Maziar Adl: 0:04

A lot of times the meetings would adjourn with a follow-up saying, okay, you go, gather this information. Let's come back and meet again so we can discuss this. And these are high profile. These are decisions that need to be made, and these decisions have high impact on many parts of the organization. So you want these decisions to not only be accurate, but also fast

Tom Raftery: 0:24

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast. The number one podcast, focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host global vice-president at SAP Tom Raftery Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special guest Maziar. Maziar, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Maziar Adl: 0:52

Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yes. My name is Maziar and, I'm the CTO and co-founder of Gocious, LLC which is a company that was founded in Southern California in 2018. And since then we've been focusing on providing SaaS products for product managers. Our focus currently is in manufacturing industry and, I'm excited to share some of our experience with you today.

Tom Raftery: 1:18

Okay. Superb. And SaaS products, manufacturing kind of broad, I guess then that's trying to narrow that down a little, dig into a little more and you, you said 2018, you started off, so you were a very young company. What problem are you solving for whom? What, what, let's go even further back to the Genesis of the company in 2018. What made you decide to co-fund this, company, what we were trying to achieve?

Maziar Adl: 1:44

Actually I was, just coming out of a, major transformation in, in my past company called Experian. We were doing a digital transformation there and, the strategy panned out after two, three years. So I guess you can say I was getting a little bored. So, uh, I always liked to go back into startup, uh, world. The actual founder, Mr. Jake Shafran. He reached out to me with his idea of starting a company for this purpose. The problem at the time was that they believed that in, in manufacturing environments, product planning is a complicated process and it requires a lot of feedback from different teams and coordination. And there was really no great tool to create that transparency, transparency, and collaboration in the market, they many companies were still either using, uh, out data tools or they you're using Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoints and they had to keep it up. And that's time-consuming. And also it's very hard to keep the data, in a, in an updated, update the data all the time. But the focus at the time was we thought it's product planning, meaning, mainly the communication between the engineers and product managers. Once we kind of got into the first year of, execution on starting the venture and by the way, we actually, all these ideas was floating around 2017. So I just wanted to kind of give you a highlight that it takes almost a few years before this startup comes to fruition and everything gets lined up. We started operations actually about a May timeframe, um, when we started onboarding and then in late 2019, we re we realized that there, the issue is really not in that, area, even though there are some cases that you can improve, but the real issue was, uh, strategically looking at your portfolio and the mix of the products you're building. And setting the longer-term strategy long-term can be anywhere between one to 10 years. Depends on the industry you're in. you have to plan things ahead. And a lot of times we realize these plans become extremely rigid and also updating these plans across the portfolio, understanding dependencies and keeping your product, portfolio efficient, is, is very challenging to, to portfolio managers, especially if the company becomes a little complicated, like, uh, automotive, or industrial machinery, where they have a big set of products and these products have a lot of components and a lot of people have our teams have to come together. And so we started pivoting the product towards, catering and solving this problem. And, uh, today I'm happy to announce that we are currently, uh, working with, a few, companies specifically on strategic roadmaps, on manufacturing, focusing on dependencies and making sure that there's transparency across the organization and that the teams are focused on, uh, delivering business value and, delivering to the marketing and markets needs. And if they need to flex and change the product on, on the roadmap and work the roadmap, then we give them the facility to do that.

Tom Raftery: 4:55

Okay. And I can imagine in the automotive space, the lifetime of a product is not one single year, as you mentioned earlier, but rather closer to 10 years and that's a space that's being heavily disrupted at the moment. So if you were a German manufacturer and you've just come up with this awesome diesel engine, back in 2015, that 10 year roadmap might suddenly be completely changed and you might need to be thinking about switching to EV, for example, and having a shorter life cycle or having to switch it out entirely. Is that the kind of issues that you're coming across as helping companies to solve?

