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See how Digibee’s contemporary “all in one” approach unlocks modern integrations especially when compared to traditional Legacy Platforms.
See how Digibee’s contemporary “all in one” approach unlocks modern integrations especially when compared to traditional Legacy Platforms.
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Digibee’s Foundations Workshop is an initiative aiming to expand the knowledge of our users in more complex integration contexts, such as internal IT challenges or external challenges with partners of your business ecosystem.
During this introductory instructor-led training, customers can get familiar with the fundamental concepts of the Digibee Integration Platform: build your first pipeline and deploy your first integration during the class. This 3-hour session allows users to acquire practical knowledge and be more prepared to develop their integration pipelines.
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In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, sits down with Digibee’s Head of Education & AI Fabricio Inocencio, to discuss the exciting world of continuing education for Digibee – including Digibee’s own learning Academy. Fabricio shares his passion for delivering useful content and a friendly learning experience for users, primarily focused on enabling developers first and foremost. His job consists of evaluating how to deliver useful content for our customers, how to deliver a conducive user-friendly experience, and how to grow our adoption and community.
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CAIT PORTE:
Hello and welcome to Integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte. And in this episode, I’m joined by Fabricio, the Head of Education here at Digibee.
Welcome, Fabricio.
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
Thank you, Cait. Thank you for having me here.
CAIT PORTE:
I’m very excited for this topic today. So what does it mean to be head of education? What does that translate to for you?
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
I can divide my work in three buckets. The first one is how can we deliver useful content for our users in using the platform? So everything related to development content, courses, tutorials, and everything related to that. A second one, is related to learning experience. How can we deliver useful, friendly user experience and mostly a learning experience that can make their job in learning easier. The third one is more related to user adoption. How can we grow our community to attract more users and foster the engagement in order to use the resources that we are providing to them?
CAIT PORTE:
I think it’s really important when we think about the specific type of people that we’re targeting with the platform, which are developers, how are we servicing them? Right? And so when we speak to education, it’s so important that people understand not only the work that they’re doing, but the tools that are being used. So when you think about, we brought you on board to help with redesigning the educational experience for Digibee. How did you do that? Right. How did you think about redefining and redesigning the educational experience for Digibee?
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
Perfect. Interesting question, Cait. And we start with the beginning that it’s a different user. So if we see educational resources in general, we used to put education as an end. People study to get a certification and then do something else with that. Actually, we want to help our users to use the platform, not necessarily to get a certification. So in this case, education is more like a mean rather than an end.
And there are some implications that we need to take into consideration. For example, we don’t want to measure how much time they spend in the platform, actually in the platform, I mean the learning platform. Actually, we want them to use the Digibee platform. And the learning platform is just a resource for them to help to not be stuck or to get evolved their skills using in the platform. So we thinking about some strategies that we are using.
We are using the approach more “just in time” rather than “just in case.” For example, we do not provide a lot of content for them for just in case they can use. Actually this should be more just in time. And we need to take into consideration concepts like cognitive load, limited attention, and things that we want to put in place to provide a better learning experience for them.
CAIT PORTE:
When we were catching up earlier, you mentioned that platform selection was very much dictated by our user base and you referenced those things just before. Thinking about the difference between a student teacher type of engagement versus self paced learning for developers and people learning the platform. So that the end result, as you were saying, wasn’t just a certificate, but it was more “I want to use this platform over and over and how do I find the information when I need” it versus all at once for this certification.
How have you measured the impact of the success that we’ve seen from the platform? Because it feels like the change has been successful. But how are you going to look at the success in terms of metrics?
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
Oh, perfect. And it’s interesting because in the context that you brought related to how the users they learn, we need to take into consideration that we may have users that are using the platform in a linear way, learning things from scratch and in a nonlinear way that they can use the platform whatever they need. So we needed to think our metrics in a way that we could measure how the learning platform had been useful for them, considering those multiple approaches.
So one first metric that we put in place is of course the new users, how many new users we are bringing to the platform, giving our client space. And this help us to understand how we are creating the awareness and attractiveness of the platform for them. And once they are there, we measure their user stickiness, right? So we compare daily active users with monthly active users because we understand that if they are going frequently accessing the platform, probably we are helping them in the daily basis. So it’s more lifelong learning approach, it’s an ongoing basis approach. It’s not a thing that start and there’s an end, it’s a process. So we need to provide resources that can help them in a journey, not something that’s going to have an end.
