Narrator [00:00:04]:

Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the voice of global supply chain. Supply Chain Now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today's critical issues, the challenges, and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on Supply Chain Now.

Scott W. Luton [00:00:32]:

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton here with you on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today's episode, folks. We've got a special show teed up here today. In fact, it's the first installment of a double episode. That's right. We're gonna be talking with an innovative entrepreneur that's tackling some really big challenges in global supply chain. In fact, he and the team are working hard to truly change how business is done, especially when it comes to improving and even replacing traditional technology.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:02]:

On this first episode, we're going to be getting into the whole backstory, at least a good chunk of it. We're going to identify some of the common challenges for companies that create, manage and move physical goods. We're going to be talking about the state of the ERP, as well as just what the heck is an ARP? All of this and much, much more. So stay tuned for an informative, enlightening, and entertaining conversation. So I want to jump right in, introduce our esteemed guest here today, Wiley Jones, Co-founder and CEO of Doss. Wiley, how you doing today?

Wiley Jones [00:01:34]:

Doing awesome, Scott. Very caffeinated, ready to rock.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:38]:

Outstanding. Well, I got to ask you then, what's your coffee? Or what's your caffeine of choice? What'd you fuel up on today?

Wiley Jones [00:01:44]:

Oh, man, it's actually really bad. It has. It's mostly coffee, but sometimes I sneak energy drinks here and there, you know, without my wife knowing.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:55]:

Oh, we all do. Probably we all do. Caffeine makes global supply chain happen, doesn't it?

Wiley Jones [00:02:00]:

That's right.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:01]:

All right, so what other quick question, as we, as we want to get know you a little bit better before we start talking shop, we hear that you are a very passionate guitar player and even a more passionate music fan. So you're still learning, I think, to play the guitar like Eddie Van Halen. Still on that journey. But I want to ask you, what is one or maybe a couple of your biggest musician inspirations?

Wiley Jones [00:02:27]:

Oh, that is a very hard question to answer. So, spanning the different generations as early as, obviously. Gotta love Jimi Hendrix. Probably the reason I wanted to learn to play guitar. But actually, I see on your background you have a book which is titled everybody wants to rule the world, which is one of my favorite songs, tears for fears, incredible band, which I don't think that book is referencing, but one of my favorite bands, I love eighties yacht rock, like all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, big fan of all the generations.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:57]:

Oh, I'm with you. I grew up a big Eric Clapton fan, too, and I tell you, his musical journey is a fascinating one. There's some fascinating documentaries on, on the streaming channels. But anyway, I look forward to learning a lot more about your, your musical passion, but also for the rest of our conversation here today, including the next episode, we're going to dive into your passion for changing how business is done. I'm really excited to learn a lot more, doing some really cool things. So, you know, you may know I'm a big fan of context. The world is moving so fast, and context is so valuable for how we discern, make decisions right, grow our businesses. So you've had a really fascinating journey, Wiley, from designing toys and factories in China to leading hardware projects for medical devices in Silicon Valley.

Scott W. Luton [00:03:47]:

You could write a book probably on just that component. Now, prior to Doss, though, so all of that and other things prior to what you're doing at Doss, what are a couple of your favorite professional experiences, especially those that shaped your worldview and your path forward?

Wiley Jones [00:04:02]:

I think there, you know, kind of the sequence of this was I went to school, did mechanical engineering and studied electrical engineering and went out into the world very starry eyed, wanted to go work on those problems. And the very first product I worked on was I was at a really small company working on a robotic autonomous cat toy, which was probably the most fun thing I've ever worked on, but also great product, not a great business. You can imagine the market if that's not massive. It taught me a lot about building great products, but also at the same time, making sure that there's demand for the things that you're working on. You have to meet those things in the middle. And that, that was such a painfully instructive life lesson, but also just an experience in building products.

Scott W. Luton [00:04:45]:

I love your point. There's got to be demand. You know, we can get as much value and purpose and fulfillment out of the work we do, and that's real special in and of itself. But to build a business, to build a business model and a product, there's got to be demand for it. Otherwise it's going to be a really short lived business. Your final point on that? I think that's a really important lesson, Wiley, thinking out loud a bit. I think as entrepreneurs, fellow entrepreneurs, sometimes we can fool ourself, and sometimes fooling ourself involves the demand for what we're doing. Would you tend to agree or disagree with that?