Maziar Adl: 5:35

Totally. So if you think about it, first of all, if you're building a completely new car with a new platform, that doesn't happen that often, but if it, if you're doing that, then you have to plan it years in advance and it, uh, the funding is massive. but even putting that aside, for bringing new generation of cars, for example, to the market, you need a few years advance work to, upgrade the car to a new generation, especially if the trim's changing. But imagine now when you have these supply chain issues and then you have the move to EV, a lot of your strategic plans continuously needs, revisiting, updating, and also you have to have the, culture to be open, to change and to make adjustments as you go forward. Chip manufacturing, depending on who you talk to or you see the landscape, it might not get solved until 2025 at a minimum. So, if you have plans to release cars and you start at these plans 3, 4, 5 years in advance, now you have to adjust. And you'll have to have the flexibility to, delay some things, bring some features forward, some features backwards to, still cater to the market and compete. But in the same time, realize the reality on the, on the grounds. So, these are some of the challenges. That product managers face and today, especially in something like automotive or industrial machinery, there's facing it even more, they need to change much faster and more rapidly. So having one place where people can communicate can immediately come together. Can see the full picture and the impact of let's say, delays on a chip on the overall portfolio, not one project or one area that is, you can maybe call it a little bit more tactical, but at the, at the higher level at the portfolio level seems to be really important.

Tom Raftery: 7:25

Okay. And is this an on-prem or is it a cloud delivered product or how does that all work?

Maziar Adl: 7:33

Yeah. One of our objectives is to make the onboarding simple, and also to make sure that the adoption is as frictionless as possible. So, we decided to go with a SaaS model, which is in the cloud. And, currently we don't have an on-prem solution. Part of it is because we use, heavily the technologies in SaaS, not just security, but also, scaling technologies and many other things to be able to cater to, to our customers. And also we believe, we always have a saying, we want our customers to ride the innovation wave. In other words, If we are building the software and we're continuously upgrading and providing new features on that software, we want our customers to be on that journey. Sometimes when things go on prem, the upgrades become costly and very complicated. So a lot of, companies delay the upgrades and they, they miss a version. So they're not riding that innovation wave. They're not taking advantage of all these features that are coming their way. So as a result of that, yes, we are a cloud solution and we have a SaaS service at the moment.

Tom Raftery: 8:44

Okay. And so how do customers typically integrate with your cloud solution? Is it through APIs or do they just batch upload data or is it a combination or how does that work?

Maziar Adl: 8:57

it is a combination. We have the capability. Usually what happens is once we engage and the customers realize, or the prospects realize the value of the work we do, the first step is the costumers have some homework. They have to reorganize their team to be able to, feed information and also to get trained, to see our dashboards and take advantage of, our product. And then the first, initial, step is to upload data and we have export systems to upload so we have the, uploads that are coming through the data, spreadsheets, you can put them into a field and they can, they can automatically pick it up and, upload it. The other one is we have a whole API, framework for our customers to use. And we also have a service in cases, um, that it justifies. We also write integrations between our systems and those APIs.

Tom Raftery: 9:51

So is this then like a, kind of a digital twin for the whole manufacturing setup that the customer has?

Maziar Adl: 10:00

I don't know if you can call it a digital twin in the sense that usually the, the phrase is used today, digital twin is usually used for engineering and, virtual, modeling of the product, but it is a form of a digital twin in the sense that it's a digital twin of your business. Uh, in other words, you are looking at a dashboard that shows how your business businesses progressing, over time and your, your roadmap, and you can make adjustments and you can run scenarios of what happens if you make these adjustments, let's say over five years. So it said you can call it a business digital twin. It is not, you know, that a copy of your car, for example, that you're, you're making adjustments on.

Tom Raftery: 10:43

Sure, sure, sure, sure. And can you speak to any challenges that your customers have had and how your solution has helped them overcome those challenges?