And finally, and this is the most challenging, is how can we measure the learning effectiveness? And it’s not necessarily by grading, right? It’s not necessarily to see that grades. And we came up with how could the learning be useful? If the learning is useful for them, they are using the platform by their own. So we measure pipeline, how they are using and creating integration pipelines in the platform by their own, not with any help. So this is what we call the self sufficiency metric for how they are totally autonomous in using the platform. And we measure and you understand the co hosts that are using the platform and how they are progressing in deploying new pipelines without any help.
CAIT PORTE:
I think for those listening, thinking about implementing an education platform, overall it’s helpful not to just look at “hey, how many people use the platform and how many people have taken courses or completed activities or searched for content?” But in are you seeing an improvement in the amount that someone is using your product or service as a result of having better education and better tooling to support the users? So, I love that. That’s an area that we’re focused on.
When we’re thinking about licensing software based on Digibee’s experience and your past experience, what’s the biggest impact of having an educational experience like ours when you’re licensing software?
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
Perfect. I think that every product team aims to foster adoption, right, the product adoption and in our case, software. And by not knowing how to use the software, it’s a great friction for that adoption. Right. And there’s different learning curves that users can overcome this learning curve in order to start to grow in their skills in using any software platform or product or mainly digital product. So in this sense, we can think that a product team, if they have offering a software that it’s easy to use and is not complex, it’s very simple to use, maybe an onboarding program can be enough to help these users to overcome this learning curve so they are able to explore all functionalities of that software.
But in our case, despite we are a low code platform and it’s a platform that is easy to use, there’s a lot of capabilities, there’s a lot of complexities that can be solved by using the platform. So, the learning resources are really important to help the users to go through this learning curve as soon as they can in order to use all the capabilities that the software can offer.
CAIT PORTE:
Very well said. What are some of your favorite educational experiences? I know mine, we were talking about this, but I teach part time myself, so I’m familiar with a number of platforms but we talked about a bunch. What are some of your favorite ones?
FABRICIO INOCENCIO:
In this case, because we are focused on delivering a self-paced platform, I really like the platforms that can add a lot of technology features for interactivity and a way to try to replicate at most they could the relationship that students may have with an instructor.
So in this case, we get inspired by some ad tech platforms in the educational industry, for example, Pluralsight and Code Academy, that they focus more on tech as a general and also DataCamp and Dataquest that focus more on data science teaching. And they are really interesting platforms, providing those features related to interactivity, live, self grading or feedback that can provide this self paced rhythm for the student but also trailhead from Salesforce. That interesting way to organize the content with some gamification features that we are getting inspired as well. So I think that those are five interesting examples that I can mention.
CAIT PORTE:
They’re so good and we would be remiss not to mention stuff like Salesforce and I think platforms like Google for Google Analytics and other training that they have. I mean, there’s a wealth of knowledge out there and packaging it up between those platforms has been inspiring to watch.
Fabricio, thank you so much for joining me today. We very much value having education at the forefront of what we do here at Digibee.
It has been a pleasure and I am sure we will have you back for more as we start working on more education that we share. That’s it for this episode of Integration. Redesigned. See you next time.
Learn how Digibee’s iPaaS is changing the way the world thinks about integrations – transforming processes and maximizing developers innovative work.
Interview with Duncan McFadden, enterprise platform support for ServiceNow at Lowe’s, discussing how Digibee’s iPaaS transformed their shipping logistics.
In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, interviewed Duncan McFadden, enterprise platform support for ServiceNow at Lowe’s (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Lowes), to discuss how Digibee’s iPaaS transformed their shipping logistics. By partnering with Digibee and implementing a modern shipping integration solution, Lowe’s saw improvements in error monitoring, logging, and email notifications, resulting overall in better performance and reduced manual efforts. Duncan also expressed his intention to utilize Digibee for future projects, particularly in inventory and asset management, which are crucial aspects of Lowe’s operations.
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CAIT PORTE:
Hello and welcome back to integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte, and in this episode,I am joined by Duncan from Lowe’s. Duncan, welcome.
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
Thank you, guys.
CAIT PORTE:
Duncan, we’ve worked together now with Lowe’s for a little while. Why don’t you tell everybody what your role there is over at Lowe’s?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
So. My name is Duncan McFadden. I handle enterprise platform support for ServiceNow. I’ve been doing it for roughly four to five years now. Whether it’s been from just handling enhancements and defects to now more handling the actual platform itself from like, license structure, platform upgrades, and all that kind of support.