Wiley Jones [00:05:19]:

Yeah, I say the same thing to our team, and just broadly in life. And the stories that you have to be most careful and weary of are the ones that you tell yourselves. And that is a thing that honestly keeps me awake at night. You know, as we're building the company is just the fundamental duality of when you start something, you have to be really high in your conviction of it. But at the same time, you also have to be deeply skeptical of your own ideas. And I think demand is the scariest part of that. Like, do people truly want the thing that we're putting out into the world? It's a really scary thought, just constantly having to, you know, revisit that every day.

Scott W. Luton [00:05:55]:

Wiley, that is million dollar, maybe billion dollar advice. The importance of being frank, not just with others, but yourself. Really important. Appreciate you sharing that. So fast forward a little bit. And the robotic autonomous cat toys man, that is, that's got me spinning. We'll have to revisit later. But you co founded DOS a couple years back, back in 2022, and y'all have experienced some seismic growth, innovation and success ever since.

Scott W. Luton [00:06:23]:

I want to ask you, though, that infamous question. What was your why for starting a company?

Wiley Jones [00:06:29]:

I think the two minute drill on that is, I was an end business user of a lot of the solutions that DOS is trying to go out and replace. I experienced the best parts of those solutions and the worst parts. I'll chalk it up to a very simple anecdote. I was in China working for a few years, working with contract manufacturers, and I spent almost all of my time doing program management. And I wanted to be an electrical engineer in terms of the work that I was doing, but I really didn't have an opportunity to do as much of that as I wanted to. It turns out the supply chain, and you guys talk about this so often in the podcast, is it's really a composition of a bunch of competent people moving things around the world, going line by line through spreadsheets, and litigating the state of what happened, what is happening, and what will happen. And that was really hard for me because I wanted to be designing physical products, and I really spent a lot of time trying to think about what the solutions that we could work on were that would make it easier for end business users to level up their capabilities in terms of their ability to do program management and supply chain so that they could focus on very high leverage work as opposed to data logistics and going line by line in status meetings. Everyone's been there, right? So that was really the inspiration for a lot of it.

Scott W. Luton [00:07:51]:

I love it. I love it. You know, spreadsheets have been around for seemingly, I don't know, a century, maybe not quite that long, but forever. And we have found, as humans, the most creative and probably also wasteful uses for spreadsheets. And the other thing that maybe you implied, or maybe you mentioned, touched on when we come to those meetings, those project meetings, product management meetings, you name it, problem solving meetings, oftentimes everybody has their own version of spreadsheet and the data, and just getting to that central truth can be next impossible sometimes. So I love how that is all baked up into your why as well? Because you've experienced it firsthand. You saw a better way, leveling up the art of supply chain management, helping to empower. That is what I heard there.

Scott W. Luton [00:08:42]:

So that begs the question, what does Doss do?

Wiley Jones [00:08:47]:

Yeah, the one liner or two liner is we help businesses manage their operations from purchase order all the way to point of sale. And it's a very broad directive, but it covers the flow of goods into and out of a business, the flow of dollars into and out of a business, and all of the data artifacts that kind of get thrown off as people are doing that, we collect all that up and consolidate it into one place for them.

Scott W. Luton [00:09:14]:

That's music to my ears. That is maybe not so much Jimi Hendrix to my ears, but it's like Beethoven or yacht rock. Maybe some easy listen to my ears. And we need more of that in global supply chain. Given the complexities and kind of going back to what you mentioned, I've got your website over here, Wiley, and I love how you all up at the top, the ERP that was promised. Cause that speaks to me that there is such an easier way. And man, when we as leaders and managers find easier ways for our teams to get stuff done, what that frees up the innovation, the ideas, the more fulfilling work. That is an exciting part of where we are in global supply chain right now.

Wiley Jones [00:09:59]:

Your comments there, the thing you talked about a couple minutes ago about how if we look back, spreadsheets have been around a very, very long time. I think there's a really important narrative to look at, which is that the origins of so much of this, it's so much more profound than we even realize. Some of the very earliest forms of writing were people putting what looked like kind of like a bill of lading or like almost like a packing list or a receipt. They were carving it into stone. That's actually why it's called a ledger. That like, ledger is a. It's a word for, you know, an actual block of stone. It dates all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia.

Wiley Jones [00:10:36]:

And accounting is one of the original forms of math. And so what we're working on is this like, extremely profound thing. Not we as in just us, but I'm seeing broadly in the entire industry. We're trying to build systems that make it easier for people to understand the state of truth of what is, um. And helping businesses do that. It's what helps them deliver their goods and services and move physical, real things and drive value around the actual world. It's not like those NFT projects that are fake or creating artificial value. It's not like a thing that just exists in the mind of a person.