Maziar Adl: 10:56

Yeah. One of the, customers that we're working with is that there's mainly two, main, domains that we, hear that, uh, is helping our customers. One is transparency. So it's, about, teams coming together. They, always have the latest information and they, know where, the links are, so I'll give you an example. Let's say you put a roadmap on the dashboard and somebody points to a component or a feature and says, well, this is going to be delayed. So what, what is that going to do to our portfolio? You can pull all the products, for example, that that portfolio is, is using, or it's impacted by. And, you know, these are the latest versions, uh, you know, that it's approved and it, you know, these are the, source of truth for that information. This is compared to having spreadsheets and PowerPoints and trying to keep them up to date and they all link to each other and you need to kind of make, make sure that they're all, you know, in, in, unison and sinked up,

Tom Raftery: 11:55

And have you got the latest version?

Maziar Adl: 11:58

Exactly. And it's not only that, you know, that they sometimes circulate this stuff in the email and, you know, know which email was the latest. So it becomes a little bit, uh, difficult to, to maintain. So that's one thing. It was transparency in the organization. People having access to information. And as single source of truth, for discussion. The other one is a medium where the information is at your fingertips. So when you're gathering in a group and having a conversation about your long-term roadmap, If you need to make adjustments, the adjustments can be made right there. And, for example, you can search through the products or plans. You can pull anything you need and you can make adjustments to it. We can see the feedback, but in other words, you can be in a meeting and your meetings are much more productive at that time. We even heard from one of our customers that before they had this product they would go into meetings and everybody had a different standard in reporting. Like each group had a different standard of reporting their, business case or product roadmap. And then the person sitting on top of making decisions would ask and he would get different levels of information depending on which group they would go to. So a lot of times the meetings would adjourn with a follow-up saying, okay, you go, gather this information. Let's come back and meet again. So, so we can kind of discuss this. And these are high profile. These are decisions that need to be made, and these decisions have high impact on many parts of the organization. So you want these decisions to not only be accurate, but also fast. So, so that those are the two areas that, we hear from our customers that this product is helping them. ok

Tom Raftery: 13:43

and you mentioned automotive is, or are you just for automotive? Or there other sectors that you think, well, are there other sectors that you're playing in or are there other sectors that you think you would be valuable to play in?

Maziar Adl: 13:59

Actually, we are more active in industrial machinery at the moment but, yes, products that have, a level of complexity that you need to bring multiple teams together to work on, different parts of the product. And then you bring them to bring these parts together to or teams together release the final product, maybe on a platform. Those are the industries that are prime for us, or you have an industry that have a relatively good sized portfolio of products that they offer. That's also a, good, candidate for, our products. The point being that you have multiple teams and you need a body to coordinate, bringing these teams together to produce the product. and these are all product teams. So they have these components and they're working. So in a car, for example, you have a team that works on engine and they're constantly working on releasing the new version of the engine or researching the engines that they have to put in their, uh, car. And therefore those product managers are focused on that area. of the car. So those are some good candidates, for our product.

Tom Raftery: 15:09

Okay. And then there'd be another, team working on maybe the brakes and another on the suspension and another, on the exhaust. And you bring them all together on your platform so that they can not just see in their own individual teams, but also they can see the overall progress is that it?

Maziar Adl: 15:25

Exactly. So if you think about it, the last thing you want is, I mean, engine is obvious, but the last thing you want to do is have teams completely independent, even though they're, for example, they can all use the same brake, but they're all building their own brakes. And now your cost goes up, complexity goes up, coordination goes up and you don't know if these products are going to be in line or not, but where you can, you want to bring a good balance between differentiating the product and, finding common, components or common, parts to kind of reduce the complexity, uh, moving forward on that, platform. So it's a, it's a balancing act but without a tool like this, it's very hard to coordinate between teams at a high level and make sure that, uh, everybody's aware of what's available and how, what other teams are doing that they can then use in their platform.

Tom Raftery: 16:18

Okay. Very good. And where to from here, I mean, obviously the end goal is, you know, world domination, but between here and there, what are the plans?

