Scaling IT Services: The Productization Strategy That Works

0:00Hi, it's Ian Markram from IT Masterminds and today I've got Amundra. He's a CEO from Octane Solutions based in Sydney actually a TM1 organization that's progressing more and more into AI as well through the IBM suite of tools. Welcome to IT Mastermind Talks, your access to insights and experiences from thought leaders in the IT services industry and those that support the industry. Our podcast features not only the seasoned professionals charting their start to exit journey, but also the key contributors who help ensure their success. We delve into the diverse challenges encountered within the IT services realm, encompassing both professional hurdles and personal obstacles. Join us, be part of our growing community, and engage in the conversation. Hosted by Ian Markram of Loading Growth.

0:53Amenra, how are you? Thanks, Ian. I'm I'm I'm great. I'm Fantastic. Fantastic. Would you like to just give a quick overview of who you are? Just a couple of sentences and what your organization does. Amenra. Yeah. so I run Octane Solutions. I started Octane and run Octane Solutions. So we we provide FPNA and AI solutions to the office of finance.

1:20Yeah. and we mainly specialize in IBM suite of products and we are IBM gold partner. Great. Great. Fantastic. Fantastic. Now we're going to get more into those services and what makes your company awesome and you know bit of talk a bit about case studies later on but what we normally do in this show is just talk a bit about the journey that people go through to become you know a business owner of an IT services firm or a software firm. So, I'm going to start off and we always start off with the background right at the beginning of, you know, what were you like at at high school? Amenra, what were you like as a student?

1:56[clears throat] I probably was not the best of the students, but I was always very curious. I'm actually born in Fiji, so my my high school was was in Fiji and and that that's where I've been brought and born and brought up u and and then moved to Australia in 1999. Brilliant. Brilliant. Now, when everyone thinks Fiji, they think beaches and they think palm palm trees and turtles and everything else that's amazing on those islands. Were you on the mainland or you're on the island?

2:27Yeah. Yeah. Now, we on on the mainland from from Nandi, which which is where the the main tourist hub is. Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. It's still a beautiful place. And I see that they Fiji Airlines are trying to push more and more through to the US as a stopping stop gate to the US. So hopefully that takes off for tourism there as well and bringing American tourisms back into Fiji. So be great. Now at school what were your favorite subjects? Did you do sport? Because a lot of a lot of people in in Fiji obviously love rugby league and rugby union. did you follow any sport? Did you play any sport?

3:06Yeah. what what you'll find common with the people from Fiji is is their love for sport. So we grown up playing both bit of rugby touch rugby and and soccer but we we've dabbled in just about everything. So from volleyball to to tennis and and just about everything we could get our hands on. Fantastic. Fantastic. Great. All right. So you studied there. Did you go did you go to university somewhere or how did you

3:32Yeah. Yeah. So I've I've I've had did my university in Fiji as well and and did some postgraduate here in Australia. Fantastic. So what type of universities are there in in Fiji? Yeah. Now we we've got a pretty good university. it's called University of the South Pacific. So it it does cater for for not just Fiji but all all of South Pacific. So we it was a great melting pot of not just having students from Fiji but from all across the South Pacific in that. It was quite

4:03That is that is something something I didn't even know about. So, this is why I love doing these talks with my clients because I never ask them these questions. Never get the the time. I'm always just trying to solve problems when I'm coaching. So, and you got family obviously back in in Yes. not not that many, but I I still So, you did mention Fiji Airways. So, we actually proud to have them on as a client for the last seven years. So, because of that reason as well, I do end up making fairly regular trips back back home, I would say.

4:38And I do have quite a few friends and family still in Fiji. Fantastic. So, you're using quicker to fly to Fiji than to meet our clients in Perth. Yeah, 100% 100%. You know, Perth is is a long I've got clients in Perth and I I jokingly say to them every now and then, it's like going to the moon. it's quite difficult to get there. So, that is awesome. So you're using one of your clients. There is a reason writing off of tax which is good to go to go back and visit your f family and friends and enjoy yourself there. Well that's pretty awesome. So you moved over to Australia and you did a postgrad or something. Did that affect? Is that what happened?

5:15Yes. Yes. I've I've started so when when I moved to Australia I I was working as accountant and and did my postgrad as well at the same time. Yeah. And what I found is while working as accountant here and I moved here at a great time. So the Sydney Olympics was on in 2000 GST was just being introduced and and there was so much work for for accountants. So we we probably landed here at a very great time and the the excitement level and and being in Sydney in those years was was really really exciting. So while working as an accountant I found myself gravitating towards more and more system side of things. So implementing systems ERPs and all that and eventually more and more on I got more and more excited and and juiced up by by the FPNA side and more importantly the TMON side of

6:06Fantastic. So you what was your first job in in in Australia? I worked for a company at that time it was called Pioneer but it's called Hansen now. So it was a concrete company. It was a fair fairly large and it was just starting to go through a SAP transformation when I joined. So it was very exciting few years there and I've still got friends from there.

6:31Fantastic. Fantastic. So you worked at Hansen which is I know it fairly well. It's it's a global brand as well I think. so so that's great. and then you learned a bit about you know integration with I suppose SAP at that stage in planning and and forecasting which I suppose led you into into the TM1 world more and more. so from there where did you go from there? after that I moved to few few different smaller organizations and and and did quite a few different things within the office of finance or financial accounting management

7:05And then eventually ended up at one of the subsidies of Canon it was called CISA at that point so part of Canon and that's where I got my hands on TM1 and and actually fell in love with the product. Yeah, it's a really good product because we used to compete with it. So when I ran my consultancy firm back in the day, we were an SAP shop and we used to compete all the time with TM1

7:34And I just could remember the the moment that TM1 had that inmemory Excel functionality came out and it just blew everything out the water basically and as we know office of finance, CFO, office of CFO all love Excel and to this day I suppose so. Mhm. So, you know, what a great way to put all this memory inmemory calculations and everything else and workflows into a product that everyone knows and trusts already, which is Excel. So, what a great you picked the right horse there. I think when IBM brought TM1, I think it's one of the better buyers that they've actually done. I think they have bought some duds over the past like most software big companies, but I think TM1 was definitely the one. So how is TM1 going at the moment as a product? Amandra.