Wiley Jones [00:11:15]:

It's a real thing that moves around the world. And that's what gets me so excited about the trajectory of the entire ecosystem today, is that everyone's really focused on, on moving that entire directive forward.

Scott W. Luton [00:11:28]:

Wiley, I didn't think you were going to bring up Mesopotamia on today's podcast, but I'm so glad you did because as you were describing that, and I also didn't know Ledger, one of the definitions was a big block of stone. Can you imagine hearken back to centuries or really a millennium ago when they were still supply chain managers? They were just called different things. Can you imagine how your day really stunk because you had to document you using a stone and a hammer and a chisel? Man, we got it good now, huh? You also referenced, you know, those physical goods, very tangible, right? Oftentimes they're staring at us in the face, in our warehouses and our factories, you name it. So your team specializes in working with any company that manages physical goods. And we all know we talked about a minute ago, curveballs still abound, even though we're nothing chiseling bills of lading and other documentation that makes global supply chain happen. There's plenty of new and old curveballs that are still around the corner, and plenty more that's, that's coming that we don't quite yet know what they look like. So I want to ask you, what are some of the common problems you help businesses solve? And, you know, what are the same? What are some common threads? And there might be some, some ones that are a bit more unique. Your thoughts, Wiley?

Wiley Jones [00:12:45]:

Yeah. So another reference back to kind of literature or anything like that is Anna Karenina, if you're familiar. The opening title of it, happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are unhappy in its own way. We see that with all the companies we work with, and not to say that they're unhappy by any means, but there's these really unique things that define every problem. But what's been so fascinating to us as we go out and look at every single company we work with, if you strip away the top, the surface of all of them, or you sand them down and then you squint at these problems, they end up being kind of the same most of the time. And it's like humans are 70% water or something, businesses are 70% tabular data and PDF's. It consolidates down into a few different problems, which is really just consolidating orders and doing a, what I call an order management problem.

Wiley Jones [00:13:40]:

And then there's a full stack, full value chain problem, which is really just about consolidating all the inputs and outputs across your entire value chain into one place where you can contextualize it. And then the final one is the most complex of the problems, which is when you have third party data and first party data, which is data that you as a business are in control of, and you need to put all that stuff together. You see this mostly with really large organizations where they're like, youve probably heard this a million times, where like, we have seven different systems and we need to get them all to connect to each other and make sure that they actually all have the same information everywhere, which is never what happens. So those three things are what we see most commonly.

Scott W. Luton [00:14:16]:

Trey and then were going to dive in deeper in the second episode, folks, and at least a couple of those problems. And one of the last things you mentioned, which we talk about incessantly, practicians are out there working incessantly as interoperability, right? We've got all these different technologies that so even the smallest of organizations use, and they've got to integrate and communicate each other and get the job done. Right? Play nice in the sandbox. As a lot of folks have said time and time again, it's critical. Wiley. Right. We're in this age of brilliant, innovative technology. We haven't mentioned AI yet.

Scott W. Luton [00:14:51]:

That certainly plays a factor. But if this technology on an island does this really well, but doesn't communicate with the rest of the human and digital organization, we got a problem. Riley, your last word. And then we're going to get into acronym soup.

Wiley Jones [00:15:08]:

It's an underrated problem, or maybe it's an implicit problem that emerges as companies get bigger and bigger, and I think people don't focus on it because it has this emergent property, which is that as the companies grow and become more and more successful, with that success comes the necessity to integrate deeply with your customer partners, whether it's in retail or manufacturing, or deeper in your value chain, looking backwards again back into your supplier networks. With that strong success comes the requirement to deeply consolidate information across systems that you don't maybe have control over. I think people don't think about the consequences of what will end up happening as they grow and succeed as a business. That's where they really run into problems.

Scott W. Luton [00:15:57]:

Yes, well it's funny you mentioned consequences. I would argue that when you think about planning and strategizing for all the gains we've made, really as a profession, I'll call it as a craft, as my dear friend Greg White used to call it. For all the gains we've made, we still have massive gaps, right. And especially given all the opportunities we have to simulate and plan for different scenarios these days. We could do millions a day, really. But a lot of organizations don't pull those levers. We're not throwing stones at anybody, it's just kind of the part of the current state. And to your point, consequences is a great word, because each decision or non decision brings with it plenty of consequences, some that we know about and some we find out about.