CAIT PORTE:
So Duncan, thank you for joining us. Tell me what prompted Lowe’s, when you think about how Lowe’s is working with ServiceNow and integration, but what prompted you to look for an integration solution?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
So at the time, we were just about to start working a defect related to all of our shipping integrations, where a lot of stuff was just getting like, random errors. At the time, we weren’t really logging anything just because we had nothing really set up from IT, at least from that background. Honestly, we weren’t really looking for an integration solution. It just happened to be due to the friendship of other individuals that they started working for Digibee. And we were able to look at that solution holistically and start to work something together.
CAIT PORTE:
So tell me a little bit more about this shipping situation. We know that Lowe’s provides amazing customer service. I’m a Lowe’s customer. There’s one around the corner that I hate to admit that I frequent so often. We’re always doing home projects, but when you think about this from a consumer standpoint, obviously we care about shipping notifications, but was there an impact to consumer behavior here or was this primarily internal logistics? What was going on?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
So this would be just internal logistics. Related to movement of IT equipment. So when you think about, let’s say, like, the phones, like, your signature captures that obviously you’re doing your payment methods through, any of those kind of items where we’re moving stuff. It’s a different FedEx account than what you’d see from like a consumer level. So, we’re just not sure if there was like a disconnect there. But we were using kind of like. An old version of their integrations, which was like soap based. Granted, again, it was built in 2017, but obviously Digibee was able to help us move to a more modern solution of the shipping integration.
CAIT PORTE:
It’s interesting to hear 2017 referenced as, like, a long time ago, but you think about technology changing every day and new things coming out. We want to have our companies on the latest and greatest of technologies without the legacy holding us back. When you think about before and after and what the outcome was in using Digibee to power these integrations, what are you seeing now as a result of that implementation?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
So, I think in the past we could say there was at least a 5% to 10% plus disconnect when it comes to sometimes showing like delivered statuses. Sometimes, I mean, the status would not even show anything. It would just show that the tracking was just sitting there, doing nothing. One, we’re seeing those, from like a logging perspective a lot better, because obviously you can see logs tremendously better when it comes to Digibee’s platform. As well as making sure we know that those alerts are happening. So obviously all that stuff is being sent back to our platform and we’re able to see some of that stuff through email notifications. It does seem that we’re getting a better, or at least a lower rate, of issues. I would still say there’s probably like a 2% when it comes to – but I want to say this is more like a FedEx-related question. But yeah, it’s definitely working a lot better. Again, obviously to speed to market of not having to do some of these extra logging tables and doing some of that extra work just to be done from our side was nice. And yeah, I mean, the tool is really easy to show someone what’s going on.
CAIT PORTE:
I love there were two things that you referenced there. One of the things that we talk about is the ability to drive down your backlog. So Duncan, has there been anything that you’ve been able to see as an output now that you’re no longer worried about this shipping situation where, “hey, yeah, those notifications are going out, we’re not seeing as many errors. I don’t have to react to feedback or questions or monitoring or issues.”
Is there anything now that you’re able to get to as a result? Has that been something that’s come as a result?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
Yes! So, while we were working this with you guys, I was actually doing some other enhancements when it came to some parts of shipping and receiving. And I guess an example would be at the time someone had to manually receive stuff, right. Because we’re concerned with obviously that delivered status being correct at the time with the old integration. So, someone was manually receiving product to actually show the movement of assets to the stores. So, obviously this is more like a holistic asset management approach. But, with that, right, now that we know that the delivered
status is a little bit more refined and able to be known that it’s correct, we moved everything to be back to automatic receiving. So, obviously you’re taking – I think we took about three users off of manually receiving stuff. When you look at the hours of time spent per year, something like they were wasting probably like $15K-$18K on it per year. I mean, granted, this is just hour based, but that alone, right? I mean, that speaks volumes. How quick – while you guys were doing the integration, I’m obviously doing other work and we’re able to just push out more stuff together that way.
CAIT PORTE:
Yeah, I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast is my background is in product and product management, and so I have a soft spot for the ability to get more work done, particularly for development, because you can then say, “hey, we’re going to focus on these really crucial, more innovative things, so that’s because we have this ability unlocked,” right? So it’s not to say you no longer need those three individuals or that your time is no longer needed related to this integration, you just can now focus those resources on other more crucial things. It sounds like.
You also mentioned that the platform allows for more visibility. Can you tell me about what you’re showing and who you’re showing it to? You referenced that earlier.