8:24Yes. so it it is it is quite interesting time. So since IBM has has taken over TM1 you've seen a lot of investment come through. So while the engine the the core part of TM1 remains the Excel integration and and and the other side of the things the performance remains the the investment from IBM has meant that it it's now become a full-fledged modern platform for FPNA. so you can for example get it from on on the cloud on the AWS cloud on IBM cloud or still on prem. it's been infused with with very very good dashboarding application. It's now been infused with AI forecasting and and and a lot of engine work has come come in as well. So now it's become a quite a modern tool application that that sits in in the FPNA tech quite well and and performs really well. So when you walk down the streets of George Street in Sydney and you look both sides of the of the street, you can just point out to all all the organizations that that are using the the application now.

9:29Yeah. Great. Great. So it's obviously still growing and it's still really relevant into this in today's environment as well. So let's just quickly go back into the journey. How did you why did you start your own organization? How did you get into starting you know Octane Yeah. So few few things. So one one of the things is is probably sometimes you just have it in the in in the blood that you you will set out and do something of your own. So it it could have I would have been running my own business. it just happened to be I I I get to do something I love now. the how the journey started is as I gravitated more and more towards TM1, I ended up getting more and more deeply involved. So I used to run the Sydney user group and get more involved with the community side of things.

10:18Great. And eventually I got tapped on the shoulder and was asked to join McQuary group to to lead their TM on site and I I sort of joined as employee number one as I call it for for TM1 into McQuary and they had aspiration or a wish list of we've got a tool we need to bring it out of finance and put get it embedded into it and then deploy it in a in a professional way.

10:47Nice. and I I thought this is this is a role that that's actually suited me to the tea at that point in time and took up that role and I thought I'll I'll do it for a couple of years and then start on my own. I ended up staying in McQuary for 8 years because it was such an exciting journey. So we we took TM1. So the first part of the journey was building a team around. So building a team here in Sydney, in India as our offshore team and in Manila for support and and then that was part A and part B of we were part B of the journey was to go and and sell the benefits of TMON across McQuary and and try and get the uptake of TMON high. So we started with probably I think 20 users is when we started.

11:36Yeah. when I resigned we had around 780 users and application was used by finance globally for all their forecasting for all their allocations for group treasury for HR all kinds of things. So it was very very exciting journey there in in being able to deploy. So and those are the experiences that I'm using now in Octane.

12:01Fantastic. Fantastic. So for those people that don't know, McCquori is a big investment bank. It's actually also a retail bank now as well in Australia, but it's a global investment bank and, it does fairly well normally. So it's good, stock tip if you ever want to invest some stock money into stocks. Mccuri is a good, a good buy normally. so were you actually also you said you were going across divisions there to get the 780 roll out people, which is a lot. Did you actually build anything for the investment? You know, you know, when they went out and they did an M&A activity on an asset, for example, would you go together as a team and work out quite quickly if the assets worth it or not using TM1? Would you do that for

12:47Yes, there there's obviously limits to what I can speak about. especially now McQuary is one of our larger clients as well. Okay. So, so the good thing is the journey has continued me without being inside of McQuary. Okay. So, you don't have to answer any of those type of questions if you don't need to. But it would be exciting. It would be exciting. So, I did some planning and forecasting for a PE type company as well. And it was so amazing because it was just better than doing budget and forecasting.

13:18It was when they acquired an asset or acquired something, they would actually do the due diligence with the planning team and it was quite quite exciting. So I'm sure you've been involved in something like that and you would have loved that cuz that's it's it's unique and it's different. so bit of time pressure. Well, it's great that you got Mccuri as a client. so let's just talk about when you left and resigned McCquory did you go straight there and start Octane Solutions or did you have another couple of engagements?

13:47No no so you once I resigned so you obviously have a bit of a standown period so I couldn't couldn't do work for McQuary for for 6 months I think but that that was not not the core part of the plan to on board McQuary as a client. what what the the motivation for setting up Octane and and the planning around that was we could see and and looking at the McQuary scale what we were doing we were using all all our local vendors and the global vendors that we had in this space in the TMON

14:21And one of the things I quickly realized is that there was a bit bit of a gap in the market as to what the client me as a client wanted from the vendors and what was being offered by the vendors. that was a and b the other thing which we quickly realized that it was very the the cost was very high if you needed to scale up applications such as TM1 or any other similar tool at the scale that we were trying to do. the the the rate of consulting and things like that. There was a very sort of a mishmash of onshore offshore delivery and things like that. you normally had to work with different partners for onshore, different for offshore and things like that. And and what I clearly saw was a gap in the market that if I could deliver the quality of work that we're doing in McQuary to to other clients

15:13Yeah. in in a way that was sustainable on the costing side as well, leveraging the onshore offshore without diminishing the quality. They could be a gap and and that was a and then the B part was we we had to deise a a sort of a solution or a product that fitted with what the client wanted and not what suited the the consulting company. So around the utilization and things like that and and charging for what we use in more fractional charging. So that was the key motivation and probably took couple of months after stepping out of McGuire to deise the products and and finetune what we're going to go to the market with and and that's what we did. actually Optus was my first client that we signed up.