Scott W. Luton [00:16:48]:

And that's why I'm really excited, Wiley, about some of the cool things you're doing differently. Your last word and then I'm going to talk about ERP. Anything else you want to add there about consequences. And as humans we like to cling how we've always done things. It's just in our bones, right back to Mesopotamia. But that's not good enough these days.

Wiley Jones [00:17:06]:

Yeah, broadly, the consequences is an interesting keyword to frame a lot of things around. I also talk about these as either kind of the artifacts. For example, if a thousand years from now someone were to come and look at the records that we have stored on our computers or the PDF's we have of everything, they would be like what is all this stuff they'd be trying to piece together, almost like an archaeologist would. All the artifacts that we've generated. And I try to think of the systems that we're designing with Doss, but also with our customers and the processes we help them set up. What are the artifacts that generates for future generations? What are the consequences of the things that we're doing today and the decisions that we make, how will it impact their business, when they go and bring on new customers, when they go and bring on new manufacturing partners, when they go and bring on new three pls or warehouses. We're trying to think steps ahead so that we don't corner ourselves and box ourselves in with decisions we made early on. The consequences, you know, is almost kind of thinking like an archaeologist looking backwards at what we built.

Scott W. Luton [00:18:07]:

Oh, I love it. Are you a fellow history nerd, Wiley?

Wiley Jones [00:18:11]:

If it is not become plainly obvious, yes, I am a huge history nerd.

Scott W. Luton [00:18:16]:

That makes two of us. We can learn so much by looking at the past. Okay, acronyms, we have plenty. You know, in my air force days, I thought we had lots of acronyms. Which we do. We did. We still do. Global supply chain loves acronyms the same way.

Scott W. Luton [00:18:32]:

So we're going to talk about a couple next, including ERP, which we got the smartest audience in the world. Most of them will know. Enterprise resource planning. It's an acronym that not only a lot of our audience members know, but many work with. Sometimes they fight with, maybe not sometimes, maybe for some all the time. And I got a call out before I ask you this question. Cause maybe it's not a fair question as the founder. What's that jacket? Let me see if you can hold that jacket up you got there.

Scott W. Luton [00:18:59]:

The, the anti ERP. ERP club, Wiley.

Wiley Jones [00:19:03]:

Yes.

Scott W. Luton [00:19:04]:

I love that. Maybe we'll get the background out in a second. But let's first get your initial thoughts on kinda the mini state of the ERP.

Wiley Jones [00:19:13]:

I'll call it back to your, your air force days. And then also in the supply chain. Yeah, acronyms are abundant, right? Acronyms I find always so interesting because they're either like, deeply specific, where they give you a lot of context about what something means. And again, your appreciation of context is something that we care about, too. ERP is a really funny one because it's kind of a non acronym. It doesn't really mean anything. Enterprise resource planning is kind of pretty, I would say generic. The enterprise part is true.

Wiley Jones [00:19:44]:

That's definitely true. It definitely is enterprise. But the resource planning, I'm not sure. People kind of shrug. But when we talk about like, the state of the ecosystem and why actually this jacket is kind of a funny joke. Like all good jokes, it has this deeply rooted truth in it. You know, you have to. In the humor.

Wiley Jones [00:20:02]:

Is this truth that every company needs a system of record? Once you reach a certain size, you have to have a state of truth. But at the same time, I think, you know, I'm not speaking at a term when I say a lot of the marketplaces or the market is dissatisfied with the landscape of solutions. Again, not because there's anything categorically bad about them, but I think because there's been these incentives that have led to poor outcomes over, let's say, the 50 years since maybe the inception of these products. Yeah, I think as a category of software, it's pretty straightforward. Where we're at today, it's been a bunch of generational shifts based on the platforms, going from mainframes to client server to cloud to now hopefully a new shift with AI. And I think a lot of generations are locked into the platforms that they originally started on. And so that's something that we think a lot about.

