Corey Dickens with Brightly

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

brightly, solution, company, palo alto networks, manufacturing, siemens, work, team, upward mobility, tools, coming, Corey, cmms, ot, industrial, commuting, product, asset, point, focus

00:00

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00:56

Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go

01:14

Alright, once again, welcome to Industrial Talk a platform dedicated industrial professionals all around the world, you're bold, you're brave, you're daring greatly you innovate, you solve problems, you are making the world a much better place to live. Thank you very much for what you do pointing at the video at you. You're the you're the hero in this story. And we are broadcasting at SMRP 31st annual conference, it is bigger than it's ever been. It is magnificent. And we have wonderful people that are walking around and vendors that are really keen on solving the challenges of today. You need to go out to SMRP.org get engaged. If you're in the world of maintenance. If you're in the world of reliability. If you're in the world of asset management and everything in between SMRP.org Make it happen. You get to beat people like Corey who's in the hot seat, right leaves the company. Let's get a correction. Corey How you doing?

02:13

I'm doing well. Scott, how about you no complaints?

02:15

You wouldn't listen to me anyway.

02:17

I would. You would I would

02:22

want to share my dirty laundry. No way. But I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

02:27

Have you gotten a chance to go out to the pool? You know, we're in Orlando. Beautiful weather, right? Nope.

02:32

I've been stuck in the salt mine right here the whole day, every day. And I can't. It's one of those things where I don't want to miss out on the great conversations. And so if it's there, it's there. And I want to have that conversation and have have the chat around as IT management, whatever maintenance and whatever tools, which are pretty doggone cool and Brightly got a cool tool. Before we get into that. Give us a little background on him. Korea's

02:59

Okay, so I am a Senior Solutions Consultant on the manufacturing team at bright light. As Jason, you'd met last year at Fabtech, which is a fantastic, awesome show. We touch many verticals. I focus on manufacturing, I came from manufacturing, before manufacturing and running maintenance teams and trying to stand up CMMS is and solve today's and tomorrow's problem utilizing technologies. I was in the Navy. So I used Oh, thanks for your service. Thank you I use the most complex tools you can imagine. And the most antiquated fashions and try to figure out how to tell story, tell stories with data had to be perceptions with data, I had to turn subjective conversations into objective.

03:44

What do you mean by that? Subjective to the objective

03:48

instead of gut feels? Who has the quote? I think it's Deming says without data, you're just another person with an opinion.

03:56

Oh, no, they go. So that's what that was your objective?

04:01

That has always been my objective is to stop playing the who's who or he said she said game. Play the they're talking about numbers, right? When we're going into business conversations, justifying the ROI of adding these new tools, technologies or modernizing our approach takes money. It takes money to make money. So you got to beat them at their own game because they're looking at just the pure cost. So you need to show them either the ROI or the cost of inaction.

04:29

So take us through let's Briley let's let's just let's just be real. When we start talking about CMMS there's a lot of companies out there that provide a platform that is called a CMMS. Yes. Tell me about brightly.

04:44

Brightly is going to be celebrating their 25th year as a company this year. So 20 by who really started in 1999 as a CMMS for schools, specifically schools. It started in Coates, North Carolina They grew so large because it was such a need, and they made it an easy tool to use. Well, one time they had I think 70% of K through 12. And the US was using school dude. I mean, we had people coming to our annual user conference, they had tattoos of school dude on their arm. They love that that much school dude school like dude, like, Dude, Where's My Car? Yeah, school dude. They spin up a sister company and Oh, seven called facility dude, again, different buying cycles between different entities, mainly facility management to that point. And then if people are familiar with CMMS, is the dude solutions acquired a company called Bigfoot CMMS in 2017, and it was manufacturing asset centric CMMS, it was very data driven, where before the solutions were very ease of use work order based, this became more asset centric. And then that's the product that we revamped, and we've pushed the market ever since.

05:56

So it's been around for a number of years,

05:57

the company has been around and again, the names have changed so much school do facility do dude solutions, we've made like 10 acquisitions over the years. So we've brought in a lot of great products and companies to build out these portfolios, where we're not just a point solution for CMMS. Inside of the verticals we serve, we have additional products to create a suite to meet all their operational challenges.