16:04Big client big client brand. It's good. Fantastic. So, just talk us through how how did you did you just go there, pitch? Do you know people there? How did you actually get your first client? Because everyone always asks me, Ian, you know, I want to start, you know, an IT services firm or a software company, whatever it is. And I say, it all starts with clients. What do you mean? I said, like, if you don't have a client, you do not have a business. So you obviously got Optus which is amazing brand which is a telco company if anyone doesn't know that and it's owned by Singtel in Singapore as well. So, how did you get your first client there? I mean,

16:41As as with most things, Ian, it's it's a mixture of being in the right place at the right time, a bit of luck and and and a bit of being a bit naive and not knowing all all the things when you're starting out and and just going in and pitching everywhere and doing trying to do everything on on in in the early days and and that's how we got it is

17:03That we happen to be at the right time with the right price with the right right skill set. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, people say that there's a little bit of luck. There's never luck. I'm telling you now, it's you probably didn't know exactly what you're doing, I would say, at that stage, but you actually, you know, had a a niche, a specialtity, you had resources, you had a way to solve a problem. And that's what people buy. You know, people buy from people that can solve problems. And the bigger the problem you have,

17:32The more they'll pay for it. That's what I always say as well, you know. So, congratulations on getting that first client. How long did it take to go to get your first client? Was it quite it didn't look easy at that stage. It was probably it took 6 months to to get the first client and and then and then the word spreads and and you the market understands what you bring to the table.

17:57And and then you go off from there and the flywheel starts and and I I probably agree with you a lot that the client is is the engine room. So no matter who we are internally and what we bring to the table, without clients, without having an audience that actually pays for it, it it's all pointless. definitely. Definitely is. So you've got a bit of a business model in your mind through the journey had at McCori, which is an awesome, you know, exercise to go through. You had the onshore, offshore, you had a bit of a global brand awareness, how different vendors work together. You you sort of had that as an idea. you probably didn't map it out as such but you actually took that model and you've sort of worked on that model and that's what your business does at the moment. so congratulations on that. A lot of people try and work on what is the business model especially now with AI and onshore offshore and where does AI fit in and is that going to be as part of a consultant going to a client you know you as a consultant and some AI I suppose is the way it's all happening now. you talked a bit about products that you build up products. So what we're really passionate about at loading growth around the coaching is you take the services you productize them and then you take those to market. It's a lot easier to take products to market like that and you can box them and you can put time or a cost around that box and people can associate as in what they're going to buy and what they're going to get delivered which is a really

19:29Good strong thing to have if you want to sell a packaged offering or package services. Is that what you guys are doing at the moment? Yes. Yes. And and it's gone through many iterations. So that that's a a very great point you make is to is to it's not easy to productionize service especially in a niche area because where the skill set is is is key and sometimes people chase different consultants and and so forth

19:56But what we managed to do and and it's only probably not on day one but probably few years in postcoid or while we are sitting around twiddling thumbs during covid is we came up with an idea around it's we call it obtain blue where you buy from us Octane Blue which is around 40 hours of service and that service has got no limits and we don't even specify whether it's onshore offshore is it a architect support guy training whatever it is you can buy Octane blue for a fixed price and and what we've also done is we put all our pricing on on the website as well so there there's no mystery around variable pricing for different clients and things like that. So that we're not competing on the price is what the message we're sending to the market is we've got a fixed price of offering of what we do.

20:48We we are delivering on on the quality and and sort of on the back of the skills that we bring in. So what we've done is we we we reached out to our existing client set and and talked to them and most of them took up the Octane sort of package and it's also a fractional support package as well. So for example, most clients are at a scale, they're not at the McQuary scale where they require a team of people. They require a a consultant on a ad hoc basis as and when they require. So if they sign up with the Octane Blue package, they've got 40 hours to use and draw down. They could use the package to do mini projects. They could do the package to do enhancement. They could use it to do support. Whatever they need, they could use it to do training. Doesn't matter to us. We've got a large set of teams. So we've got about 50 consultants, close to 50 consultants now. And they're set up in a way we call it the flight center model where we've got a small cell of team where it's got a architect, couple of developers and few support staff that look after a a sort of a portfolio of clients and they are empowered to look after the clients whichever way they see fit. So what happens is if you buy obtain glue you can raise a ticket and we pretty much operate because we we we've got 20 global clients we operate on almost

22:07So you could raise a ticket in any at any time all the we provide the ticketing system if you don't have one as well and you could pro send a ticket to us and be be comfortable knowing that somebody's picking that up within the next hour and solving your issue very very quickly. And all our clients absolutely love it. And and some people buy two two Octane blues a month, some buy one Octane Blue every 6 months. And there's the other thing what we did is we've we've we take the approach of being frictionless. So when you operate or work with us, we try and remove all the friction. So any anything around contracts and things and things that usually frustrate the clients around working with vendors of of like us, we've removed all of that. So you don't you don't need to sign a 12- month contract or any kind of contract. You can buy whenever you want and and and use it and off you go. So things like that. So we don't bind you into

23:06For sure. We believe that what we bring to the table is so compelling and so easy to We don't need you buy you. we need to we don't need to bind you via contract. It's so compelling. You'll just keep buying it. And that's what's happening. Fantastic. You know, I'm a big believer in frictionless. You've got to make sure that the client knows what they're getting, very transparent whenever offer and anyone's out there listening to this. Any offer that you have is got to be so easy to understand and absorb. And then the price point has got to be, you know, it's got to be a no-brainer to actually get to use that service. once they incorporate that service into their process internally, it sort of sticks and it can you can never get rid of it.