Scott W. Luton [00:20:49]:

It's like you put that directly, but diplomatically. Cause a lot of ERP is out there. They're getting stuff done, right. They've been with us for a long time. And it's not so much what I heard there from you, Wiley. It's not so much that you're rounding up the townsfolks, the run the ERP monsters out of the village. No, it is, you see a better way. Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:21:12]:

And a big part of that better way is helping our people better. Right. And that's what, that's one of the things I'm really passionate about because, you know, having spent a bunch of time in the manufacturing industry in particular, and getting out on those factory floors and rubbing elbows with the frontline folks that create the value, the reason the companies exist. And I always thought, how can we make their job easier? And certainly by extension, our supply chain managers and our supply chain professionals that are, that have this really important task of moving these physical managing, moving, making, you name it, returning these physical goods around the world that in and of itself is immensely complex and sometimes, unfortunately, not throwing stones, just, it is what it is. Sometimes our technologies don't lessen the complexity. They add to the complexity. Right. One last thing.

Scott W. Luton [00:22:05]:

I'll get you to comment along these same lines about. There's a better way. You look at our phones, right? Look at our phones. We're not using the same phone most folks aren't that we did 50 years ago when I was growing up. Wiley, I think I got a few years on you. I think we had a phone that sat on a wall with long cord, about a 50 foot cord. It felt like sometimes rotary dialing, right? There was no such thing back then yet of call waiting, all that stuff, right? Get twisted in the cord. Had to call and get the time.

Scott W. Luton [00:22:40]:

Oh, man. Lived in archaic times nowadays, goodness gracious, you know, right here. And not just the size and the look and the feel, but the power you've got right there in your hands. And that's a great analogy for the ERP space and in a broader sense, the supply chain technology space. And if we're not seeing change like that, what are we doing wrong? Your thoughts there.

Wiley Jones [00:23:08]:

Well, I love these analogies and representations and kind of like thinking of them in more abstract terms because it does help you characterize what is good and bad about something. Like you said, diplomatically and just trying to be objective. And a couple examples is we just look at progress over the last 50 years. The computers that put astronauts on the moon from the Apollo program, they're, I don't know, maybe a million times less memory and compute than what's in our hands. Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:23:38]:

Right.

Wiley Jones [00:23:39]:

And we can say the same thing of a lot of enterprise systems of record. But do we think that that order of magnitude of progress has been made in that category? And the answer is definitively no. But then we have to scrutinize the questions for why. And I think a lot of it has to do with some kind of almost like fundamental physical limitations to creating processes, which then you put inside of a black box. And once it's inside of that black box, only a few people understand it. That's taking that complexity of. I have a very deep value chain that runs forward and backwards across the entire world. I need to characterize it into a system that makes it so that anyone can interact with it.

Wiley Jones [00:24:21]:

But that means that I have to kind of crystallize it into place. Once you make it crystallized, it also makes it hard to make changes and rip things out because it's now rigid. Right. You can't have a rigid structure and also a flexible structure. It's kind of hard. And that's what's gotten us into this position. And so finding better ways to balance that going forward is, is really what we focus on.

Scott W. Luton [00:24:41]:

Yeah, man, a lot of truth there. Well said as you're sharing it, too. And, you know, one of the things as you were talking there that came to my mind is implementation. You can't have an ERP conversation without talking about implementation. And we'll touch on that in a second. But, you know, so many implementations out there that I've come across in decades of being in this business, oh, man, so much wasted time and frustration and pushing production back and just creating so much friction and frankly, wasted time, dollars and more. And, you know, I've got a great chief supply chain officer friend of mine, I just had lunch with him the other day, and he likes talking about return on energy. Return on investment is important too, but return on energy, you know, if your whole team, your whole organization is going to invest all of this energy and all its different definitions into a any initiative, gosh, the return better be there and it better be there quickly.

Scott W. Luton [00:25:44]:

You know, who's got time, as summer code is have said, ain't nobody got time for a two year implementation these days, you know, so we're going to tough till then in a second. I said throw it out there then. There is a better way. There is a better way. And I want you to tell me and educate me about this ARP acronym adaptive resource platform. Tell us more, Wally.

Wiley Jones [00:26:07]:

Excuse me, if you're doing a little bit of setup, and I'll try to make this as compact as possible. Like I said earlier about the non acronym of ERP, adaptive resource platform we think is extremely descriptive. It's adaptive. We look at the resources of a business and we've created a platform to operationalize them. When we think about time to value, there's this notion of agility. Not like scrum or agile, like as a framework, but like true agility, like the meaning of that word. And also your former air force. You're familiar probably with Boyd, and like the teachings around agility and the ability to quickly recalibrate your orientation when you take in new information, that is what organizations need.