Maziar Adl: 16:29

Well, we're, we're still, onboarding new customers and these Tom, some of them take time because they have a complex organization and they need to, get trained, adopted data loaded. So, we are in the process of, doing that, but obviously our, our hope is that, we expand in this, area, but also to bring in more and more facilities for, strategic steering of, the portfolio, including some, decisioning. So for example, if people come in with ideas on how to, uh, let's say for example, the company has an ambition saying we by 2035, we're all going to be electric. Now give all your ideas on how to get there. So when people come in and, supply their ideas, we want to be able to categorize them and also, but also to help score them and prioritize them for them and then manage the life cycle to put them on the roadmap and track them through its fruition. So those are some of the future things that we're currently working to enhance the capabilities of this team going forward. And I'm hoping that our customers would come on this journey and, enjoy these new capabilities that we continuously bring to them.

Tom Raftery: 17:40

Okay. Okay. I'm just in the back of my mind, I'm hearing that and I'm hearing people, adding ideas and them being integrated and ranked, and I'm thinking, does that mean then that you could have a leaderboard of people who come up with ideas?

Maziar Adl: 17:56

Exactly. So usually what happens is ideas come up, come from different parts of the organization, but you, I guess you can call them a steering call or a product board team that has to review and also, clarify and then rank them to see which ideas. They have to execute first and what ideas are probably better than the others if they're are competing. But having that channel for people to be able to submit their ideas, and then the facility or the platform for people to come and review and make decisions on those ideas. Um, but also, I mean, there are products that do that today, but the more important thing is once those decisions are made, how easy it is to then take those ideas and integrate them into your roadmap and drop them on your roadmap and then see them through as opposed to taking them from one product, putting it in another and then managing it separately. It's about this integrated, you know, one place to work on all of them.

Tom Raftery: 18:55

Okay, very good. Okay, Maziar, we are coming to the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I have not asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this that we haven't touched on, that you think it's important for people to be aware of.

Maziar Adl: 19:11

Not really. I think, you, you do a great job in, covering, everything. The only other, item that I can add is, it also helps in general product teams and product team can be a combination of product managers, product owners, or it can be product managers, finance, and marketing. It helps them understand their relationships. And sometimes it ends up with, I don't want to say reorganization of the company, but it creates new bridges and channels. Between the teams when they bring them all on, on this dashboard and they start communicating and collaborating with each other. I think that, you see a more meaningful relationship in these organizations and between the groups.

Tom Raftery: 19:52

Very nice. Very nice. Cool. Maziar, that's been really interesting if people want to know more about yourself or about Gocious or any of the things we talked about in the podcast today. Where would you have me direct them?

Maziar Adl: 20:05

Obviously, they can always come to our website. It's Gocious dot com and, there, they can, uh, see a lot of, places where they can request a free demo, we would have, people in person, showcase the product to them. No strings attached. And, uh, on top of that, you can always, contact me, which is M A Z I A R dot adl@gocious.com. Or Adam Shaki our, head of, business development, he is, a D a M dot S C H a L K e@gocious.com. And I can send you all that information for, for later, if you want to present it.

Tom Raftery: 20:45

Sure. I'll put that all in the show notes that people are, have access to it. I never asked where did the name Gocious come from?

Maziar Adl: 20:51

That's a very interesting story, we were actually brainstorming on, on a name for the company and, uh, we, kind of brainstorm on different things, but you know, in a startup, I guess, especially in this day and age, you want to have the option to be agile and flexible. I told you that we already did a pivot once. So, uh, for us, what mattered was we wanted a name to make it ourselves, make it. You know ourselves. So we wanted a name that really didn't mean much, but in the same time, so we could make it ours, but in the same time we want it to have energy. And, when we were brainstorming, you know, the word Gocious to us seemed, you know, go is kind of a driven thing. And, Gocious is kind of a happy thing in our mind. So we, we wanted that to be reflective of our culture.

Tom Raftery: 21:41

Nice. Nice. Go get them.

Maziar Adl: 21:43

Yeah, exactly.

Tom Raftery: 21:46

Super, super, super Maziar, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Maziar Adl: 21:51

Thank you so much.

Tom Raftery: 21:53

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digital supply chain, or, or simply drop me an email to Tom dot Raftery @ sap.com. If you'd like to show, please, don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application at choice to get new episodes, as soon as they are published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks catch you all next time.