23:51So you've obviously been doing that really really well. congratulations on that. I think it's it's it's a good way. I know that you do training as well. So it's not just the support side of TM1, you do training. Do you can you just talk a bit about the training because I believe a lot of times you know there's a lot of turnover at these big companies that you support. So there's got to be a lot of training ongoing training. So that the education of that product stays high and then therefore it also doesn't mean that you get a lot of low-level tickets coming through as well to support the planning solution. So can you just talk a bit about that?

24:25Yes the the the basic motivation came from so when we were at McQuary when we looking we're very and and it's a very databased company as well. So one of the things we used to do is every month and look at the tickets and go why is someone raising a ticket and and eventually it boils down to a couple of reasons. So one either the tool is not fit for papers. So somebody's raising a ticket to do something to make it a bit more fit for

24:51Or the user doesn't know really know how to use it. The functionality exists but the still raising a ticket because they don't know how to raise it. All the other things are IT stuff. So data not loading and all that. we should pick that up before the user knows and and fix that. That's the approach we take. So the training how the training comes about is what we found that if if we have a trained up community of users the number of tickets goes down the number of issues that come up.

25:21It's it's sort of a contradictory thing from me as a vendor saying I'm doing something which is reducing the consumption of my services. However, what we also see is that as the skill set of the users increase, they understand via training the tool set much more better and they start coming up with more and more work for us which is higher value and higher quality.

25:44Great. Great. And it also excites our consultants. So we like we always say the customer come second, our consultants come first. So that is something that our consultants love as well is doing newer things. No, nobody wants to sit there and just do support tickets. For sure. Brilliant. You know, it's interesting because I had this I had a call late yesterday afternoon from a company in the US and they were talking about how they can see in the market that a lot of companies don't really want to fix the underlying route so that they can keep the support tickets high and justify their expense every month. It's quite crazy, isn't it? when when and and I think a lot of big companies out there don't really understand. They just go, "Oh, we've got a lot of support tickets. Therefore, we need a company to bring them down." And they really never get down. And if they do get down, then generally what happens is they go, "Why why are we paying for the service and get rid of that company that's providing it?" So,

26:42It's quite it's quite a a difficult thing to keep in balance. But it's it's a bit you know it's a bit of I don't think people I don't think end user companies understand that you know and but really important because in your situation you're doing the more value work at the top because people are beginning becoming more creative around solutions for planning and what the tools can do and as we know that's where the big problem solving happens and that's why you get paid the big bucks.

27:13So well done on that. I think training is something that a lot of people don't do well enough. and and I think yeah, keep on keep on doing that. That's what I would say. Now, just to keep on moving on, I've looked at your at your website and you know, obviously I know you guys because you're part of our community and everything else and you've got some amazing logos on on your on your on your company website and there are probably just a few that you've just stuck up there because like everyone else

27:42They never really update the website that often in services world. can you just give us you know some of the examples of recent times? You might not have to mention any companies but you know how are you actually working let's say for example a tech company I see a tech logo there which I've also invested in on on the share market that tech company up there how are you doing a planning solution for them for example versus something that is could be a retailer are are they very similar solutions can you talk to the audience about what you're doing in those environments

28:18Yes no I I I'm I feel blessed every day looking at some of the clients and some of the exciting stuff that we do for different clients. So we we some I mean the logos are there but so we've worked with some of the largest banks in the world. We've worked with some of the largest retailers in the world manufacturers and and and the tech companies as as you say and the the forecasting budgeting however is different for each one of our clients and each one of the sectors. there are some similarities within the same industry. So sometimes like we we we tend to be quite strong in the financial sector because of our experience in the banks and and the compliance side of things within the banks having but we've got all kinds of clients. So we've got small manufacturers, small retailers that that are not u well-known brands at the moment. Y

29:11And from even for them the planning application that we we deliver is is topnot. So couple of things that we so we quite passionate about the planning function and how budgeting forecasting works and how it fits into the bigger picture and around the reporting and things like that. So what we'd like to believe is we bring a lot of expertise lend from all those different client sets and and infuse that into any application that we do which means that for for small organization we are able to whip out in 6 to 8 weeks we go live for for them. So it helps what our learning is from those bigger brands that we've got like probably talking about wise tech

29:54And and bringing them bringing the learnings from them. The difference that we see with the the the top end of town our clients that are at the bigger side of the things the problems are pretty much same but at at a different scale where the the consultation the volume of the data and and and the change required is is is is huge. So how we measure it so for example especially for the large organization one of the first questions we ask is as we start deling into this is how quickly are you able to change? So once you're doing for example if you're doing rolling forecast how quickly are you able to integrate a change downstream or or a change in scenario how quickly does it take you to get it filtered down to your main reporting is it taking couple of days couple of hours or is it almost instant so our target is always to have instant changes but it's not always practical in large organization so yeah I mean we we can probably talk in depth around that that sort of the intricacies of of the planning process in different organizations.

30:59Yeah, the planning it's it's amazing. I started doing planning when was it on a solution called BLunt. I don't know if you remember Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. I did that I did that for a big company in UK when I was in the UK. before I even got into my SAP days and I came up with a budget and forecasting solution for a company that had 32 legal entities around the world.