06:21

So how outside of that outside of the pedigree that exists within brightly and of course, all the acquisitions that have taken place as marvelous. How do you find brightly as how do you differentiate from the other, the noise out there,

06:37

there's a lot of noise. I think some statistics say 400 Plus SEMA messes in the space. And, unfortunately, a lot just keep going for the same market share. And there's these overgeneralize solutions. And I say that in brightly is a pretty general solution to but we take specific approaches to different industries. And again, we complement those from a CMS perspective, with other products that help solve today and tomorrow's challenge in that industry. brightly, especially from a manufacturing standpoint, again, that's where our product was built for that focus. So when people like, Oh, we're gonna do school dude isn't focus on manufacturing was like what our product is. And then from there 25 years, you learn the right way to do things, you learn the wrong ways to do things, and then you learn from those mistakes, right? We've been through those rough patches as a company, and we've come out bigger and stronger. Coming out from that now, we're not private equity backed, either. We're owned by Siemens as a strategic company. So that's only going to further obviously, the funding that is coming in, they're going to give us direction. Siemens has been around for 175 years.

07:38

Yeah.

07:39

Yeah, we, we all know, Siemens,

07:43

yeah, let's put it that way. Everyone does. Yeah, they're there again, because that's why we're such a good fit. They're in public infrastructure. They're in education. They're in manufacturing, obviously. So we're working with those independent teams to have those synergies. But again, Siemens is coming in focusing, they bring the expertise to the table to we've generally had to go seek out. Now we have all that internally. So as far as your question about the noise in the market, we have the experience, we're not the new kid on the block, we might not be the flashiest things, but that's fine. We have the workflows that are built out over time learning what makes sense, what does not how do we not want to overcomplicate things, but also, sometimes you need a breadth or depth of robust functionality, right? So you have you have solutions here that are on the high end with complete customization. It's really your tool, you buy it, you build it how you want. Some people like that some people don't. There are others that want very easy to use tools. But then again, they hit a wall and they kind of grow out of it pretty soon. They're like, what's the next challenge tomorrow's problem, we're trying to strike that sweet spot. So if you want to look at it, like an enterprise or entry level to a middle tier solution, I would say we're the middle tier solution. Yeah, but

08:55

it possesses some capabilities for for customization. That's right. It's not everybody. And I guarantee it. Everybody has said I just want to buy it off the shelf. Yep. And then when that happens, they realize, like, like an hour into the implementation. Yep. That they want some customization they're too limited at that point. Right. And but there's appears to be a nice balance that I see here, but with the, with the Siemens pedigree too, as well, that brings a lot of a lot of knowledge, a lot of depth a lot. And I think you're right, there's that real sweet spot in the middle. Not too simple, not too complex. So with that said, if I came to you and I said, hey, I'm interested, of course, you need to define everything. What's the typical implementation time for brightly?

09:46

Again, we take different options to it. Now there are ones where small teams like myself, when I stood up our CMMS and I embedded some of the solutions out there in the space. Again, it gave me that upward mobility to grow into but it also saves On today's problem efficiently and easily, I stood up the program, my timeline was about 45 days. And it was me being assigned trainings through an LMS tool, and then getting assistance on a weekly cadence of getting my asset registry built in teaching me how to build preventive maintenance schedules, right. So it was a slow roll. Now there are more advanced options where we can send our brightly consultants to your facility for a week or two, do data migration and data work for you either on site or prior to and then also train the trainer, train your team go out collect asset information, right? So we can help augment because you can't stop what you're doing for a week to give us 40 hours of time you have a team, you have operations happening, you still gotta send product out the door, you have to meet timelines. So how can we augment and supplement that that timeline could be further out to nine to your plus days at that point, right? We

10:53

have still, we're tight. That's really all it is. But

10:56

after that it's not like it's not buying an on prem solution where you have to pay for an additional support package. With SAS that's included. Yeah. And we have a three ring service. That was a big thing about brightly this year different when we talked to Jason. We're pushing 1000 people as a software company internationally now. That's substantial. And with that, we've also rolled out 24/7 365, three ring support, and you always get a brightly employee to answer your question.

11:23

So you're never left alone. Now. Why would you want to help

11:26

reach out there's the phone, there's email, there's a chat in the app. And I taught myself to use a software and our help guide feature. So anything I coordinated? No, again, I did my demo. I forgot half the information. I went through my input to implementation, I was very focused on certain elements. Six months later, I solved that problem. What's the next one? And how does this solution helped me?

