be
curious and you can only improveand adapt.
If you are curious, you don'twant to be stagnated and stay in
one place because if you shuteverything off, then you will
(05:50):
become outdated over time.
but the number one thing thatbusinesses don't do is really
hone in to maximize the softwarethey've got.
They tend to go, this isn'tworking for me.
I'm gonna jump ship.
Rather than going, this isn'tworking for me.
What can I do to change it?
And how does that compare towhat's out there?
And that's what should be the,the main focus.
Harv Nagra (06:09):
Really, really good point.
So you support businesses withtheir tech needs, assessing what
they do need and troubleshootingit and helping them integrate
and all that kind of stuff.
What are the biggest red flagsyou see?
That should be a wake up call toa business that they need to
tighten things up and it's notworking optimally.
Ryan Pearcy (06:26):
So firstly it's are you getting the information you
need to drive your businessforward, or are you literally
working on gut feel?
If in today's world you'reworking on gut feel, then you
are at a massive disadvantage tothe competitors that you're
trying to outbid or, win workfrom.
Harv Nagra (06:43):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (06:44):
you need to be, I guess, honing your systems to
deliver the data you need andthe way we work, you should
always go, okay, as the, leadersin the business, what is it that
are the strategic points thatthat enable you to make key
decisions?
And then we work backwards toensure the tech stack is
delivering on that.
Harv Nagra (06:59):
Do you think businesses are often good at
recognizing there's an issue ordo you think they need a bit of
a reality check and thingsstarting to really creak and
people starting to moan beforethey recognize there's problems?
Ryan Pearcy (07:11):
So I think a lot of the times with this area, the
business owner or the key peoplelike the board, strategic
decision makers are awarethey're not getting the
information they need, the moreproblematic areas.
They don't know what's possible
Harv Nagra (07:24):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (07:24):
they need to talk to specialists to sightly just
be made aware, like what is itwe can do?
What is possible in this day andage?
They hear buzzwords like ai.
They know they need better data.
Everything's data driven, but
Harv Nagra (07:35):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (07:36):
if it's actually applicable to their business and
how they operate.
Harv Nagra (07:39):
Right?
Ryan Pearcy (07:39):
not, they dunno what the problem is, it's that
they dunno how to fix it oractually is this problem just
something that we have to livewith.
Harv Nagra (07:45):
There's AI and then there's also automation.
That's another, term you hear alot.
But then, if you haven't seenhow that really works and comes
together, then it doesn't reallymean much.
You just have a very vague idea.
Right.
so this is what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna paint you a picture ofthree real life agency tech
stacks, and then I'd love to getyour help in both debugging them
and highlighting the risks.
(08:05):
Okay.
So let's paint you a picture ofAgency A.
This is a 20 person agencythat's running on gut feel more
than structure.
I'd say they're at a maturitylevel one.
They price their work inharvest, but there's no formal
pricing model.
Just copying old quotes from oneanother and tweaking the
numbers.
(08:25):
For project resourcing, they'reusing Google Sheets and it's a
bit of a free for all, wheretheir project managers can just
throw in a number for whatresource they need and how long
the next week they're trackingtime in harvest, but it's super
inconsistent and most peopledon't do it.
Project management is all overthe place.
Some people are using the notesapp on their computer.
Some are using Asana.
Some people are using theirpaper notebook.
(08:47):
They're sending invoices throughHarvest, but nothing syncs with
their accounting platform.
And for business reporting, it'smostly just hoping that you have
more money coming in than goingout.
And at end of year there's a bitof a freakout when you kind of,
look back and realize youweren't as profitable as you
hoped you would be.
Okay.
So, so that's kind of the, thescenario.
(09:09):
where do you even start with abusiness like this really?
Ryan Pearcy (09:11):
Well, ironically this is very similar to a
business I've worked with, so, Imean hopefully this, this is
something I can, I can commenton, but you've got, you've got a
number of issues here.
So firstly, harvest is a reallygood entry level tool.
it enables you to do a lot ofthe basics.
You can get some goodvisibility, but it sounds like
they're not firstly using thattool to its maximum.
They've got inconsistency inprocess and they're not able, or
(09:33):
definitely not holding theirstaff to account in how they
operate.
Harv Nagra (09:37):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (09:38):
a big problem that they're experiencing is around,
and process rather than tech atthe start.
they've looks like they've gotdisparate systems that can be
connected'cause Harvest canconnect into finance systems.
So that may be that they wouldneed to look at their finance
system.
Is that something they need toconnect into Harvest to
streamline some of the processesbeyond just, I guess their
operational tool being harvestin this case.
But if you're then getting intoresource management.
(10:00):
What is a massive pain point fora lot of businesses and really
hard to align if you are lookingat trying to manage resource in
a different tool to the, one youare doing your budgeting,
quoting and job or projectprofitability reporting in, then
trying to align those is a hugeburden on people because every
time something changes in one,you have to manually go and
(10:22):
update it in the other.
Harv Nagra (10:23):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (10:23):
whenever I'm talking to businesses that wanna
do both, it's like these are twokey fundamental areas that
really you wanna try and sit inthe same platform cause even if
you've
Harv Nagra (10:31):
got
Ryan Pearcy (10:31):
two separate platforms and you're doing it
well in both, and you wannabuild a connection, that's a
really hard build, that's areally hard thing to get
consistently correct.
There's too many things thatchange on a
Harv Nagra (10:42):
day to day
Ryan Pearcy (10:43):
basis that could cause problems and errors.
Harv Nagra (10:44):
Especially in an agency where kind of projects
and, and clients are so...
well, it can be quite erraticand rapidly changing.
So having to synchronize all ofthat stuff, one of the things
that I've seen in, in an agencylike that is also the complete,
like, disconnect from how muchbudget you have left is just
really horrible when you're justmaking up numbers in a Google
(11:05):
sheet and saying, oh, well Ineed 20 hours for that.
Do you have 20 hours in thebudget?
I was mentioning that there'sreally inconsistent time
tracking; if there's only a fewpeople tracking their time,
might as well not even bother.
because, what is the point?
you're not gonna have accuracyat all.
Ryan Pearcy (11:19):
And not only that, like a, a big problem we had
with a a client is that alltheir staff were tracking time
and they thought, oh, brilliant.
our chargeability on this staffare the points it's supposed to
be, but our profitabilitydoesn't match that.
Why is that not happening?
It turns out.
the people tracking their time,they just weren't putting all of
their time down.
Harv Nagra (11:34):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (11:35):
like in a given week, so they're 35 hours,
they're maybe putting 30 hoursdown.
So their charge ability comparedto what they were putting down,
that's great, but it's just notcompared to their full week.
Harv Nagra (11:44):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (11:44):
the ability to bring in dashboards that
actually for those individualstaff members
Harv Nagra (11:48):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (11:49):
them, have they completed their time sheet?
What does their chargeabilitylook like?
And get them to hold themselvesto account.
Change is a culture inside thebusiness.
And we did this with a clientthat went on to Scoro and it
completely, fundamentallychanged how they worked.
it meant that the managersessentially didn't actually have
to do as much managing becausethe staff was self-managing
themselves.
The culture changed entirely.
Harv Nagra (12:10):
Right.
That's really interesting.
Ryan, where do you stand on theidea of like, only asking your
team to track billable timeversus tracking their full day,
Do you have a point of view?
Ryan Pearcy (12:21):
Yeah.
Strong point of view.
So I think they fundamentallyhave to track the full day, and
there's a couple of reasons forthis.
you've got chargeable time,that's great.
That always contributes to,money that's gonna come in,
you've got to determine how muchmoney, because you've got
recoverability issues if you areputting way too much time down
compared to what a job shouldtake.
But the other bit is in thenon-chargeable, you've got
(12:43):
effective non-chargeable andineffective.
you've
Harv Nagra (12:46):
got
Ryan Pearcy (12:46):
stuff that can help push the business forward.
So they're going out to try andwin work
Harv Nagra (12:49):
or they're
Ryan Pearcy (12:50):
changing a process and being more streamlined.
That's really effectivenon-chargeable work.
And you want to be graspingthat.
You wanna know how much of ourstaff, who are the ones that are
driving the business forwardcompared to those that are more
kind, sat on their hands
Harv Nagra (13:03):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (13:04):
Just they're going, okay, I've not got enough work.
I'm not going out chasing it.
So, in my view, you wanna trackthe entire of it not to
necessarily go after thoseemployees,
Harv Nagra (13:12):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (13:13):
understand how do we make our our non-chargeable
time as effective as possible?
Harv Nagra (13:18):
Absolutely.
I think as an operationsdirector of, when I was managing
in that role in an agency, myissue with not tracking the full
day also was that it makes itreally hard to know if someone's
just been like lazy with notlogging everything or if that
was genuinely everything theyworked on So the only way for me
to know whether they track theirtime properly that day is if
(13:41):
they logged their full day.
About this agency.
A, there's two other things thatI wanted to highlight.
One is like that, that thing Imentioned about copying and
duplicating quotes, that is justsuch bad practice.
You have like.