31:25And there was no structure, there was no solution that could actually do that at the time. So I built something and I built it out of some highlevel planning books in those days. There weren't much around and the concept and I'm not accountant like you. So, I'm more of a systems guy. I didn't have the accounting background, but I had this planning process in my mind that I wrote up on this board and I and I wrote the software for about a year and I rolled it out and everyone couldn't believe how good it was. And they they then made me the head of planning and forecasting for this company as a global company. And I was reporting into the the group CFO in Italy and I was in the UK

32:15And I was like the this lady's right-hand man and basically I just ran this whole thing this process over and over again. I couldn't believe it. And just because you know knowledge is power and I had all this knowledge and they could ask me any question I could and no one could ask the question answer it but I could

32:35So it's like it was quite amazing but yeah so that's how I got into analytics actually as well so the planning side but one of the things that always amazed me around planning is a large organizations was they would do the planning cycle once or twice and then they just got too too ex exhausted you know through this process, you know, up top up and bottom down and this got too much effort into it so that they and the system wasn't there to support the process and they couldn't do it quick enough. and I suppose that still is part part of the problem today. Is that

33:11Yeah. Yeah, that that is correct. well, one of the things that really highlighted this problem was COVID. When COVID happened, just about every organization had to reject their forecast on a fairly regular basis. most of our clients were running multiple scenarios as to what's going to happen, what potentially is going to happen, what shops, all that kind of thing. And what what that highlighted is that you you needed to have a robust planning application that's able to be agile in those scenarios. Obviously, that's an extreme situation, but on a day-to-day basis, so from where we sit, we see all kinds of things. I'm glad to say that all our clients are probably not in that situation anymore because now that they've been touched by magic. So, they their planning process is not not a nightmare anymore. But what we do see is a lot of organizations still doing it on Excel and in in and and that is as as they grow and as the as the situation scenario requirements keep on changing it is harder and harder to keep up in Excel. We recently did a sort of a CFO magazine webinar with one of our clients Rena and and that's one of the cases we talked about with with the CFO from Rena as to how their planning process and they were using another tool at the time

34:36Was so disjointed that the it was not only affecting the the data side of things and and collection and collection of the data for the planning but also a big hit and rain on the morale of the team because every cycle So planning meant long hours and frustrations and conflicts and fights and and trying to update all of that. But once you take that away, so number one, you find a lot of time and energy back into the teams. So that's something that we probably don't measure enough

35:06Apart from the time savings and and the insights and all that. So that that was a very interesting discussion that we had with the CFO there on on the benefits of having a really really good planning tool. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. So you you mentioned webinars. I know you guys do a lot of webinars every year. You probably do what's it up to five to eight webinars a year because you really are educating, you know, potential customers and existing customers. Is is that still the case? Are you doing those many

35:33Yes. I personally do about five to eight per year and and the rest of my team combined, we we probably do about two to three webinars a month at the moment. wow. one one of the things that has happened over the years is we we are based here in Sydney so headquartered in Sydney but we've also got a a big base in India and recently we've also got IBM partnership for New Zealand and and the South Pacific that includes Papaini and Fiji where we've got more clients as well.

36:07So what it means is we use the India base as well to save the Middle East market. so we we operate in in number of countries and we've got a center of excellence in different places. So our our senior people are constantly out there educating the market on couple of things. One is the the AI side which we haven't even spoken about. So how how we educating the market on the AI side in AI and finance but also on our core business which is the TM on the budgeting planning side of things as to the improvements that are coming in on a such a regular basis the infusion of not just the tool set but also in the in the how you should be budgeting and forecasting. So those are the things that we constantly talk about to to our

36:54Brilliant. and you guys, you know, I've seen some of the webinars. You're really passionate about your your your specialtity and and solving those big problems for companies and that's that's still a big problem. So, awesome. Keep up those webinars. I think it's it's very powerful to do that. quick question now, what made you you know like I've I had a team in India myself and Hyderabad back in 2012. I've got a team in Philippines at the moment about 30 staff that do something totally different. do marketing for IT services and software companies. and I've got obviously clients have got teams all over the place as well around the globe. It isn't easy to open a a company in offshore land as I call it. can you talk a bit about the experiences that you've had opening in India and whereabouts and how long it's taken you to establish that?

37:45How much time do we have? It's a lot. It's a lot of effort. in doing business in India is is is a different ball game. give us some examples because I think it's important for people just cuz I know a lot of my clients even now Amundra always ask you know we got to we got to get a blend of an offshore rate to bring the the onore rate down make sure that ra cards you know realistic for our clients so I say to him well look you got to be really really careful and I've got a metric internally that we when we coach you got to have about eight to 10 people offshore before I would say pull the trigger and open your own branch you know because the overhead head and the cost of actually running that isn't really worthwhile unless you get to 8 to 10 people. But let's just quickly talk a bit about your your experiences.

38:31Yes. yeah, you you correct. You you need to you need to have a bit of scale to be able to do that. So we've got 40 plus staff now and that makes it quite sort of easier for for for us as as we're chasing scale. so coming coming back to the original question as to how and and what so number one I I think that is a very very very good competitive advantage for us is because it's it's our own people. So when when from day dot one of the business models that when I started Octane was going to be that we are going to have a on show offshore model. Y

39:11And because I had been working with our Indian team during my Mcquary days and and quite a few of them are senior members of Octane now. so I had a very to begin with I had quite a bit of familiarity with the market. it still took a bit of time to set up the entity. The the bureaucratic side of India is quite difficult to to navigate. So it's it's you you need to have very very thick skin if if you are going to get into that side of things. But

39:46But now that we we we we are fairly well established in India and not just the India offices we've got four offices now in India and it's not just established to save us our Australian market. We we are a IBM partner, gold partner in India itself and India for us is is one of the fastest growing market especially on the AI side.

40:09So don't treat India as as a offshore office. It it is our core part of the business and the clients in India are core part of the business now. So but that was not the case on on on the early days. It was set up as a as a offshore center and and we we eventually built it up to to what it is today as as we go.