Wiley Jones [00:26:49]:

And the way that you do that is by compressing the time to value and the time for you to go and take in a new piece of information and quickly go and apply it somewhere inside of your process, inside of your business, inside of your relationships with your customers. And so we structure everything we do around how fast we can make changes in our system and how we can enable our customers to do that. We've aligned our incentives around that. We do a couple of crazy things where we're like, we don't charge for implementation upfront. Um, actually, we sometimes don't even charge for it at all. And things like that actually align our value with our customer's value. Those are a lot of the things that we, we think about when we, we talk about, um, agility and consolidating the time to value.

Scott W. Luton [00:27:31]:

You give me too much credit. Uh, Boyd. I have to learn more after some googling on Boyd and, uh, his or her thoughts on agility. But I like how you separated from some of the, um, the structure, some of the methodology that have, have kind of made agility or agile to be something a little different in the generic sense. Agility is, even though it's talked about more these days, it's forever been important to any organization, but certainly global supply chain, because as you said, taking in that new information, it happens even with the most successful supply chains that are out there, they are still, it's the nature of the business reacting as much as we push things to being proactive and predictive and all this stuff, we don't control, the weather, we don't control, unfortunately, a lot of geopolitical stuff and other, plenty of other surprises. So I love your, how you kind of couch that in the importance of practical or operationalized agility is critically important. And how does that, so back to the ArP. Tell us a little bit more.

Scott W. Luton [00:28:38]:

How does that bake in? How does it, how are organizations leveraging ARP to act on the promise that's always been associated with ERPs? How is it better?

Wiley Jones [00:28:50]:

I would say categorically, like I kind of talked about earlier, a handful of problems we like to focus on. If we take the thing that I think your colleague said around, like, no one's got time for a two year implementation. And we kind of think about that very literally. We try to bring as much value in, let's say a 40 hours workweek, like a literal week of time. We try to get almost 50, 60, 70% of an implementation done in that period of time where we focus on the single most important workflows that a business has, and then the things that are the substrate and the foundation of their business. Again, not the consequences of their business, but the things that are the inputs and outputs. It's mostly around procurement. It's mostly on order management.

Wiley Jones [00:29:34]:

On the finance and accounting side, the things that are kind of a layer up from that, which are very simple, accounts receivable, accounts payable. And when you think about the consequences of those things, it's basically the consequences of goods coming into and out of your business is inventory. Inventory is a byproduct of a process. It's actually not the, it's not like the first order thing, right. And the same for financial reporting and kind of your reporting product. People are like, I want to focus on reporting. We're like, well, do you have your accounts payable, accounts receivable in order? Is that in a really good state? Are those processes extremely optimized and really dialed in? And they're like, no, of course not. And we're like, okay, well, let's start there.

Wiley Jones [00:30:07]:

And so those are the kinds of things that we think a ton about with our customers. We start on these boundary conditions that allow us to drive to an end to end system as quickly as humanly possible.

Scott W. Luton [00:30:18]:

So kind of what I'm hearing from you, Wiley, in Cordial's process is we're assessing an organization's ability to become agile, or is the foundation and how they view the business, and is it all in order? So then we have a solid foundation to build. That agility, that success, those outcomes we're after. Do we have the right foundation to build on? Is that accurate?

Wiley Jones [00:30:44]:

Totally. I think there's a profound, like, implicit point, which is that it is painful for a lot of these companies. It's not this spiritual retreat where they're relaxed and it's like a spa. It's probably like a shiatsu massage where they're in. It's not fun to have all the knots massaged out. It requires what I would describe as competent and earnest people. And so when we interact with companies that, frankly, are not in that camp, we, a lot of times will disengage, because you cannot, you know, the old adage of, you can't lead a horse to water. You lead a horse to water, but not make them drink.

Wiley Jones [00:31:19]:

The same thing is true for businesses that don't want to change, but we, we just focus on finding high quality companies that do, and, um, we help them evaluate that substrate and that foundation. And it's painful, but we think that we have the tools to help them go and transform those parts of the.

Scott W. Luton [00:31:34]:

Business, and powerful change with consequential outcomes. Sometimes that's painful. A lot of times, that's painful. First off, I'm not sure what a shiatsu massage is, but I'll take your word for it. That is not your routine comfort. But Wiley, I like how clearly and confidently you are that you know, you're not a fit for every organization out there, every culture out there, and that's okay. That's okay. But those high achievers with big time expectations that want to change how business is done and is committed to finding a better way, not just for their customers, not just for their suppliers and their whole ecosystem, but they're people, right? That is exciting.