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
Yeah. So currently it’s really more like a reference point to only me and one other individual, but it’s more just being able to see those logs. With a lot of your more traditional, say, like, platforms as a service, you’re not going to have that much built when it comes to logging, out of the box. Without having to really stand up a good enterprise logging solution at that point. And then obviously, you run into a lot of factors of how big those tables become? How do we make sure security around some
of that stuff? So, actually just having it within Digibee and being able to see it easily and quickly for whatever request I want to look at does make things a lot easier. Right? Because obviously we know where the errors are. They’re going to be bucketed to wherever they are, and then we can just work to fix those issues really quickly.
CAIT PORTE:
Duncan, you’re referencing a number of things that we’ve talked about.
Has the ability or the usage of Digibee now highlighted, “hey, I can use this in other areas?” Are there things where you’re saying, “hey, there’s this opportunity that exists at Lowe’s, or I see this challenge, or this problem, or this service is falling down where I can now insert Digibee?”
And maybe you can talk a little bit about what you’ve seen as a result of the ease of use that we’ve talked about so far.
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
Oh, definitely! From our side, right, we’re just kind of on a hold when it comes to some integrations. But, I definitely will be using Digibee for the future. I could definitely say we’re going to be working on a pretty big project here soon related to some other kind of forms of inventory and asset management. But, when you think about inventory and asset management, that spans very large. When it comes to Lowe’s, and I mean all companies, right, they’re going to care about their inventory and asset management a lot.
CAIT PORTE:
Inventory and asset management not only matters for the consumer, matters for the business. What do we have? How much room do we have? How do we think about what’s coming in and what’s going out? Especially when you’re talking about big physical products used for home improvement. So, all that space really matters when it comes to laying out your store, thinking about your trucking, and anything that’s getting from point A to point B being available for the consumer. So, I could imagine that there’s a ton on your plate, potentially, for how can I use this technology to improve some of that or to optimize what we’re doing today?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s such small things that most people don’t think about asset management that it adds up really quickly. When you start looking at like, dollar amounts, it’s very crucial to keep it in check, I’ve learned.
CAIT PORTE:
Are you looking at a lot of the dollar amounts related to the work that you’re doing or having an impact on? Is that a part of your role?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
It is now, yes. We are looking to kind of watch what’s the difference between efficiency gains or if we can kind of move some of our – because we track, obviously, the amount of hours for certain work – so we’re going to track against efficiency gain, whatever, like CPECs and OPECs for a lot of stuff. So, it is a very big thing to my new team. I will say that at least the ServiceNow space has moved around to different departments and now it is kind of like a bigger focus.
CAIT PORTE:
Did you look at any other iPaaS solutions as you were evaluating and trying to solve this problem?
DUNCAN McFADDEN:
I personally did not. I, again, was very trusting of the individuals that I did work with with Digibee, and did take everything from what they said. And I mean, it worked exactly as we wanted, so there’s really no real reason to look for a different solution at the time.
CAIT PORTE:
Well, we love to hear that, right? We’re very happy that Digibee is having an impact on what you’re doing at the business. Duncan, thank you so much for spending time with me today.
For everyone joining us, thank you so much for joining. It’s been a pleasure. Again, my name is Cait. This is integration. Redesigned. Brought to you by Digibee. And thanks for joining me.
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With host Cait Porte, Chief Marketing Officer at Digibee
In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Digibee’s Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, is joined by Field Chief Technology Officer for Latin America, Andre Campos, for a discussion exploring IT departments. Cait and Andre cover topics including how IT departments have evolved, building them, the current perceptions around them, the challenges they face and ways to overcome those challenges, the importance of collaboration between IT and other departments, and the crucial role these departments can play to deliver significant value to their company. One perception in particular discussed is the significant expense of IT for companies while IT struggles to demonstrate their value. Cait and Andre cover how prioritizing IT departments to drive digital transformation efforts can become a competitive advantage for businesses.
CAIT PORTE:
Welcome back to another episode. I’m Cait Porte, your host. And today we are talking with our Digibee Field CTO for Latin America, Andre Campos. Welcome, Andre.
ANDRE CAMPOS:
Hi Cait. It’s good to be here again.
CAIT PORTE:
Thank you for joining us.
Very excited about the topic today, which is building an IT department and why that is seen as such a huge expense for a company. I think I may know the headline here, but very happy to have you to talk about this.
I think we’ve talked about digital transformation a number of times on the podcast and I think we will continue to do that. When we think about digital transformation, it’s a necessary evil, as we say, because we have to do this – IT teams and departments and all of the technology we have available relevant – and it’s expensive and takes longer typically than you expect, creating some frustration between everyone working on anything related to digital transformation and trying to limit the amount of cross-functional frustration that happens. Right?