40:30Yeah. The Indian market has been growing rapidly. I mean if you can see the all the you know on the finance news and everything else how it is growing. It's one of the fastest growing economies in the world. it's going to be internalized. When what I mean by that is it's got enough drive itself to sustain its own economy at some stage rather than shipping people offshore to do work. So I think that's brilliant. great. So you set the set the first vision of that offshore was to support local onshore but as it as that entity gets more mature and the environment there has allowed you to go direct to clients in India that's actually given you revenue and it gives them also gives them the opportunity to be consultants directly rather than being treated as offshore people which is a bit different isn't it?

41:15So that that is actually pretty nice. So good to hear that. Now I know I know you are going through you know you are getting clients now you're trying to target Middle East have you got any clients yet from the US because I would say the next evolution for you guys would be either Europe or the US with your growth in your markets but you know the the the where the Australian dollar and the strength of the US dollar it's so affordable now to get clients from the US and deliver them from partially onshore here and offshore in India. So what are your thoughts around that? Are they in play?

41:55Yeah. No, I mean that that's obviously on on on the cards and and we we doing active work. We we've got few clients because I talked about Octane Blue which is support packets. So anyone from globally so we've got clients in UK US organically. So it's not something that we went out and chased and got it but inbound clients that that we sign up from there. US is is a a quite a different market. So it does require a bit of focus and and and the way you deal with the clients and within US you can't treat it as one big market. It it is

42:35Within the different parts of US. So we we have been probably been to US three times this year already. So it is on on the cards but early days at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Do you go to some events when you're there? It's so we we we've got two big IBM conferences every year. So, Sync and Tech Exchange that typically we take use cases and clients from here and do presentations and and this year was also quite special for us because we won an award and which was presented to us at the Sync conference in Boston

43:10On on the AI AI delivery that that we've done. Congratulations. I saw that award. So that's fantastic. And then we're going to get get on to innovation AI stuff soon. I'm holding that back, you know, because I know that's it's it's a big area for you guys as well. so just quickly go back how do you how do you actually deliver how do you keep the delivery onshore offshore tight you know for a client because a lot of companies I coach Amandra you know this because you've been through this a while now is you know they're onshore offshore they have this sort of batton they're trying to hand over it slips between the gaps who owns this who owns that have you got any sort of magic or any process that you guys follow there at Octane Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We that that is our secret source actually and and that is the the number one reason.

44:01Tell us tell us tell us what the secret sources. Yeah. so the the the first thing around that is is we probably I've mentioned it before is we genuinely look at our staff as our first priority. Our clients are our second priority. we my job and our leadership team's job is to ensure that our consultants and our staff from all all sides are are extremely happy and and engaged in what they do.

44:34That's our first and then once we do that they will look after the client. So using that philosophy what tends to happen is we do quite a few things differently. So for example when we talk about that we've got number of large clients here. So for example, recently we doing a big rebuild of all the cubes for one one of our clients is new

44:55So we we actually going through and upgraded them to the cloud and and modernized their u they've been using tmon since 1998. Some of the cues are still that old. So what we've done is we we totally rebuild it into a new new platform on the cloud and things like that. M so when we're doing things like that what we also tend to do is the consultants who are working on that and they're working on on those kinds of things on on a fairly long term is we would actually fly them over here and and sit with the clients at at different parts of the project especially at the beginning at the end of the project. So what it means is our consultants get to travel quite a bit. They get to travel to all all the different clients. It helps us recruit the best of the best. So we'd like to believe that our consultants are the cream of the crop in in the place that we operate in

45:46And that helps us attract the cream. The second thing that happens is that the client's engagement with us and our consultants is is at a at a level. So it's no longer the concept of somebody sitting offshore and we don't know it's a faceless. It it is it is someone that you know that we're dealing with and and things like that. So the relationship that we build between the clients and our consultants is is is at a much deeper level. The other thing that happens is that our consultants when they come here and sit with the clients, they understand the business much better. they understand the the the scenarios and and and the pressures that the the clients are facing on a day-to-day basis and and that allows them to when they go back and go into the solution mode is to come up with a solution that that is actually quite appropriate and relevant for the client.

46:36Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. I like that. Very nice. Very nice. Now just want to go back to the journey of of you know Octane and everything else but you know it's never ever as a business owner you know it goes up and down this this journey that we on this this ride it's like a roller coaster as a business owner and can you just tell us some of your biggest challenges you faced early on at Octane Solutions? Yes, I mean there's always challenges even when you are we work in an industry where some people call it feast and famine. I I probably don't look at it this way but what tends to happen is a few things we tend to focus on. One is is our we we've got a very very deep and and a high level focus on our marketing and our sales that side of the engine.

47:28And then we've got equal amount of focus and spotlight on the delivery side of thing. And if any one of them engines is is working better than the other, then what happens is you've got more clients than you can handle or you've got more people than you've got clients. And you our job is always to find that balance. So that that's probably the biggest challenge is because there there are times where we we are totally run off our feet with with number of clients and quiries and things that come from from either organically or from our marketing and and then to keep matching it up. So we we we like to believe that the model the we call it the flight center model is having the smaller cells of teams doing delivery for different clients and things like that. It it allows us to have a scalable model but still it it needs a lot of work to keep keep it keep it chaining. So that that's probably the biggest challenge. The the other challenge for for a organization our size always is is we we have to throttle our our aspiration and our growth plans because of the funding. So we we are self-funded and and have been sort of been very careful not not to get any outside influence. I have come from Mcquary so I can do understand the outside influence the the the funding can can bring and we it allowed us to sort of grow and go into our areas and markets there where we wanted and not forced into it. So those those are probably the two big challenges is maintaining the balance between the sales and and the delivery and and the

49:01Funding side of it is to how to manage the growth. That's great. Great. Because one of the things is, you know, about scaling your business is it just costs money. There's it's a people's business. People don't really understand services. And, you know, you might have a staff member starting on the 1st of December, but you're only going to get paid, you know, 56 or 65 days later on average. You know what I mean? So, where who's funding that gap? Well, to you, the business owner.