Scott W. Luton [00:32:16]:

That is exciting. So, folks, if you want to learn more about this ARP, the Doss ARP, as I'll call it, right? When I first saw that, Wiley, I was like, Doss ARP? Maybe it's a comic book character, but we need a cape. I could, I could envision it, but Doss ARP, folks, if you want to learn more, you have to connect with Wiley and do that. But, hey, we've been to doing our homework. We've got a quote here. So in your last response, Wally, you talked about time to value. You talk about that a lot. I was checking out some of your.

Scott W. Luton [00:32:49]:

Some of your blog articles, which, by the way, is about three levels of intelligence above mine. You talk about time to value a lot. You're just talking about the power of a week a second ago. So we've got a quote from one of your Doss customers saying what should have been a year long project they accomplished in weeks. Man, that dog will hunt. As we say around here, a lot of organizations would be looking for that. So. So how does that.

Scott W. Luton [00:33:19]:

How are you all able to compress all of that, you know, in that time down to get value as quickly and immediately as you're able to?

Wiley Jones [00:33:28]:

Yeah, there's a myriad of factors, but I would try to sequence them through the following perspective. The first part of it really is that we just deeply understand our customers problems. It sounds really cheesy, but it comes from being extremely empathetic. You talk to them, not about how your solution works, or we don't send them white papers on the way our product functions. The first thing we do is we sit down with the actual individual contributors, the operators, the people who run the business. We try to deeply understand every single thing they do, and then we reconstitute it in our world, in our representation of what Doss can accomplish. And then we just put the mirror in front of them, we show them that, and it's this moment of clarity. Then they go, oh, okay, so now we can go do this, and we can go do this, and we can go do this thing in accounting.

Wiley Jones [00:34:19]:

We can go do this thing in the way that we do, reporting automatically on our monthly cadence or whatever it is. And so the workflows just kind of pour out of someone. Once we do that extraction of, you know, kind of the initial, it's like, almost like kind of pulling the plug, and the water just kind of come, the floodgates are open. Right. Everything is downstream of that. Nothing else matters unless we can accomplish that, first and foremost.

Scott W. Luton [00:34:41]:

Oh, I love that, Wiley. Now, there's no mind meld, vulcan mind meld, involved in this extraction, right?

Wiley Jones [00:34:48]:

No, no. It's closest to if you've ever seen the movie office space, the scene where the consultants are sitting across from them. You're like, what do you do here? It's kind of like that, but we try to do it as fast as possible because real world teams are busy. We do this in a couple of hours. We just sit down 15 minutes, 15 minutes with various stakeholders, and we just aggressively rip the process out of their brain. And, you know, and not as invasive as going to the dentist or something, but that's the idea.

Scott W. Luton [00:35:15]:

The power of empathy, especially when you operationalize it in driving technology, business, supply chain performance, and taking it to a new level. I appreciate how you said that. What I'm also hearing is different conversations. You know, my hunch, while is a lot of folks out there that may be listening to this podcast, maybe they're in the consulting realm, or maybe they're just internal change agents, and they probably all can relate to that. How you've got to first deeply care about getting to what our team members and what, uh, employees and, and, uh, what folks that make these organizations perform, what they care about, what they're experiencing, what they're doing well, what they're not doing so well, and getting to the root of that with lots and lots of empathy. I can see that that's clearly an important part of y'all's mo at Doss, huh?

Wiley Jones [00:36:06]:

Yeah. There's a one anecdote on that is we have a couple operating principles we think about as a company. The single most important one, like, if we cut out all the others, this would be the only one that matters, which is from the Toyota production system. It's, you know, Taichi ono. Go and see Genshu. Genbutsu, right, the place where the thing is done, and you can't cheat that. You have to go and put in the work and do the thing and go and watch the people do the thing. Like literally going to onsite with our customers or just going and, like, asking someone, can you walk me through the thing you do every day or the thing you do at the end of the month or whatever it is, and once they show you, then it all becomes clear.

Wiley Jones [00:36:45]:

But you can't cheat that. You have to go do it.

Scott W. Luton [00:36:47]:

I'm with you. And, you know, back to our inner history. Nerd what we were saying about halfway through this conversation is we learned so much by looking at the past. What's old is, is new again. Taiichi Ono TPS that go and see methodology has been around a long time, but it's still as powerful now as it was then. And I love how, how you've incorporated that into an organization that is changing how business is done, changing how technology is done and what that means for organizations that make, move, manage stuff all around the world. So folks can have to connect with Wiley Jones and the DoS team. We're giving you a great opportunity here through this special double episode.

