Successful transformation combines technology excellence with effective change management and user adoption.
Innovation must evolve with customer needs, delivering both immediate and long-term benefits throughout their digital transformation journey. In the final part of his conversation with ERP Today, Darryl Sackett, CEO of Codestone, explains how the company’s customer-centric approach to innovation is driving measurable business outcomes.
Evolving with customer needs
Elaborating on the importance of this aspect, Sackett adds that customers can have a different goal six months from now – and certainly within 24 months. Giving a practical example of innovation in action, Sackett describes how Codestone’s onboarding team leverages AI to create personalized guidance videos, streamlining the customer journey from day one. These innovations help the company engage and service customers across industries and various company sizes. According to Sackett, the type of work also varies, ranging from something as small as the latter stage of data analytics, which may be done in a few weeks, to big lifecycle projects like core ERP transformation, which could take about 18 months.
However, the company or the project’s size notwithstanding, Sackett says that Codestone focuses on not only implementation but also a culture change for the organization.
“Our ability to address and implement that adoption and change management piece makes Codestone different,” Sackett observes. “You may have all the tech in the world, but if the people don’t know how to use it or the best way to use it, nothing will change, and any change will be much slower than expected.”
Managed services are also key. “One of our major objectives is to create customer advocacy, and we do that through proactive monitoring, measuring customer feedback, and conducting many case studies with managed service customers.”
When it comes to platform choice, Sackett notes that Codestone’s approach is “typically agnostic.” However, he acknowledges there are clear use cases where a customer might be more invested in one platform than another. “You just have to go back to what they are trying to achieve, their requirements and their use cases, and then map that back to the solutions we have. We don’t force a customer down a certain path because we want what’s best for them.”
Innovation in Action
According to Sackett, whatever platform or ecosystem a customer chooses; AI and associated investments are moving the needle today.
Giving the example of an automotive manufacturer customer, Sackett says that Codestone’s real-time analytics offering ingests the latest news in real-time and then compares what is happening around the world to the orders the manufacturer has received from various countries in their ERP system. “For example, when the news shows that there’s disruption in a certain region, the manufacturer can easily reroute to a more reliable country or route. They can also opt to order more to hedge their risk from supply chain delays.”
Sackett adds, “This is real-time supply chain analytics that can only be done with AI engines behind it, irrespective of the ERP that the customer uses.”
However, Sackett believes that AI still needs one to three years to mature even though the advances in this space “are moving at light speed.”
Addressing emerging trends
Looking at the big picture, Sackett observes that the future is not only about keeping pace with what vendors are doing in their software stacks but also creating a diverse and unique niche for Codestone’s offerings. “Computing in the future will layer into running, creating and understanding a business without going into 16 spreadsheets,” Sackett says. “It could help us forecast the top three things from a revenue generation perspective over three months where we’re creating an upside; while managing the risks.”
While technology continues to evolve at light speed, Sackett emphasizes that success depends on three critical elements: modern technology infrastructure, clean and reliable data, and an intelligent AI layer to derive actionable insights. “It’s an entire stack modernization,” Sackett concludes, “which is why we’re building our business to cater to all those layers.”