A legacy of client relationshipsand discounts and, the reality
of scope for a particularproject that is in a certain
quote.
So if you're using that as likea template to.
(14:02):
Copy and run with for anotherclient project.
A different client project.
That is absolutely terrible.
That was the first thing.
And the second thing was whatyou were saying about workflows.
A priority for an agency likethis is really maturing their
ways of working in consolidatingthat.
before they even try to improvetheir systems and stuff like
(14:23):
that, but I think really gettinga good handle on that it's just
something they need to do.
Ryan Pearcy (14:27):
a lot of it is a lack of visibility of it.
So as you grow, when you are, Iguess, a small business, you see
everything that's going on.
But as you start getting, 15 upto 20 employees, you start
losing track of what's beingdone.
So something that we always dobefore we get even close to
recommending any changes, weprocess map out.
So the, the business owners,the, the strategic decision
makers can see exactly what'shappening by who at what stages,
(14:49):
and then the, the amount oftimes they go, oh wow.
We've got full reliance on thisone individual for a critical
point.
Harv Nagra (14:56):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (14:57):
everything stops.
We've gotta resolve that.
And that's
Harv Nagra (15:00):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (15:00):
to do with system.
That's just refining actuallyhow they operate.
And that is fundamental thatbusinesses should be 100% all
over.
Harv Nagra (15:07):
Alright, let's talk about agency B.
So this is a hundred personbusiness that is doing a lot of
things.
Right that I quite admire.
But I'd say they're at like a2.5 on the maturity scale, not
quite at that level threemilestone, which means they have
really consistent and documentedways of working and really more
importantly, really tightly knitsystems in place.
(15:28):
So let me describe theirsituation.
They have really clever pricingcalculators set up in
spreadsheets so they can.
Define the scope veryaccurately.
But they still build theirquotes in Google Sheets to issue
to clients as a, as a PDF.
They separately track deals inPipedrive, which is a CRM
platform, if anyone didn't knowthat.
(15:50):
Resourcing and time trackinghappens in Aava time sheet
reports are exported from Aava,and then budgets are tried.
They, they try to reconcilebudgets in Google Sheets.
Where they have to remember toadd expenses and purchases.
Project management happens inAsana.
They're using pipe drivepipeline stage as a reminder to
(16:11):
invoice.
So they've set up an invoicingstage, okay, as a reminder that
they need to invoice something,but it's a manual process to
check what's left.
To bill.
Obviously, a CRM system and asales funnel is not set up to
track.
How much you have left toinvoice and all that kind of
stuff.
And then sales activity istracked in terms of reporting.
Sales activity is tracked inPipedrive, and they're doing a
(16:34):
really, really good job and kindof analyzing what, what their,
pipelines looking like.
Project tracking, like I said,is in Google sheets, and
financial reporting is alsothis.
Spreadsheet puzzle that takesplace with weekly meetings and a
lot of kind of sit downs withproject managers, account
managers, and the finance team.
what are the issues?
Ryan Pearcy (16:53):
I mean, this sounds very much typical of a post
covid business
Harv Nagra (16:57):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (16:57):
they've gone.
We need to pivot a lot intocloud-based systems that allows
us to work more flexibly.
I.
But they've just had to makesome quick decisions on
something.
There's no overall IT strategy.
Where are we going?
What is the ultimate goals here?
So you've got some really goodtools in place, some market
leading tools in place, butthey're just not connected.
Harv Nagra (17:16):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (17:16):
like disparate.
Everything is being sharedmanually and, and you become
very spreadsheet heavy.
The other thing I would say isthat I think you're optimistic
with a 2.5 there.
I'm giving that a, a two, asolid two based on my
Harv Nagra (17:26):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (17:27):
you're creating so many problems along the, the way
and you are also prioritizingcertain tasks in the wrong
system.
So for example, CRM pipe driveis perfect, up to the point you
are going to be winning work,and then it needs to hand over
is to
Harv Nagra (17:40):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (17:41):
a system that is managing those projects to the
point of invoicing.
And then you've got another areawhich is taking over the, the
reporting.
Harv Nagra (17:49):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (17:49):
you connect the systems in secure APIs with
trigger points.
So those stages where you saidabout now we've got a stage in
Pipedrive for invoicing.
As soon as it gets to the pointof we are now quoting that
should be moving data intoanother system.
the brilliant thing about thelikes of score is the, the
marketplace where you canconnect tools together, you can
still do best to breed, buthands over the data into the
(18:09):
relevant system when you needto.
finally on this, the reportingside.
Harv Nagra (18:13):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (18:14):
you do have to report in Excel.
Harv Nagra (18:15):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (18:16):
But if you're doing quotes in Excel you know,
building them out, if unlessthey are really complex, you
should be moving that into whatare very advanced quoting
systems now.
And if you do have to do inExcel, then at least connect
that into like a, a Zapier toolthat pushes the data into
systems such as Koro.
So you're not having to retypeit.
Harv Nagra (18:36):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (18:37):
a little bit of smart engineering there that
goes.
Okay.
We've now created a quote.
We know that like what it'sgonna be, it's gonna be
accepted.
Let's get the data into theproject management system.
Automatically
Harv Nagra (18:46):
I totally agree, but I, I do think there's probably a
lot of complexity in mapping aspreadsheet to a system as well.
So it's probably, you'reprobably better off just using a
system for that, I, I think acouple of things that I wanted
to highlight about this case is,downloading time sheet reports
from one system and trying toreconcile in a spreadsheet.
Like, nobody wants to do that,first of all.
(19:08):
And obviously you're not gonnabe doing that on a daily basis.
So it gets done every two weeks.
And in that amount of time, youcould have over burned on all
your deliverables.
Right.
And and the other thing thisagency was saying to me is that
they don't know if they projectmanagers remember to add all the
expenses and purchases into thespreadsheet as well.
So there's a big mystery aboutwhether everything is being
(19:30):
tracked.
think you already said, butusing a pipeline stage to remind
yourself of what needs to beinvoiced is just like, it, it's
just not on.
Yeah.
It's nuts.
And I, I think for an agencythat's a hundred people, they've
waited way too long to build abetter integrated system or, or
bring in an integrated system,is what I'd say is like
Ryan Pearcy (19:52):
Well you say that, but what I'd say is, if they've
got to a hundred people and
Harv Nagra (19:56):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (19:56):
money, and
Harv Nagra (19:57):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (19:57):
you know that, that level, think about the
efficiency gains and the profityou can get
Harv Nagra (20:02):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (20:02):
by tweaking how you operate.
Harv Nagra (20:05):
Totally.
Ryan Pearcy (20:06):
a business, at that stage, say if we are still
successful at this point.
Harv Nagra (20:09):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (20:09):
be so much better just by refining what we do.
Harv Nagra (20:12):
I think that's why I gave them 2.5 because they had
some really interesting thingshappening, like these
calculators and processes thatwere not automated, but then it
was just in terms of systems, itwas quite immature.
Here's agency c.
We've got a 60 personmulti-entity business.
(20:32):
Okay?
They've got entities indifferent countries and they
have a PSA platform in place,which is great, but they're not
using it to its full potential.
Okay?
So some teams are usingtemplates for quoting.
But others are doing that copypaste trick.
they don't like the PSA'sproject resourcing features.
So they're building projectplans in Smartsheet instead.
(20:53):
they track time and expenses inthe PSA for their projects and
invoice through it, but still domanual financial reconciliation
in spreadsheets and using a, atool like Fathom.
Since they're multi-entity andthey need a central place to
look at all their entities.
That's all I'll say about them.
So they've got a PSA platform,but not using all of the
(21:14):
functionality.
And there's obviously somethings that they don't like
about they see either.
Ryan Pearcy (21:19):
Yeah, and you can understand that there's in a
business that's, I guess of thatsize, you're now getting
critical people that are headsof teams.
So you can have a, a head ofoperations ahead of finance and
they're gonna have verydifferent requirements and
desires out of the system.
And there's always sacrificethat has to be made somewhere.
Because if you go for best ofbreed in every single area, the
(21:39):
problem you're gonna have isthey're all gonna be disparate
and you're creating moreproblems overall.
the other bit, and I've got aquestion to you on this, is that
they're in differentjurisdictions here, but are
there teams collaborating acrossthose different jurisdiction?
Harv Nagra (21:52):
They do share resources in terms of design and
development.
Sometimes project management aswell.
Ryan Pearcy (21:57):
Yeah.
And so that now is a very nichething that needs to be resolved.
Harv Nagra (22:01):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:01):
of systems can handle project management and,
project reporting, et cetera.
But to enable collaboration,effective collaboration across
multi entities creates a problembecause the data now needs to go
into separate.
Legal entities from a financeperspective, so you need
Harv Nagra (22:15):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:15):
connections, which a lot
Harv Nagra (22:16):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (22:17):
don't do.
need a, a rare, like a, aunicorn tool here that basically
allows you to collaborate acrossmultiple jurisdictions.
is fundamental, I think, whenyou're looking at Cross country
or cross entity, they can be inthe same country, but different
legal entities.
So that's gonna be what narrowsdown what you need to use.