49:27So, that retained earnings gets bigger and bigger as you go on. It's like it's gets bigger. It's like I want that, I want that, but you can't. and you would know that being a finance person. So, it's important. So, you just mentioned there also you covered about how do you attract and retain customers. I think it's really important. and I think it's it's important that a lot of people remember that if you attract customers and you get customers and you do the work is how do you actually retain them long term

49:59And and you your solution by buying those time slots basically allows them to be sort of like a managed services environment. Is that right? That service Yes. it it it is designed to have a a a sort of a consistent revenue from from the clients instead of the big dips that that we normally see in this

50:20So that that helps with that. Yeah. Okay. Now we are slowly getting on to the big question there. We we know what's happening and I know that you put a lot of time and effort into it is Aentic AI and all the things AI with IBM. Let's unravel that a bit because first of all I don't know really what's happening with IBM. I don't follow that it that much. Can you just tell us about IBM and their AI play at a high level so the audience could hear what's happening out there.

50:50All right. The I I think the good thing is that IBM traditionally has been very very good with AI. So it's been doing AI for 65 years or so. So it's it's not something that they've jumped on the bandwagon now. So what we find is that the IBM products especially branded under the Watson umbrella is is is the depth of of the products and the depth of what we what we able to offer to the clients is is is quite deep. So it's not something bolted on like a GPT type of thing. It is a true genuine AI for the enterprise. So that that's I think has given us a good grounding. So when you go and talk especially to the enterprise clients so things that are already considered are like for example the scalability the governance these are the things that are very important in a larger organization in introducing AI in so for example AI in finance is even more difficult because u you need to ensure that you you can't simply point to different data sources and have a chatbot sitting on top of it because you need to understand how the security works. So somebody sitting cannot ask what's the salary of the CFO and be able to get that information. So how do we ensure that the governance around those things also the models the AI actual the the large language model or the small language models that we're using how is it being learning what what data is it learning on and and is it being shared outside as well and things like that so all those

52:22Consideration need to come in and IBM is very very strong and we use a protocol what's an orchestrate which is the agentic AI side of things so it's able to connect not just the agents within the IBM sort of family but also you a modern organization you expect to have multi- aent scenario you'll have Salesforce agent we'll have a SAP agent you'll have pre pre-built agent so orchestrate is something that's not able to do all the things that we talk about within the AI frame but it's also able to integrate and orchestrate all the other agents that you have in the organization and be able to actually help help with having a governed AI in

53:04Great. So, that's really important because you know, you're going to have lots of these software products out there as you mentioned, you know, Salesforce, SAP, Service Now. I mean, all these big companies will have their agents on the loose, okay, running around the these organizations, who's going to maintain and and organize those agents, you know? so, does this is this what this does? This framework, the structure?

53:30Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That plus it on its own does what you are able to do is all all the other functionality that you'd expect from a identic like we build reports and and do all kinds of analysis insights and and things like that. Yeah. because I can imagine you're grabbing data from different software, you're dragging out information, the agents doing that on a daily basis or whatever it is and it's, you know, it's just cutting loose and who knows what's changing and those underlying environments with data

54:02It's going to be a whole raft of new services coming out there for that. Is that what is keeping you up at night and excited? Yes, that that is that is probably the most exciting side of of the business that we see. U the growth is is

54:22Is huge. they'll there'll be there'll be such a need for organizations like us to be able to integrate the agents being able to implement and being able to manage the different agents there's going to be huge huge amount of I would say. So, and you're in the office of finance CFO,

54:42So you're talking to the right people as well. So, that's a really good advantage. You got a IBM as a gold partner already. You've got a team offshore to help with the blended rates. It's going to be beautiful. now, quick one around the AI. you know, there's all you know the Gartner quadrants and you see the the hype phase that we all know quite well now for the last 15 20 years. and we're in the hype phase at the moment for AI. A lot of our clients as you know in the our community are doing AI. some in the US are getting some more success but it's quite difficult

55:17To to get the AI projects off the ground number one and then actually implement it because it's a lot to do with processes and people and we know with processes and people it's hard work. So, have you had sort of any user case examples or success stories or case studies that you could sort of share at the moment that's happening with your organization and clients out there around the Agentic AI stuff?

55:42Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. I I I and I think yes the the reason for the hype is is the lack of understanding especially at the enterprise level. I mean this is a technology which is got a very very good grounding in the consumer level. So everyone on on a personal level knows AI knows how to use it but when you translate that at a enterprise level it it's not the same it's quite different and difficult because it's not just a chiept there you ask a question gives you an answer and off you go now has got the capability to to do a lot more so some of the use cases I'll probably rattle out one is there's a scenario where a certain report a weekly report being sent to the head office offshore being generated using data from about five different systems. Downloading the this is the current process that they used to do before putting AI in is download the data do the mapping do the exceptions of of the mapping make some sense of the data put it into another Excel spreadsheet consolidate it and then have a set templated PowerPoint that it used to put it put into and then somebody would go in and update the commentary based on what they see on the data and all the underlying data. That process used to take a team of about eight people a couple of days every week and then do the weekly report that we we've been able to get AI on top of it and be able to do all of that process generate the report the commentary and and the management commented that the commentary was far better and and and sort of more logical than what the humans were put humans would go in and