Rodrigo talked about how IT departments have lost a little bit of credibility even though they’re so crucial, now more than ever. So why is this the case at some companies? From your experience and past life, what are you seeing? Why are we seeing such a friction between the necessary evil of getting them and where there’s an expense?
ANDRE CAMPOS:
I think that we are in a changing period. If you go back in history 20 years ago and thinking about history 20 years is not so. That time, IT was responsible for support business and to keep everything up and running. And every new project took a lot of time and was hard to implement. Everything was manual, and was hard to meet business expectations because of the lack of technology, the lack of understanding. There was not much partners to work together to deliver what was expected. And I think that the combination of everything has created the bad reputation of IT and it’s been hard to change it through the years. It’s been changing, but we are in the middle of this change.
CAIT PORTE:
I love that and I think we’re trying to shift the tide, right? And we’re trying to change that perspective or perception of IT.
When we think about where we are, what do you see as maybe the top challenge that IT departments are faced with in trying to get the support that they need to deliver?
ANDRE CAMPOS:
I think that we have to always remember that transformation is not about technology, it’s about people. It’s not about how technology will think, will change everything, but how people will use technology to change everything. I know it’s not that strong, but it’s different. So, how are you going to use the right technology, the right partners, to help people changing their daily basis work? Or help people changing the relationship they have with their customers or the other business that are partners? So handling it, thinking about the business need as the center of everything is key to change and to accelerate the digital transformation.
CAIT PORTE:
I agree with that being on the receiving end of digital transformation in the past. But, for a company that doesn’t see IT as a default department sort of just say “yes, we have to have this, because…” When a business isn’t built on technology, how do companies, in your opinion, approach technology, digital transformation, with a mindset that it is a competitive advantage, not just another expense?
ANDRE CAMPOS:
I think it is a matter of natural selection. All the companies that – well we are in the moment that we are having changings in the customer behaviors, in the relation between business to business – so there is a lot of things that has to be changed. So, if the company doesn’t face it as something that will make the business better, more performative to match customer expectations, it will be something that will leave them behind the others. They don’t want to create a differentiator, they’ll just be another company and the customer will definitely select another provider. So, it’s key to start this transformation.
CAIT PORTE:
Interesting comment there. And I think many companies are faced with is it the people, is it the technology? Is it a mindset shift that we move toward? And, what is going to impact the bottom line? So when you look at those things – I mean, you already mentioned people, you already mentioned that you can’t just get technology – what would you give as a recommendation for other teams to say hey, let’s get it to perform at its best? And, to deliver the most for the company?
ANDRE CAMPOS:
I think that this evolution, this change is happening now. And, I think that is happening in a lot of different dimensions. We have more technology available, so it’s easier and faster to find platforms that can help this process, to find good partners, to help these partners. I think that we, you and me, we are immersed in a lot of technology. We have smartphones, we see Netflix and streaming and everything. We can have everything faster. So, we now know how technology can help us in our lives. And I think that because of the changes and the need of meet customers expectations to change the way we relate with other business, this pressure is making the business and IT departments work better together. So, it’s been easier to bring IT from the “doer department” to a “strategic department.” This is the right moment to do that.
And, I think that the pandemic has accelerated that. Putting IT in now because of the restrictions we had. IT was the most important part to allow the business to keep running. And, I think that knowing business better, having business and technology working together, this is the most important change to go through the digital transformation.
CAIT PORTE:
I was thinking about this earlier. In past lives I’ve worked in a product capacity, and the most success – and I know that you are coming from a CIO background and experience, right? I’m assuming that you’d echo this – in that the most success that we’ve had is when as a product team, we’ve presented from a business lens to the IT department to say, “hey, this is the challenge we’re trying to solve. Help us figure out how to do that.” As opposed to very prescriptively, “here’s the solution, go get it done.” And I think that has always been the case. But there’s certainly more success when we really involve IT from the beginning in solving a problem and utilizing that skill set.
ANDRE CAMPOS:
Exactly. Yeah, that’s it. My point of view, IT is the most important agent of change. Knowing better the business and knowing technology. And most important than that, knowing how to apply technology in benefit of the business. So having IT involved since the beginning, applying the right technology, having the right partners. This is very important to have success process.
CAIT PORTE:
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Andre, for joining us today. Always a pleasure to have you on. Love to hear the experience about how we can make IT teams look good again, right? And deliver that value.
So thank you for joining us.
ANDRE CAMPOS:
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.
The business case for integration has never been stronger. This infographic highlights some of the findings of Digibee’s 2023 State of Enterprise Integration report.
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