And that should be a decidingfactor over many other areas
(22:38):
because the sharing resourceelement, the tracking of that
and the rebilling of that andthe recharging cross multiple
entities cause a massiveheadache,
Harv Nagra (22:47):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (22:48):
admin burden, which will lead to things being lost
and margin being deteriorated.
Harv Nagra (22:52):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:52):
you don't use a tool that can grow across
modern, that's my number onepoint.
Other elements by the sounds ofit, is if they're not utilizing
the tool effectively or they'vegot this big problem with the
resourcing, how fundamental isit?
Is it something where you can bein discussion with that tool
that you're currently using togo, well, what's your pipeline
look like?
How long until you, I guess,adapt this into things that
we'll need?
Because sometimes it's muchbetter to work with who you know
(23:14):
and what you know than jump shipinto, into the unknown.
So find out the gaps you'remissing.
Have a good dynamic conversationwith the software provider
you've got before exploringanything else further.
Harv Nagra (23:26):
I do agree.
I, it is a lot of work to moveto a new platform, learn it,
and, implement it and changemanagement we know is a
difficult thing.
So I think you're, you'retotally right.
Talking to the product team andunderstanding How you could be
using that functionality and whyit's not working for you.
I also wanna flag that I don'thave an issue If somebody really
thinks for a really particularthing, like project management,
(23:49):
they want to use Asana becausethey just have to create a load
of tickets and the PSA systemfor example, doesn't support
that, or something like that, orit just gets really complex.
I, I don't have an issue withthat, but I think when you're
paying for a tool like a PSA orjust any kind of really robust
project management system, youdo wanna make sure you're trying
to get the best out of it andtrying to consolidate.
(24:11):
Otherwise it's counterproductiveto kind of the whole goal.
I think at some point if youalso recognize that something's
not fit for purpose, like themulti-entity issues or things
like that, you might have toswitch, which is absolutely
fine, but it's recognizing thatit's not fit for purpose.
Ryan Pearcy (24:28):
So the other thing I'll just add on that is that be
very careful because you mighthave a very strong-willed
dominant head of operations.
Harv Nagra (24:36):
Yes.
Ryan Pearcy (24:36):
about from a I guess a task management resource
perspective that goes, this doesnot work for me.
Harv Nagra (24:41):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (24:42):
to look at another tool.
And then
Harv Nagra (24:43):
I,
Ryan Pearcy (24:44):
reaction is they're probably gonna have a tour that
they like, they wanna move youover to it and you may not be
considering the impacts.
Of the other elements of theteam about doing that.
So you need to bring everyoneinto that discussion,
Harv Nagra (24:54):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (24:54):
and properly understand, well, what is it?
The, the other tool we'relooking at doesn't have, that we
currently have in the, the toolwe're using.
there's a, a natural reaction Iguess we touched on that at the
start, to chase the shinyobject.
Harv Nagra (25:07):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (25:07):
you know, always consider the grass is greener.
Harv Nagra (25:09):
I think as you mature and as you have much
clearer picture as finance oroperations leaders about how
your business runs or how youwant it to run, you also get a
very clear idea of yourrequirements.
Ryan Pearcy (25:22):
some people, I guess, are not great at teasing
that out.
So some, some, we, we can get areally good defined list.
We covered everything.
Others, know, the way the mindworks, you really need to sit
down with a third party.
Harv Nagra (25:33):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (25:34):
them ask you the critical questions that brings
that information out of you,'cause sometimes you'll, you'll
think something's reallyimportant, but actually talking
it through you realize it's notas important as other areas.
So
Harv Nagra (25:44):
Good point.
Ryan Pearcy (25:45):
and step back and sometimes bringing someone else
in helps you do that.
Harv Nagra (25:49):
Ryan, thank you so much.
So we've looked at three casesthere.
I've got a few other questionsfor you, so I'm gonna dive into
those.
What is the biggest mistake yousee businesses make when it
comes to their finance andoperations tech stack?
It might have something to dowith some of this stuff we've
been talking about, but what,what comes to mind when you hear
that question?
Ryan Pearcy (26:05):
Number one is they don't have an end goal, so they
will pick in silos, problemsthey've got and look to resolve
that issue.
But if you do that, all you endup with is lots of different
systems that don't communicateand don't deliver the ultimate
End position, which is clearvisibility of the key areas of
our business that enable us tomake decisions.
(26:26):
So start with where do we wannaget to and work backwards from
that.
Whenever we work with thebusiness, we're holistically
looking at multiple differentareas of that business and then
bring that those together to go,okay, well this is what you need
to get out of it.
What do we need to build to getthere?
And I think that's the numberone issue that most businesses
suffer.
Harv Nagra (26:45):
I, I, my, my next question is not about knocking
other tools, but there's the PSAroute businesses maturing can
go, but there's also tools outthere that are tool stacks in
themselves.
There's the clickup, the Monday,and teamwork and stuff like
that.
They're not really PSAs, wheredo those fit and is it part of
the journey?
(27:05):
Can you make it work?
What are your thoughts?
Ryan Pearcy (27:07):
I should probably disclose this at the start.
So, I'm a accountant bybackground, so I'm led by
numbers.
I think the numbers are criticaland you'll find in virtually
every system in a, a business,something that is in there will
lead into what ends up in thefinance system, which then ends
up in the reporting tools thatenable you to deliver I guess.
And the problem we have with alot of these generic systems is
(27:28):
they really ignore finance.
And
Harv Nagra (27:30):
if you
Ryan Pearcy (27:30):
want some visibility of the profitability
of what you are doing, whichactually is gonna drive whether
what you're doing, is it successor not?
'cause in the end, it all comesdown to money.
you really need to havesomething that enables you to
track the finance in the sameway you're tracking the, the
management of the project.
So the likes of Clickup Monday,et cetera.
Great tools, really good atmanaging tasks.
(27:51):
Not so good at managing thefinancial element.
And you can sometimes boltthings in, but it feels very
much a like a, an ancillarything rather than a key focus.
Harv Nagra (28:01):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (28:02):
I tend to not to go down those routes, I tend to go
with something that hasfinances, the core alongside
project management side.
Harv Nagra (28:10):
I agree with you.
I think one of the things thatI've seen in, in systems like
that, that was quite stressfulfor me is that I've got a
toolkit now, and now I've gottago out and build this thing to
work for my agency or getsomebody in to build it for my
agency, which is like, I'm shorton time and I am not a systems
(28:30):
engineer and I I, I I just don'thave the time for that.
So that's what I found quitestressful is that you're giving
me a toolkit that's fantastic,but I don't have like ages to
figure all this out and see howit's all gonna integrate.
Ryan Pearcy (28:44):
the other bit on that is, is not, in my opinion,
finding a consultant that canhelp you build this isn't the
problem, right?
You're
Harv Nagra (28:49):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (28:49):
upfront.
Harv Nagra (28:51):
The
Ryan Pearcy (28:51):
problem is that now you get tied to that consultant
because they know how the systemworks and you are not skilled
enough to do it.
So now you are tied to what theydo.
They can charge you what theywant over time to make tweaks.
And you end up finding that the,the monthly or annual costs
you're paying for this are farhigher than you expected.
'cause you had the idea of thesoftware costs and the upfront
(29:12):
rather than the constantiterative changes that will come
out of generally a businessusing things.
So you've got off the shelf,you've got custom, generally,
most business now want an offthe shelf package that connects
into other solutions with someflexibility to make changes that
work for the business.
Harv Nagra (29:27):
Really good point.
I've come across agencies onoccasion that have brought in a
tool, you know, they're at anearly stage of maturity, stage
one or stage two, and they'vebrought in a system thinking
this is gonna sort out all theirproblems, so they're paying for
it.
But they didn't sort out thoseworkflows that we were talking
about earlier, and now they'repaying for a system and kind of,
it's just sitting there andeveryone's scared of touching
(29:49):
it.
Do you ever come acrosssituations like that and like I,
I don't even know if there's aquestion here other than I'm
really sorry you've decided todo that.
That was not the right way togo.
Ryan Pearcy (30:00):
I know, I mean, it's not necessarily the right
or wrong way.
It's quite standard that thiswill happen because everyone
will have the right mindset inthat we need to make change,
which is
Harv Nagra (30:10):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (30:10):
the the biggest thing to overcome.
So we've now made that decision.
We're implementing, buteveryone's busy.
So the implementation path, thetraining path doesn't go maybe
as slick as we want.
And then once we're back in ourday jobs, we're started to
Harv Nagra (30:21):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (30:22):
how we're supposed to be using this tool
effectively.
Now we're finding work aroundsand those workarounds take
longer.
They feel clunky,
Harv Nagra (30:29):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (30:30):
it's putting us off using the tool.
What I get brought into a lot isthat.
We're using a tool.
We dunno if it should be the onewe're using.
It's not working for us.
Let's look at something else.
And I go and go, well actuallythe fundamental things you need
are in there.
We just need to make some tweaksto how it's been set up.
We need to change, I guess, someof your workflow processes
through it.