Scott W. Luton [00:37:35]:

It makes me think, Wiley, double secret probation. What was that? From animal House, right? Animal house?

Wiley Jones [00:37:42]:

Yeah, I think so.

Scott W. Luton [00:37:43]:

Is that right?

Wiley Jones [00:37:43]:

Yeah, I'm trying to remember if that was what that is from. Is it when the dean is telling Bulkowski or something? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It's something like that.

Scott W. Luton [00:37:53]:

Probation wasn't good enough. It had to be double seeker probation. Right. Anyway, we digress, folks. What a great conversation. So, Wiley, I know folks gonna want to sit down and have a similar conversation with you and kind of figure out what makes you tick, what you are doing special there, and see if maybe if they could even work with you or imagine you do some keynote in here and there. They might want to invite you in to speak to their organization or event or what have you. How can folks connect with wiley jones and the Doss team?

Wiley Jones [00:38:23]:

Yeah, LinkedIn's easy. You just send me a message. I pride myself in being, like, as responsive as possible to literally every form. I'm. I'm really bad about this, where I'll just pick up every spam call I get. Cause it might be a customer. Right. Um, so literally, my info is all on, on LinkedIn, just wiley jones.

Wiley Jones [00:38:40]:

And then also you can just email me wileyos.com dot. Uh, we have, we also have the Doss.com. it makes it easy. I can just d o s s. So that's. Yeah, wiley, Doss.com dot.

Scott W. Luton [00:38:49]:

And there's a story there that maybe we'll get into in a future, future episode, how. How you were able to procure Doss.com. as simple as that. Doss.com, folks. And as you heard from wiley, connect with him on LinkedIn, too. You'll enjoy. As I was getting ready for today's conversation, I went back and was looking at some of your. Your posts and your blogs and.

Scott W. Luton [00:39:09]:

And I love your sense of humor, and I love your appreciation for a good meme, Wiley. So it makes the world go round. A little sense of humor is good on the good days and the bad days, huh?

Wiley Jones [00:39:20]:

It is. I actually have a wall of memes behind my desk, and I keep adding to it, and the team will send me them. We even have a meme thing, a recurring meme meeting inside of our company, which we call ERP memes for real world teams. And it's kind of like we go out and we go out and collect funny things we can find on the Internet. Where people talk about ERPs. I would encourage anyone who's a list active listener of to go and go into YouTube and find some of the videos of like, the webinars, the tutorials and then read the comments. The comments are so funny. Like, it'll be people being like, I am in despair.

Wiley Jones [00:39:56]:

I don't know how to do a multiple po. It's just really entertaining. You should go do it. It's so funny.

Scott W. Luton [00:40:03]:

The comments are gold. The comics are gold. I'll tell you what. Okay, well, folks, connect with Wiley Jones, co founder and CEO of Dossley. Go check out, learn more, do your homework. Kick the tires. Don't take his word for it. I'm sure he'd encourage you.

Scott W. Luton [00:40:18]:

Go to Doss.com, learn more. You can see customer testimonials and you name it, stories there. And also stay tuned for the second installment of our special double episode where you can learn more about some of the specific and interesting customer problems that Wiley and the team are addressing. He mentioned a couple of those. We're going to drill in a little bit deeper there and a whole bunch more. So, Wiley, really appreciate your time here today.

Wiley Jones [00:40:43]:

Likewise. Thanks, Scott.

Scott W. Luton [00:40:45]:

You bet. All right, to our viewers, our listeners, our smartest audience all around the globe, here's your homework. You got to take something you heard here today from Wiley. I don't know about you all. I got my 14 pages of notes here. You got to take at least one thing, put it into practice. Deeds, not words. We have such a tremendous opportunity to change how business is done and empower our people to find easier success every single day and free up time so they can find more fulfilling ways of helping the move industry forward.

Scott W. Luton [00:41:17]:

So with all that said, on behalf of the entire team here at , Scott Luton, challenge. You do good, give forward, be the change that's needed, and we'll see you next time right back here at Supply Chain Now. Thanks, everybody.

Wiley Jones [00:41:29]:

Thanks for being a part of our Supply Chain Now community. Check out all of our programming at supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to Supply Chain Now anywhere you listen to podcasts and Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain Now.