11:48

No kidding. So you use the the available training tools that were in learned yourself?

11:54

I always equate it to the Haynes manual. You go by Autozone for Yeah, truck, right. You go buy a new pickup truck, you're like, Well, I don't know anything about this. Let me go by the Haynes manual, you know, teach me everything I need to know

12:05

how long have you been with the brightly? Two and a half years, it's still very young.

12:09

It's not alone. I'm still learning a lot. But I love it. And again, it came from using the product specifically. And a lot of solution vendors here have people like me on their teams, people that use their product, because that's the most value is it's one thing to have, we always want raving customers, right? We want our customers to tell our story better than we can because they're the ones who are coming to these conferences that sometimes we might not be able to attend. But the same time having someone like me on the team that used it even on a smaller scale is still very valuable. But

12:38

you you used it in your prior work and manufacturing. What were you manufacturing? Textile?

12:45

No way really? Yeah.

12:47

So the company I worked for, started in Austria, way back in the day. And the gentleman from Volvo when he needed the seatbelt, came to our company, a global company and said I need this. lovin, can you do this? So the first seatbelt was woven by our company. That's pretty cool. And I'm sure if I was in charge of still maintaining the exact same equipment that wove the first female It was then oh, they don't make them anymore. Right. So again, Korea's job now is to come in and extend asset lifecycle by trying to become more proactive or meet, move the needle because we're just firefighting at that point.

13:29

And did you, we started to,

13:32

and then you now you're over brightly? Well,

13:34

at that point, I had some things going on my life, right, starting a young family, I have two little girls under two now. I had moved to a better area, wait till they get married an hour away. So I was commuting a lot. And I felt like I was very limited in my upward mobility. Not that I'm a super ambitious person. Not that I want to be promoted every single year, every year for the rest of my that's Yeah, but it's not sustainable. But again, I have to see the next step. Right, I need to know that there's upward mobility for me, I just didn't see that that location and my other factors. I didn't want to commute an hour each way. I want to be close for my family. Right. They gave me an opportunity to work from home. Something as a maintainer, I never thought I was going to have the opportunity to do Wow, that's excellent. Yeah. And

14:23

having a family and not I commuted when I was was the raising my children now and and that's, that's,

14:30

that's tough, tough detail, baby. I have my dad's

14:33

a 35 year old or 35 year veteran of UPS. Yeah. So I mean, going to work real early, coming home real late, commuting a real lot. I just didn't want that for my family. Like that's the luxury I have, by the hard work that my parents put into raising me and supporting us. Very good.

14:52

Hey, how did they get a hold of you? This is a great conversation platform.

14:57

I'm on LinkedIn, Corey Dickens on LinkedIn. I And as well just contact brightly.

15:03

That was easy, that was easy, you're gonna

15:04

have all your contact. Yeah, we're gonna have all his contact information out on Industrial Talk. So if you're not, you will be able to contact him just go out to Industrial Talk.com and make that connection happen. We are broadcasting once again from SMRP 31. And if you're not here, make a plan to be at 32. And that's next year, of course, I can do the math, and be able to do that and be engaged with individuals like Corey is a big, big deal. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. I say it all the time. If you're in an asset management, reliability, or maintenance space, you should be@SMRP.org make that happen. SMRP.org. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side, thank you very much for joining, we will be right back.

15:50

You're listening to the Industrial Talk, Podcast Network.

16:00

Another great conversation, Corey Dickens. Make sure you connect with him, all his contact information will be out on Industrial Talk, as you know. So our platform to take advantage of our platform or first just go out to Industrial Talk, get connected to the ecosystem. But it's where we can begin to educate more highlighting individuals like Corey, collaborating to solve problems. And then from that collaboration, innovate so that that we just continue to help and work on your success. That's what it's all about. No doubt about it. Go out to Industrial Talk. We have a lot of education opportunities, a lot of collaboration out there. Geez. Just tons. Make it happen. It is a place for you. All right. Be bold, be brave. dare greatly say it all the time. Hang out with Corey change the world. We're going to have another great conversation coming from SMRP shortly so stay tuned.