And we need to retrain the teamand then have a support service
(30:53):
that goes on for maybe normallysix months to bring those
individuals back'cause they'llgo off and find other ways of
working back to actually whatyou should be doing.
Cuz until you overcome thechange curve, which is usually
at least three months whereyou're going from, this feels
cumbersome to, this is nowsecond nature.
You're gonna find people startdiverting from the path.
(31:14):
It's completely normal, happensall the time.
You just need a plan to bringthem back to it.
Harv Nagra (31:18):
So let's say we're in a level two business.
You were saying earlier thatsometimes when you're really
close to the, the situation orthe context in a business, it
can be hard to come up with yourlist of requirements.
But there is, let's say there isa business that's at that level
two listening saying, yeah, weneed to, level up and get to
that integrated stage, whetherit's a single system or
multi-system integrated if youwere leading that discussion,
(31:42):
does anything come to mind interms of how you would prompt
them to think about what theyreally need?
Ryan Pearcy (31:47):
Yes.
So firstly, involve the team.
Too many business owners orstrategic decision makers go, we
know what the right thing to dois.
We know where the problems are,
Harv Nagra (31:57):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (31:58):
when you start having proper conversations with
your team, do you identify thatactually what they're flagging
isn't really what we thought theproblems were.
They're happy with theseelements.
Even if they moan about it,everyone moans about IT, right?
That's the, that's the thing wecan get away with, moaning about
IT.
But sometimes the moan is justfrustration of what's happened
at that exact point and notnecessarily a fundamental issue
(32:18):
that's going forward.
So do that map out your processbecause it brings to the surface
areas you were completelyunaware of that were problematic
or makes it clear that certainareas are taking far longer than
they should do.
Harv Nagra (32:29):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (32:30):
out your processes and that will help tease out
some of the key requirements anddo a RAG assessment, so put a
criticality against every areaI'm a sucker for spreadsheets.
I'm an accountant, a minimumthing, stick in the spreadsheet
and put some visualization toit.
It really helps refine what youneed to focus on.
Harv Nagra (32:49):
think the next challenge sometimes is that when
somebody has identified whatthey need, they might not have
the headspace or the resource toactually implement something
properly or figure out theworkflow.
Is that where your team, forexample, can come in or someone
like yourselves to help supportin that kind of process?
And how does that work?
Ryan Pearcy (33:09):
Yeah, so I, I, I guess if I go a step back
slightly, when you are, I guess,identifying what you need, what
I'm saying is you've identifiedthe pain points.
It's not the solution.
As you said earlier you've gotthousands of options out there,
and each one connects intodifferent systems in different
ways.
So they say an example.
We, we've got Xero thatintegrates into Harvest.
Great.
But that integration is acompletely different integration
(33:32):
to how Scoro integrates intoXero.
'cause they operate in differentways.
They share data in differentways.
And you can't just take that, itintegrates as a definition of,
oh, now we can share every bitof data we need to share.
that point, talk to someone.
There's so many people,including us that just have a
complimentary discussion to helpyou identify, have you got the
skill set internally to do thisyourself and identify the right
(33:53):
tools, or do you need to bringsomeone in to help you pick out
what is the right flow?
When we do it, we map out yourexisting processes.
We map out what the process willlook like in the tools that we
are saying are, are probably thebest fit for you.
And then Mm-hmm.
visually compare the two.
And now when you transition, youknow how you need to work'cause
you can bring people back to theactual process steps that they
should be adhering to.
(34:13):
So if they do start pivoting andstart diverting from the path,
you know how to bring them backto it.
Harv Nagra (34:18):
So in, in terms of kind of the scenarios I
described earlier, that's kindof a, a real example of how your
team could go in and startdebugging and understanding
needs and stuff like that andhelping them build the right
tech stack and do you supportwith training and, and that kind
of stuff as well?
Ryan Pearcy (34:34):
Yeah, it's all system dependent.
So, as you said, thousands ofsystems, we know quite a lot of
them out there.
But if we don't know it, I guesswe've built up a network of Very
experienced people that we canpull on to implement, train and
support on the systems thatbrought in.
And it's not always, I guess,independent consultants.
It could be the software vendorsthat have a really good team for
that, but wouldn't necessarilyunderstand the overarching
(34:58):
ultimate goal.
So they go, well, this is theway you need to set it out for
your business.
Great.
But actually you might need sometweaks in that that enable you
to do the next step in the nextsystem.
So we sit above.
All the various systems and workout how they should work
together and bring the businessand the software of vendors and
the consultants together to go,you need to adhere to this
(35:19):
overall strategy.
Harv Nagra (35:20):
Excellent.
So, Ryan, if somebody'slistening and thinking that I
could use that kind of supporthow do they find yourself and
start a discussion?
Ryan Pearcy (35:29):
So easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn.
Harv Nagra (35:32):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (35:32):
a very recognizable head as everyone says.
So, uh, so look for Ryan Pearcyon LinkedIn.
Add me and drop me a message.
Always happy to have a chat.
The website iswww.digital-transformers.co uk.
And yeah, we've got informationon there on how to reach out as
well.
Harv Nagra (35:46):
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for yourtime today.
Really appreciate you beinghere.
Ryan Pearcy (35:50):
It is been a pleasure.
Thank you.
All right.
What did you think?
I mean, if some of that felt alittle too close to home with
the situation in your agency,it's not meant to cause offense.
The point is to highlight thathow these workflows can hinder
the efficiency, accuracy, andvisibility in your agency and
end up being roadblocks in yourjourney to operational maturity.
(36:12):
I've been on the ground inagencies working in those ways,
so I know how tedious it can befor project managers as well as
finance and operations leaderswho are trying to understand how
the business is doing.
I do hope some of Ryan's advicethere at the end was helpful and
do reach out to him if you thinkyou want to change the way
you're working or bring in a newsystem, but recognize you could
(36:33):
get some support with thatprocess.
I'm trying a new thing here.
If you have any questions forRyan that you'd like me to pose
to him in a follow up, drop me anote at podcast@scoro.com.
That's it for me this week.
If you've enjoyed thisconversation and this podcast,
please share it with someonewho'd appreciate it.
Share your thoughts when you seeus discussing this episode on
(36:54):
LinkedIn.
And if you haven't already, signup for the handbook newsletter
at scoro.com/podcast.
Scroll down and you'll find thenewsletter sign up form.
We send out a newsletter withthe takeaways from each episode
every other week so you don'thave to scribble down notes and
you've got something toreference.
I'll be back with the nextepisode soon.
(37:14):
Thanks so much.
What is the biggest mistake you see businesses make
when it comes to their financeand operations tech stack?
Ryan Pearcy (00:05):
Number one is they don't have an end goal, so they
will pick in silos, problemsthey've got and look to resolve
that issue.
But if you do that, all you endup with is lots of different
systems that don't communicateand don't deliver the ultimate
End position, which is clearvisibility of the key areas of
our business that enable us tomake decisions.
(00:26):
So start with where do we wannaget to and work backwards from
that.
And I think that's the numberone issue that most businesses
suffer.
Harv Nagra (00:33):
Thanks for listening to The Handbook
Operations podcast.
This podcast is brought to youby Scoro.
If you're a regular listener,you know that I love talking
about business maturity levels.
Level one is where you're justmaking things up as you go.
Level two is where you havepockets of best practice in your
agency.
The real milestone is levelthree.
(00:53):
This is where you really grow upand centralize and codify your
best practice and have best inclass tools in place, and this
is usually where agenciesrealize they need a consolidated
tool to run their business.
A platform like Scoro.
From there, you can move on tolevel four, where you become a
data driven organization.
I saw the benefits moving toScoro brought my agency.
(01:16):
So where are you at?
Is it time for you to move on tothe next maturity level?
Sign up for a free trial atScoro.
com.
Or, if you arrange a demo call,tell them Harv sent you.
Now, back to the episode.
(02:02):
Hey all.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I've supported and spoken to anumber of agencies over the
years, and I've seen it all.
When it comes to Tech Stacks,there's the early stage optimism
tech stack, 10 people, 20 toolsand everything duct taped
together with Goodwill and aGoogle Sheet.
Then you've got the, we'vegrown, but nothing's changed.
(02:24):
Tech Stack.
We quoting happens in Excel,project management is in
people's notebooks, andreporting is done by squinting
at the bank balance.
And on the other end there'sthe, we've invested in a big
platform but kind of hate ittech stack where the tool
exists, but the team's stillbuilding work arounds in Notion
and Smartsheet because theydon't trust it or they never
(02:45):
implemented it properly.
These businesses are alldifferent sizes, but the
pattern's the same.
The tools don't talk to eachother, the data's a mess, and
leadership ends up flying blind.
That's why I wanted to bring ontoday's guest, Ryan Pearcy.
He's the founder of DigitalTransformers, a chartered
accountant, and aself-proclaimed Super Geek.
(03:06):
Ryan spent nearly 15 yearshelping service-based businesses
clean up their systems, bringingfinance, tech, and process
together so leaders can actuallymake decisions based on reality.
Essentially, he and his teamwork on digital transformation
projects that allow theirclients to work faster and
smarter.