57:15Copy paste from last month and change few things. We find the easiest way to do things and rightly so. But Agentic AI was able to go into the underlying data, understand the trends a lot more and be able to sort of consume a huge amount of data and sort of distill it down to a Can you give us a bit of about some of the use cases that you currently have around Agentic AI that you've currently seen out in the workspace? Yeah, there there's a there's a huge amount of sort of agentic AI interest in especially in the enterprise space and some of the use cases that we've delivered is around the report automation. So one of the examples was that we we had a report a sales report submitted into the head office on a weekly basis and and the generation of that report required collation of data from five different systems including some downloads from emails and and PDFs mapping finding out the exceptions collating the data and in putting it into a a set format that the head office wanted including a commentary and then emailing it out. So if you consider that scenario very common scenario with the finance team and analyst that do it and that usually takes in this scenario it was taking about eight analyst couple of days to do it every week. So look at the amount of time that is being spent in this particular task. We are able to put in agentic AI that was able to go in connect to all the different data sources being able to download it make sense of the data do the mapping

58:48Exercise do the exceptions and and even go have the human in the loop where for example a new account comes in and it doesn't know where to map it stop the process and send an email out to the relevant human and ask for it to be mapped once it's mapped then it continue the process do all the collation and then do the commentary as well and what the management commented was that the commentary was the beauty part about it because the humans that did the commentary usually did a copy paste from last month and updated the commentary with the different percentages. In this case using aentic AI it was able to go in into the depths of the data not just the data at the balance level but also at the transaction level make sense of it the trends and things like that and have a very very rich commentary and also all the all the manual task of downloading uploading emailing and all of that was handled by the agentic AI in a in a control brilliant brilliant

59:42That that those are the kinds of things that AI is taking over now. Nice. Nice. so it's giving those analysts an opportunity to focus on other things as well. Yeah. Which is, you know, really important probably looking at the numbers. so that's fantastic. how do you see this sort of evolving as a service line for you guys? Is is it going to be over the next two three years? It sounds like, you know, it's going to get better and better. Agenda

1:00:07Do you think it's going to be a big part of your business going forward? we we expect it to. we expect it to. not just because we we invested in it and started probably 18 months ago even before the the hype got on to the level it is today. Some call it the AI bubble at the moment. We'll see how that pans out.

1:00:28But however we we operate in a in a space where this technology you can see is here to stay and here to grow and be more and more embedded with the business as we go. The technology is evolving at a very quick pace as well. So we probably not in a position to say how exactly it will look in 2 years time but what we do know is that we'll form a big part of of being able to work with our clients in in implementing and running this.

1:00:54Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant. all right. So we get on to the sort of the that's where the future I suppose of Octane's going. Is there anything else we haven't covered? You might get some more clients in the US or Europe or I suppose that's part of the future plans. anything anything else besides that and innovation agentic AI yes u couple couple of other things so even moving beyond the office of finance so at the moment we've got a couple of use cases that we're working in where a particular company in India is getting u they're responding to hundreds of RFPs a month

1:01:30And what we're putting is agentic AI to be able to go in understand the RFP the requirement of the RFP and map it to the product line that they have and being able to very very quickly give the sales people sort of a hit list of these are the ones that you need to target on because it is a very close match. So we we see use cases move beyond beyond finance. Obviously there are a lot of use cases in HR already. IBM doesn't have any HR person in in this part of the region anymore. It's all done by agents already within the IBM itself. So we expect things like that to happen more and more.

1:02:08Brilliant. So, it's good that I've got your phone number and it's good I've got your details because on that exact use case, we've got a a challenge for one of our clients at the moment. And I would love you to chat to me in the next week or so around some of those challenges that they have and maybe as a team we could solve those for for that client of mine. and there's a few other things that we are trying to build out at Loading Growth for our customers like you guys

1:02:37That maybe you could help us out because everyone's getting in some form of shape involved with AI as they should. and we're trying to build something that helps our clients win more and and beat the big guys as I call it. So I think getting some time of yours would be awesome to to talk a bit about that in detail. so let's say for example, if you had to give one piece of advice, okay, one piece of advice of a person that wants to start out and run their own IT services business, they probably had an end user client like you were once upon a time. What would you say to them to first couple of things they should do or not do to actually start their own IT services business?

1:03:20Yeah. firstly is is is it's probably jump in with your eyes open. It's exciting. It's interesting. But it's it's loaded with risk. Not all of us will be successful. not all of us will make money out of this game. it it is going to be a very exciting journey. But the thing you if somebody's looking to jump into this kind of like from working for a corporate job

1:03:48Going into the vendor space the first thing I I normally tell them is see if you can live without a salary for 6 without having that drug of salary coming into your account for 6 months. If if you can pass that test, you you probably are ready mentally to jump into something like this because one of the things you you'll have to manage is the the the funding side of thing and and the risk profile. So I I use someone who's who's got the ability and the mentality to take risk and and and take some calculated risk. not everything will work out and being able to psychologically walk away from dumping some money into a into a project or into a initiative and then deciding when to because we also tend to get invested into the projects especially that we have come up with and go

1:04:41Yeah I'm I'm quite invested and it will be a success but at at some point you'll have to realize not everything will be and you have the mindset to be able to take that hit and look yeah I tried it idea was great timing was not right or something like that and move away. That's one. And the second thing is if you don't have the ability to sell, you you probably will very find it a big uphill battle to to to be in the industry and and selling not not as a as a word, but being able to consult no matter the experience and the expertise you bring in, but in being able to convert that into a sale is very

1:05:19Yeah, it all starts with clients. So if you don't have any clients, you don't have a consultancy firm unfortunately. So very good wise words there from you Amandra. I appreciate your time once again as as always. You bring in a lot of thunder to some of these topics and I love to hear from you. thanks very much and I hope you have an awesome day. Thanks a lot. Bye.

1:05:40Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on IT Mastermind Talks. Don't miss out on our next episode. Hit the follow button and stay updated. Want to be our next podcast guest? Contact us and share your expertise with our audience. Visit www.it mastermind talks.com for more