So in this episode, we're gonnatry something a little
(03:27):
different.
I'm gonna walk Ryan throughthree agency stories that are
quite similar to things I'veseen or experienced myself, and
I'm gonna ask Ryan to unpackwhat's going wrong, what they
need to fix, and where theyshould focus first.
I am calling it the Tragic Taleof three Tangled Tech Stacks.
Let's get into it.
(03:48):
Ryan.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
Ryan Pearcy (03:51):
thank you for having me.
Harv Nagra (03:52):
So we're gonna be troubleshooting some tech stacks
today.
That's what I wanted to get yoursupport on.
But a few questions before westart.
There's literally thousands andthousands of tools and platforms
out there, there's new stuff forbusinesses popping up every
week.
Based on your experience, isthere a sweet spot in terms of
the number of platforms aservice-based business might
(04:13):
want to use to, run theirfinance, their operations, and
their project management, or isa more important thing to think
about how well the platformsintegrate.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Ryan Pearcy (04:24):
I would say the latter is more critical.
Harv Nagra (04:26):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (04:26):
about sharing data, building what we now refer to as
a modern ERP.
A small system that will beconnected via secure APIs and
allow you to essentially enterinformation only once.
When that information goes towhere it's needed.
Now the volume is critical.
So the volume of apps, theamount of apps you're working
in, but only really if you'vegot people that need to be in
(04:47):
each individual app.
'cause you don't wanna overloadthem.
If it's segregating what peoplework in, so you've got one app
for approvals and that's theonly thing they need to go into
for approvals, then that's muchbetter than having to go into
three different apps fordifferent areas for approvals.
So it's
Harv Nagra (05:00):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (05:01):
where are.
Members of my team interactingand what's the impact on them
rather than the total number ofapps in the stack.
Harv Nagra (05:08):
Where do you stand on the idea of experimentation?
because there's so much outthere, there might be a
temptation to see like., thehottest thing somebody's talking
about and give it a go.
what's your view is that okayand good to do?
Or do you just need to keep aneye on experience for your team
in terms of complexity?
Ryan Pearcy (05:24):
Magpie syndrome is definitely a problem.
Uh, You
Harv Nagra (05:27):
What does that mean?
Ryan Pearcy (05:28):
it's everyone's looking for the next shiny
object, right?
We get drawn in'cause it's gota, a useful tool or feature that
we've not seen before and we'relike, oh, that looks
interesting.
And that is helpful to someextent because we, we like to be
curious and you can only improveand adapt.
If you are curious, you don'twant to be stagnated and stay in
one place because if you shuteverything off, then you will
(05:50):
become outdated over time.
but the number one thing thatbusinesses don't do is really
hone in to maximize the softwarethey've got.
They tend to go, this isn'tworking for me.
I'm gonna jump ship.
Rather than going, this isn'tworking for me.
What can I do to change it?
And how does that compare towhat's out there?
And that's what should be the,the main focus.
Harv Nagra (06:09):
Really, really good point.
So you support businesses withtheir tech needs, assessing what
they do need and troubleshootingit and helping them integrate
and all that kind of stuff.
What are the biggest red flagsyou see?
That should be a wake up call toa business that they need to
tighten things up and it's notworking optimally.
Ryan Pearcy (06:26):
So firstly it's are you getting the information you
need to drive your businessforward, or are you literally
working on gut feel?
If in today's world you'reworking on gut feel, then you
are at a massive disadvantage tothe competitors that you're
trying to outbid or, win workfrom.
Harv Nagra (06:43):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (06:44):
you need to be, I guess, honing your systems to
deliver the data you need andthe way we work, you should
always go, okay, as the, leadersin the business, what is it that
are the strategic points thatthat enable you to make key
decisions?
And then we work backwards toensure the tech stack is
delivering on that.
Harv Nagra (06:59):
Do you think businesses are often good at
recognizing there's an issue ordo you think they need a bit of
a reality check and thingsstarting to really creak and
people starting to moan beforethey recognize there's problems?
Ryan Pearcy (07:11):
So I think a lot of the times with this area, the
business owner or the key peoplelike the board, strategic
decision makers are awarethey're not getting the
information they need, the moreproblematic areas.
They don't know what's possible
Harv Nagra (07:24):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (07:24):
they need to talk to specialists to sightly just
be made aware, like what is itwe can do?
What is possible in this day andage?
They hear buzzwords like ai.
They know they need better data.
Everything's data driven, but
Harv Nagra (07:35):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (07:36):
if it's actually applicable to their business and
how they operate.
Harv Nagra (07:39):
Right?
Ryan Pearcy (07:39):
not, they dunno what the problem is, it's that
they dunno how to fix it oractually is this problem just
something that we have to livewith.
Harv Nagra (07:45):
There's AI and then there's also automation.
That's another, term you hear alot.
But then, if you haven't seenhow that really works and comes
together, then it doesn't reallymean much.
You just have a very vague idea.
Right.
so this is what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna paint you a picture ofthree real life agency tech
stacks, and then I'd love to getyour help in both debugging them
and highlighting the risks.
(08:05):
Okay.
So let's paint you a picture ofAgency A.
This is a 20 person agencythat's running on gut feel more
than structure.
I'd say they're at a maturitylevel one.
They price their work inharvest, but there's no formal
pricing model.
Just copying old quotes from oneanother and tweaking the
numbers.
(08:25):
For project resourcing, they'reusing Google Sheets and it's a
bit of a free for all, wheretheir project managers can just
throw in a number for whatresource they need and how long
the next week they're trackingtime in harvest, but it's super
inconsistent and most peopledon't do it.
Project management is all overthe place.
Some people are using the notesapp on their computer.
Some are using Asana.
Some people are using theirpaper notebook.
(08:47):
They're sending invoices throughHarvest, but nothing syncs with
their accounting platform.
And for business reporting, it'smostly just hoping that you have
more money coming in than goingout.
And at end of year there's a bitof a freakout when you kind of,
look back and realize youweren't as profitable as you
hoped you would be.
Okay.
So, so that's kind of the, thescenario.
(09:09):
where do you even start with abusiness like this really?
Ryan Pearcy (09:11):
Well, ironically this is very similar to a
business I've worked with, so, Imean hopefully this, this is
something I can, I can commenton, but you've got, you've got a
number of issues here.
So firstly, harvest is a reallygood entry level tool.
it enables you to do a lot ofthe basics.
You can get some goodvisibility, but it sounds like
they're not firstly using thattool to its maximum.
They've got inconsistency inprocess and they're not able, or
(09:33):
definitely not holding theirstaff to account in how they
operate.
Harv Nagra (09:37):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (09:38):
a big problem that they're experiencing is around,
and process rather than tech atthe start.
they've looks like they've gotdisparate systems that can be
connected'cause Harvest canconnect into finance systems.
So that may be that they wouldneed to look at their finance
system.
Is that something they need toconnect into Harvest to
streamline some of the processesbeyond just, I guess their
operational tool being harvestin this case.
But if you're then getting intoresource management.
(10:00):
What is a massive pain point fora lot of businesses and really
hard to align if you are lookingat trying to manage resource in
a different tool to the, one youare doing your budgeting,
quoting and job or projectprofitability reporting in, then
trying to align those is a hugeburden on people because every
time something changes in one,you have to manually go and
(10:22):
update it in the other.
Harv Nagra (10:23):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (10:23):
whenever I'm talking to businesses that wanna
do both, it's like these are twokey fundamental areas that
really you wanna try and sit inthe same platform cause even if
you've
Harv Nagra (10:31):
got
Ryan Pearcy (10:31):
two separate platforms and you're doing it
well in both, and you wannabuild a connection, that's a
really hard build, that's areally hard thing to get
consistently correct.
There's too many things thatchange on a
Harv Nagra (10:42):
day to day
Ryan Pearcy (10:43):
basis that could cause problems and errors.
Harv Nagra (10:44):
Especially in an agency where kind of projects
and, and clients are so...
well, it can be quite erraticand rapidly changing.
So having to synchronize all ofthat stuff, one of the things
that I've seen in, in an agencylike that is also the complete,
like, disconnect from how muchbudget you have left is just
really horrible when you're justmaking up numbers in a Google
(11:05):
sheet and saying, oh, well Ineed 20 hours for that.
Do you have 20 hours in thebudget?
I was mentioning that there'sreally inconsistent time
tracking; if there's only a fewpeople tracking their time,
might as well not even bother.
because, what is the point?
you're not gonna have accuracyat all.
Ryan Pearcy (11:19):
And not only that, like a, a big problem we had
with a a client is that alltheir staff were tracking time
and they thought, oh, brilliant.
our chargeability on this staffare the points it's supposed to
be, but our profitabilitydoesn't match that.
Why is that not happening?
It turns out.
the people tracking their time,they just weren't putting all of
their time down.
Harv Nagra (11:34):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (11:35):
like in a given week, so they're 35 hours,
they're maybe putting 30 hoursdown.
So their charge ability comparedto what they were putting down,
that's great, but it's just notcompared to their full week.
Harv Nagra (11:44):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (11:44):
the ability to bring in dashboards that
actually for those individualstaff members
Harv Nagra (11:48):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (11:49):
them, have they completed their time sheet?
What does their chargeabilitylook like?
And get them to hold themselvesto account.
Change is a culture inside thebusiness.
And we did this with a clientthat went on to Scoro and it
completely, fundamentallychanged how they worked.
it meant that the managersessentially didn't actually have
to do as much managing becausethe staff was self-managing
themselves.
The culture changed entirely.
Harv Nagra (12:10):
Right.
That's really interesting.
Ryan, where do you stand on theidea of like, only asking your
team to track billable timeversus tracking their full day,
Do you have a point of view?
Ryan Pearcy (12:21):
Yeah.
Strong point of view.
So I think they fundamentallyhave to track the full day, and
there's a couple of reasons forthis.
you've got chargeable time,that's great.
That always contributes to,money that's gonna come in,
you've got to determine how muchmoney, because you've got
recoverability issues if you areputting way too much time down
compared to what a job shouldtake.
But the other bit is in thenon-chargeable, you've got
(12:43):
effective non-chargeable andineffective.
you've
Harv Nagra (12:46):
got
Ryan Pearcy (12:46):
stuff that can help push the business forward.
So they're going out to try andwin work
Harv Nagra (12:49):
or they're
Ryan Pearcy (12:50):
changing a process and being more streamlined.
That's really effectivenon-chargeable work.
And you want to be graspingthat.
You wanna know how much of ourstaff, who are the ones that are
driving the business forwardcompared to those that are more
kind, sat on their hands
Harv Nagra (13:03):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (13:04):
Just they're going, okay, I've not got enough work.
I'm not going out chasing it.
So, in my view, you wanna trackthe entire of it not to
necessarily go after thoseemployees,
Harv Nagra (13:12):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (13:13):
understand how do we make our our non-chargeable
time as effective as possible?
Harv Nagra (13:18):
Absolutely.
I think as an operationsdirector of, when I was managing
in that role in an agency, myissue with not tracking the full
day also was that it makes itreally hard to know if someone's
just been like lazy with notlogging everything or if that
was genuinely everything theyworked on So the only way for me
to know whether they track theirtime properly that day is if
(13:41):
they logged their full day.
About this agency.
A, there's two other things thatI wanted to highlight.
One is like that, that thing Imentioned about copying and
duplicating quotes, that is justsuch bad practice.
You have like.
A legacy of client relationshipsand discounts and, the reality
of scope for a particularproject that is in a certain
quote.
So if you're using that as likea template to.
(14:02):
Copy and run with for anotherclient project.
A different client project.
That is absolutely terrible.
That was the first thing.
And the second thing was whatyou were saying about workflows.
A priority for an agency likethis is really maturing their
ways of working in consolidatingthat.
before they even try to improvetheir systems and stuff like
(14:23):
that, but I think really gettinga good handle on that it's just
something they need to do.
Ryan Pearcy (14:27):
a lot of it is a lack of visibility of it.
So as you grow, when you are, Iguess, a small business, you see
everything that's going on.
But as you start getting, 15 upto 20 employees, you start
losing track of what's beingdone.
So something that we always dobefore we get even close to
recommending any changes, weprocess map out.
So the, the business owners,the, the strategic decision
makers can see exactly what'shappening by who at what stages,
(14:49):
and then the, the amount oftimes they go, oh wow.
We've got full reliance on thisone individual for a critical
point.
Harv Nagra (14:56):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (14:57):
everything stops.
We've gotta resolve that.
And that's
Harv Nagra (15:00):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (15:00):
to do with system.
That's just refining actuallyhow they operate.
And that is fundamental thatbusinesses should be 100% all
over.
Harv Nagra (15:07):
Alright, let's talk about agency B.
So this is a hundred personbusiness that is doing a lot of
things.
Right that I quite admire.
But I'd say they're at like a2.5 on the maturity scale, not
quite at that level threemilestone, which means they have
really consistent and documentedways of working and really more
importantly, really tightly knitsystems in place.
(15:28):
So let me describe theirsituation.
They have really clever pricingcalculators set up in
spreadsheets so they can.
Define the scope veryaccurately.
But they still build theirquotes in Google Sheets to issue
to clients as a, as a PDF.
They separately track deals inPipedrive, which is a CRM
platform, if anyone didn't knowthat.
(15:50):
Resourcing and time trackinghappens in Aava time sheet
reports are exported from Aava,and then budgets are tried.
They, they try to reconcilebudgets in Google Sheets.
Where they have to remember toadd expenses and purchases.
Project management happens inAsana.
They're using pipe drivepipeline stage as a reminder to
(16:11):
invoice.
So they've set up an invoicingstage, okay, as a reminder that
they need to invoice something,but it's a manual process to
check what's left.
To bill.
Obviously, a CRM system and asales funnel is not set up to
track.
How much you have left toinvoice and all that kind of
stuff.
And then sales activity istracked in terms of reporting.
Sales activity is tracked inPipedrive, and they're doing a
(16:34):
really, really good job and kindof analyzing what, what their,
pipelines looking like.
Project tracking, like I said,is in Google sheets, and
financial reporting is alsothis.
Spreadsheet puzzle that takesplace with weekly meetings and a
lot of kind of sit downs withproject managers, account
managers, and the finance team.
what are the issues?
Ryan Pearcy (16:53):
I mean, this sounds very much typical of a post
covid business
Harv Nagra (16:57):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (16:57):
they've gone.
We need to pivot a lot intocloud-based systems that allows
us to work more flexibly.
I.
But they've just had to makesome quick decisions on
something.
There's no overall IT strategy.
Where are we going?
What is the ultimate goals here?
So you've got some really goodtools in place, some market
leading tools in place, butthey're just not connected.
Harv Nagra (17:16):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (17:16):
like disparate.
Everything is being sharedmanually and, and you become
very spreadsheet heavy.
The other thing I would say isthat I think you're optimistic
with a 2.5 there.
I'm giving that a, a two, asolid two based on my
Harv Nagra (17:26):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (17:27):
you're creating so many problems along the, the way
and you are also prioritizingcertain tasks in the wrong
system.
So for example, CRM pipe driveis perfect, up to the point you
are going to be winning work,and then it needs to hand over
is to
Harv Nagra (17:40):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (17:41):
a system that is managing those projects to the
point of invoicing.
And then you've got another areawhich is taking over the, the
reporting.
Harv Nagra (17:49):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (17:49):
you connect the systems in secure APIs with
trigger points.
So those stages where you saidabout now we've got a stage in
Pipedrive for invoicing.
As soon as it gets to the pointof we are now quoting that
should be moving data intoanother system.
the brilliant thing about thelikes of score is the, the
marketplace where you canconnect tools together, you can
still do best to breed, buthands over the data into the
(18:09):
relevant system when you needto.
finally on this, the reportingside.
Harv Nagra (18:13):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (18:14):
you do have to report in Excel.
Harv Nagra (18:15):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (18:16):
But if you're doing quotes in Excel you know,
building them out, if unlessthey are really complex, you
should be moving that into whatare very advanced quoting
systems now.
And if you do have to do inExcel, then at least connect
that into like a, a Zapier toolthat pushes the data into
systems such as Koro.
So you're not having to retypeit.
Harv Nagra (18:36):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (18:37):
a little bit of smart engineering there that
goes.
Okay.
We've now created a quote.
We know that like what it'sgonna be, it's gonna be
accepted.
Let's get the data into theproject management system.
Automatically
Harv Nagra (18:46):
I totally agree, but I, I do think there's probably a
lot of complexity in mapping aspreadsheet to a system as well.
So it's probably, you'reprobably better off just using a
system for that, I, I think acouple of things that I wanted
to highlight about this case is,downloading time sheet reports
from one system and trying toreconcile in a spreadsheet.
Like, nobody wants to do that,first of all.
(19:08):
And obviously you're not gonnabe doing that on a daily basis.
So it gets done every two weeks.
And in that amount of time, youcould have over burned on all
your deliverables.
Right.
And and the other thing thisagency was saying to me is that
they don't know if they projectmanagers remember to add all the
expenses and purchases into thespreadsheet as well.
So there's a big mystery aboutwhether everything is being
(19:30):
tracked.
think you already said, butusing a pipeline stage to remind
yourself of what needs to beinvoiced is just like, it, it's
just not on.
Yeah.
It's nuts.
And I, I think for an agencythat's a hundred people, they've
waited way too long to build abetter integrated system or, or
bring in an integrated system,is what I'd say is like
Ryan Pearcy (19:52):
Well you say that, but what I'd say is, if they've
got to a hundred people and
Harv Nagra (19:56):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (19:56):
money, and
Harv Nagra (19:57):
Yep.
Ryan Pearcy (19:57):
you know that, that level, think about the
efficiency gains and the profityou can get
Harv Nagra (20:02):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (20:02):
by tweaking how you operate.
Harv Nagra (20:05):
Totally.
Ryan Pearcy (20:06):
a business, at that stage, say if we are still
successful at this point.
Harv Nagra (20:09):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (20:09):
be so much better just by refining what we do.
Harv Nagra (20:12):
I think that's why I gave them 2.5 because they had
some really interesting thingshappening, like these
calculators and processes thatwere not automated, but then it
was just in terms of systems, itwas quite immature.
Here's agency c.
We've got a 60 personmulti-entity business.
(20:32):
Okay?
They've got entities indifferent countries and they
have a PSA platform in place,which is great, but they're not
using it to its full potential.
Okay?
So some teams are usingtemplates for quoting.
But others are doing that copypaste trick.
they don't like the PSA'sproject resourcing features.
So they're building projectplans in Smartsheet instead.
(20:53):
they track time and expenses inthe PSA for their projects and
invoice through it, but still domanual financial reconciliation
in spreadsheets and using a, atool like Fathom.
Since they're multi-entity andthey need a central place to
look at all their entities.
That's all I'll say about them.
So they've got a PSA platform,but not using all of the
(21:14):
functionality.
And there's obviously somethings that they don't like
about they see either.
Ryan Pearcy (21:19):
Yeah, and you can understand that there's in a
business that's, I guess of thatsize, you're now getting
critical people that are headsof teams.
So you can have a, a head ofoperations ahead of finance and
they're gonna have verydifferent requirements and
desires out of the system.
And there's always sacrificethat has to be made somewhere.
Because if you go for best ofbreed in every single area, the
(21:39):
problem you're gonna have isthey're all gonna be disparate
and you're creating moreproblems overall.
the other bit, and I've got aquestion to you on this, is that
they're in differentjurisdictions here, but are
there teams collaborating acrossthose different jurisdiction?
Harv Nagra (21:52):
They do share resources in terms of design and
development.
Sometimes project management aswell.
Ryan Pearcy (21:57):
Yeah.
And so that now is a very nichething that needs to be resolved.
Harv Nagra (22:01):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:01):
of systems can handle project management and,
project reporting, et cetera.
But to enable collaboration,effective collaboration across
multi entities creates a problembecause the data now needs to go
into separate.
Legal entities from a financeperspective, so you need
Harv Nagra (22:15):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:15):
connections, which a lot
Harv Nagra (22:16):
Right.
Ryan Pearcy (22:17):
don't do.
need a, a rare, like a, aunicorn tool here that basically
allows you to collaborate acrossmultiple jurisdictions.
is fundamental, I think, whenyou're looking at Cross country
or cross entity, they can be inthe same country, but different
legal entities.
So that's gonna be what narrowsdown what you need to use.
And that should be a decidingfactor over many other areas
(22:38):
because the sharing resourceelement, the tracking of that
and the rebilling of that andthe recharging cross multiple
entities cause a massiveheadache,
Harv Nagra (22:47):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (22:48):
admin burden, which will lead to things being lost
and margin being deteriorated.
Harv Nagra (22:52):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (22:52):
you don't use a tool that can grow across
modern, that's my number onepoint.
Other elements by the sounds ofit, is if they're not utilizing
the tool effectively or they'vegot this big problem with the
resourcing, how fundamental isit?
Is it something where you can bein discussion with that tool
that you're currently using togo, well, what's your pipeline
look like?
How long until you, I guess,adapt this into things that
we'll need?
Because sometimes it's muchbetter to work with who you know
(23:14):
and what you know than jump shipinto, into the unknown.
So find out the gaps you'remissing.
Have a good dynamic conversationwith the software provider
you've got before exploringanything else further.
Harv Nagra (23:26):
I do agree.
I, it is a lot of work to moveto a new platform, learn it,
and, implement it and changemanagement we know is a
difficult thing.
So I think you're, you'retotally right.
Talking to the product team andunderstanding How you could be
using that functionality and whyit's not working for you.
I also wanna flag that I don'thave an issue If somebody really
thinks for a really particularthing, like project management,
(23:49):
they want to use Asana becausethey just have to create a load
of tickets and the PSA systemfor example, doesn't support
that, or something like that, orit just gets really complex.
I, I don't have an issue withthat, but I think when you're
paying for a tool like a PSA orjust any kind of really robust
project management system, youdo wanna make sure you're trying
to get the best out of it andtrying to consolidate.
(24:11):
Otherwise it's counterproductiveto kind of the whole goal.
I think at some point if youalso recognize that something's
not fit for purpose, like themulti-entity issues or things
like that, you might have toswitch, which is absolutely
fine, but it's recognizing thatit's not fit for purpose.
Ryan Pearcy (24:28):
So the other thing I'll just add on that is that be
very careful because you mighthave a very strong-willed
dominant head of operations.
Harv Nagra (24:36):
Yes.
Ryan Pearcy (24:36):
about from a I guess a task management resource
perspective that goes, this doesnot work for me.
Harv Nagra (24:41):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (24:42):
to look at another tool.
And then
Harv Nagra (24:43):
I,
Ryan Pearcy (24:44):
reaction is they're probably gonna have a tour that
they like, they wanna move youover to it and you may not be
considering the impacts.
Of the other elements of theteam about doing that.
So you need to bring everyoneinto that discussion,
Harv Nagra (24:54):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (24:54):
and properly understand, well, what is it?
The, the other tool we'relooking at doesn't have, that we
currently have in the, the toolwe're using.
there's a, a natural reaction Iguess we touched on that at the
start, to chase the shinyobject.
Harv Nagra (25:07):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (25:07):
you know, always consider the grass is greener.
Harv Nagra (25:09):
I think as you mature and as you have much
clearer picture as finance oroperations leaders about how
your business runs or how youwant it to run, you also get a
very clear idea of yourrequirements.
Ryan Pearcy (25:22):
some people, I guess, are not great at teasing
that out.
So some, some, we, we can get areally good defined list.
We covered everything.
Others, know, the way the mindworks, you really need to sit
down with a third party.
Harv Nagra (25:33):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (25:34):
them ask you the critical questions that brings
that information out of you,'cause sometimes you'll, you'll
think something's reallyimportant, but actually talking
it through you realize it's notas important as other areas.
So
Harv Nagra (25:44):
Good point.
Ryan Pearcy (25:45):
and step back and sometimes bringing someone else
in helps you do that.
Harv Nagra (25:49):
Ryan, thank you so much.
So we've looked at three casesthere.
I've got a few other questionsfor you, so I'm gonna dive into
those.
What is the biggest mistake yousee businesses make when it
comes to their finance andoperations tech stack?
It might have something to dowith some of this stuff we've
been talking about, but what,what comes to mind when you hear
that question?
Ryan Pearcy (26:05):
Number one is they don't have an end goal, so they
will pick in silos, problemsthey've got and look to resolve
that issue.
But if you do that, all you endup with is lots of different
systems that don't communicateand don't deliver the ultimate
End position, which is clearvisibility of the key areas of
our business that enable us tomake decisions.
(26:26):
So start with where do we wannaget to and work backwards from
that.
Whenever we work with thebusiness, we're holistically
looking at multiple differentareas of that business and then
bring that those together to go,okay, well this is what you need
to get out of it.
What do we need to build to getthere?
And I think that's the numberone issue that most businesses
suffer.
Harv Nagra (26:45):
I, I, my, my next question is not about knocking
other tools, but there's the PSAroute businesses maturing can
go, but there's also tools outthere that are tool stacks in
themselves.
There's the clickup, the Monday,and teamwork and stuff like
that.
They're not really PSAs, wheredo those fit and is it part of
the journey?
(27:05):
Can you make it work?
What are your thoughts?
Ryan Pearcy (27:07):
I should probably disclose this at the start.
So, I'm a accountant bybackground, so I'm led by
numbers.
I think the numbers are criticaland you'll find in virtually
every system in a, a business,something that is in there will
lead into what ends up in thefinance system, which then ends
up in the reporting tools thatenable you to deliver I guess.
And the problem we have with alot of these generic systems is
(27:28):
they really ignore finance.
And
Harv Nagra (27:30):
if you
Ryan Pearcy (27:30):
want some visibility of the profitability
of what you are doing, whichactually is gonna drive whether
what you're doing, is it successor not?
'cause in the end, it all comesdown to money.
you really need to havesomething that enables you to
track the finance in the sameway you're tracking the, the
management of the project.
So the likes of Clickup Monday,et cetera.
Great tools, really good atmanaging tasks.
(27:51):
Not so good at managing thefinancial element.
And you can sometimes boltthings in, but it feels very
much a like a, an ancillarything rather than a key focus.
Harv Nagra (28:01):
Hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (28:02):
I tend to not to go down those routes, I tend to go
with something that hasfinances, the core alongside
project management side.
Harv Nagra (28:10):
I agree with you.
I think one of the things thatI've seen in, in systems like
that, that was quite stressfulfor me is that I've got a
toolkit now, and now I've gottago out and build this thing to
work for my agency or getsomebody in to build it for my
agency, which is like, I'm shorton time and I am not a systems
(28:30):
engineer and I I, I I just don'thave the time for that.
So that's what I found quitestressful is that you're giving
me a toolkit that's fantastic,but I don't have like ages to
figure all this out and see howit's all gonna integrate.
Ryan Pearcy (28:44):
the other bit on that is, is not, in my opinion,
finding a consultant that canhelp you build this isn't the
problem, right?
You're
Harv Nagra (28:49):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (28:49):
upfront.
Harv Nagra (28:51):
The
Ryan Pearcy (28:51):
problem is that now you get tied to that consultant
because they know how the systemworks and you are not skilled
enough to do it.
So now you are tied to what theydo.
They can charge you what theywant over time to make tweaks.
And you end up finding that the,the monthly or annual costs
you're paying for this are farhigher than you expected.
'cause you had the idea of thesoftware costs and the upfront
(29:12):
rather than the constantiterative changes that will come
out of generally a businessusing things.
So you've got off the shelf,you've got custom, generally,
most business now want an offthe shelf package that connects
into other solutions with someflexibility to make changes that
work for the business.
Harv Nagra (29:27):
Really good point.
I've come across agencies onoccasion that have brought in a
tool, you know, they're at anearly stage of maturity, stage
one or stage two, and they'vebrought in a system thinking
this is gonna sort out all theirproblems, so they're paying for
it.
But they didn't sort out thoseworkflows that we were talking
about earlier, and now they'repaying for a system and kind of,
it's just sitting there andeveryone's scared of touching
(29:49):
it.
Do you ever come acrosssituations like that and like I,
I don't even know if there's aquestion here other than I'm
really sorry you've decided todo that.
That was not the right way togo.
Ryan Pearcy (30:00):
I know, I mean, it's not necessarily the right
or wrong way.
It's quite standard that thiswill happen because everyone
will have the right mindset inthat we need to make change,
which is
Harv Nagra (30:10):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (30:10):
the the biggest thing to overcome.
So we've now made that decision.
We're implementing, buteveryone's busy.
So the implementation path, thetraining path doesn't go maybe
as slick as we want.
And then once we're back in ourday jobs, we're started to
Harv Nagra (30:21):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (30:22):
how we're supposed to be using this tool
effectively.
Now we're finding work aroundsand those workarounds take
longer.
They feel clunky,
Harv Nagra (30:29):
Yeah.
Ryan Pearcy (30:30):
it's putting us off using the tool.
What I get brought into a lot isthat.
We're using a tool.
We dunno if it should be the onewe're using.
It's not working for us.
Let's look at something else.
And I go and go, well actuallythe fundamental things you need
are in there.
We just need to make some tweaksto how it's been set up.
We need to change, I guess, someof your workflow processes
through it.
And we need to retrain the teamand then have a support service
(30:53):
that goes on for maybe normallysix months to bring those
individuals back'cause they'llgo off and find other ways of
working back to actually whatyou should be doing.
Cuz until you overcome thechange curve, which is usually
at least three months whereyou're going from, this feels
cumbersome to, this is nowsecond nature.
You're gonna find people startdiverting from the path.
(31:14):
It's completely normal, happensall the time.
You just need a plan to bringthem back to it.
Harv Nagra (31:18):
So let's say we're in a level two business.
You were saying earlier thatsometimes when you're really
close to the, the situation orthe context in a business, it
can be hard to come up with yourlist of requirements.
But there is, let's say there isa business that's at that level
two listening saying, yeah, weneed to, level up and get to
that integrated stage, whetherit's a single system or
multi-system integrated if youwere leading that discussion,
(31:42):
does anything come to mind interms of how you would prompt
them to think about what theyreally need?
Ryan Pearcy (31:47):
Yes.
So firstly, involve the team.
Too many business owners orstrategic decision makers go, we
know what the right thing to dois.
We know where the problems are,
Harv Nagra (31:57):
mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (31:58):
when you start having proper conversations with
your team, do you identify thatactually what they're flagging
isn't really what we thought theproblems were.
They're happy with theseelements.
Even if they moan about it,everyone moans about IT, right?
That's the, that's the thing wecan get away with, moaning about
IT.
But sometimes the moan is justfrustration of what's happened
at that exact point and notnecessarily a fundamental issue
(32:18):
that's going forward.
So do that map out your processbecause it brings to the surface
areas you were completelyunaware of that were problematic
or makes it clear that certainareas are taking far longer than
they should do.
Harv Nagra (32:29):
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Pearcy (32:30):
out your processes and that will help tease out
some of the key requirements anddo a RAG assessment, so put a
criticality against every areaI'm a sucker for spreadsheets.
I'm an accountant, a minimumthing, stick in the spreadsheet
and put some visualization toit.
It really helps refine what youneed to focus on.
Harv Nagra (32:49):
think the next challenge sometimes is that when
somebody has identified whatthey need, they might not have
the headspace or the resource toactually implement something
properly or figure out theworkflow.
Is that where your team, forexample, can come in or someone
like yourselves to help supportin that kind of process?
And how does that work?
Ryan Pearcy (33:09):
Yeah, so I, I, I guess if I go a step back
slightly, when you are, I guess,identifying what you need, what
I'm saying is you've identifiedthe pain points.
It's not the solution.
As you said earlier you've gotthousands of options out there,
and each one connects intodifferent systems in different
ways.
So they say an example.
We, we've got Xero thatintegrates into Harvest.
Great.
But that integration is acompletely different integration
(33:32):
to how Scoro integrates intoXero.
'cause they operate in differentways.
They share data in differentways.
And you can't just take that, itintegrates as a definition of,
oh, now we can share every bitof data we need to share.
that point, talk to someone.
There's so many people,including us that just have a
complimentary discussion to helpyou identify, have you got the
skill set internally to do thisyourself and identify the right
(33:53):
tools, or do you need to bringsomeone in to help you pick out
what is the right flow?
When we do it, we map out yourexisting processes.
We map out what the process willlook like in the tools that we
are saying are, are probably thebest fit for you.
And then Mm-hmm.
visually compare the two.
And now when you transition, youknow how you need to work'cause
you can bring people back to theactual process steps that they
should be adhering to.
(34:13):
So if they do start pivoting andstart diverting from the path,
you know how to bring them backto it.
Harv Nagra (34:18):
So in, in terms of kind of the scenarios I
described earlier, that's kindof a, a real example of how your
team could go in and startdebugging and understanding
needs and stuff like that andhelping them build the right
tech stack and do you supportwith training and, and that kind
of stuff as well?
Ryan Pearcy (34:34):
Yeah, it's all system dependent.
So, as you said, thousands ofsystems, we know quite a lot of
them out there.
But if we don't know it, I guesswe've built up a network of Very
experienced people that we canpull on to implement, train and
support on the systems thatbrought in.
And it's not always, I guess,independent consultants.
It could be the software vendorsthat have a really good team for
that, but wouldn't necessarilyunderstand the overarching
(34:58):
ultimate goal.
So they go, well, this is theway you need to set it out for
your business.
Great.
But actually you might need sometweaks in that that enable you
to do the next step in the nextsystem.
So we sit above.
All the various systems and workout how they should work
together and bring the businessand the software of vendors and
the consultants together to go,you need to adhere to this
(35:19):
overall strategy.
Harv Nagra (35:20):
Excellent.
So, Ryan, if somebody'slistening and thinking that I
could use that kind of supporthow do they find yourself and
start a discussion?
Ryan Pearcy (35:29):
So easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn.
Harv Nagra (35:32):
Okay.
Ryan Pearcy (35:32):
a very recognizable head as everyone says.
So, uh, so look for Ryan Pearcyon LinkedIn.
Add me and drop me a message.
Always happy to have a chat.
The website iswww.digital-transformers.co uk.
And yeah, we've got informationon there on how to reach out as
well.
Harv Nagra (35:46):
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for yourtime today.
Really appreciate you beinghere.
Ryan Pearcy (35:50):
It is been a pleasure.
Thank you.
All right.
What did you think?
I mean, if some of that felt alittle too close to home with
the situation in your agency,it's not meant to cause offense.
The point is to highlight thathow these workflows can hinder
the efficiency, accuracy, andvisibility in your agency and
end up being roadblocks in yourjourney to operational maturity.
(36:12):
I've been on the ground inagencies working in those ways,
so I know how tedious it can befor project managers as well as
finance and operations leaderswho are trying to understand how
the business is doing.
I do hope some of Ryan's advicethere at the end was helpful and
do reach out to him if you thinkyou want to change the way
you're working or bring in a newsystem, but recognize you could
(36:33):
get some support with thatprocess.
I'm trying a new thing here.
If you have any questions forRyan that you'd like me to pose
to him in a follow up, drop me anote at podcast@scoro.com.
That's it for me this week.
If you've enjoyed thisconversation and this podcast,
please share it with someonewho'd appreciate it.
Share your thoughts when you seeus discussing this episode on
(36:54):
LinkedIn.
And if you haven't already, signup for the handbook newsletter
at scoro.com/podcast.
Scroll down and you'll find thenewsletter sign up form.
We send out a newsletter withthe takeaways from each episode
every other week so you don'thave to scribble down notes and
you've got something toreference.
I'll be back with the nextepisode soon.
(37:14):
Thanks so much.
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