Dilraj Kahai and Eric Shufelt with 21Tech

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial talk, asset management, AI solutions, data cleaning, professional services, public sector, operational efficiency, transportation, utilities, smart grids, maintenance maturity, process definition, technology adoption, Hexagon Live, 21 Tech.

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Scott, 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

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02:52

one thing I've learned, and I gotta learn how to dress like you. This man is the best dresser in Vegas right here. Yes, he is something else up my game. There's a sense of style that tech guys need to learn from him. So shout out to you right

03:07

there. And now, while we just wrap it up, we're gonna leave on. Yeah, good idea. Let's go. Let's start just sort of level set right now. Del Raj, let's just talk a little bit about where we're at. What's happening with the tech, 20 or 21 tech, excuse me, red Tech, No, I saw 21 No, it's 21 tech, where do we stand from the last time we spoke? What's going on?

03:30

All right, before I do that, I'm just going to introduce Eric Shufelt, our felt, our Vice President of professional services, who is one of the most brilliant minds in asset management and running organizing, and is a true leader in the game. So we're really happy to have him here, and he is. He's basically running our entire professional services division with public sector around the continent of North America. You asked me a really legitimate question. The last time we talked, we talked about being on the cusp of change, on things that were going to change, and we're really excited about what's coming down. Yeah, that change has arrived

04:10

way here. I call it an industrial Renaissance. There's, there's, there's, it's crackling out there. Yeah, it's, it's something's going

04:18

but you know, what's really interesting that we're finding is a lot of companies are saying we've got to bring AI to asset management, and they're coming up with these really grand AI preventative maintenance plans that our clients are looking at with fear and intimidation and saying, You're selling us this. We don't wait here. Our data is incomplete. Our data is dirty. We can't even use the data to get there. So how do we get there? And so 21 Tech has really changed the way we are bringing AI to asset management. We're looking at the critical, fundamental problem of data and saying you can't get there until you have the stepping stones. And. We've developed AI to help automate their processes and make them more efficient, but while doing so, to clean up their data so they can get to the next level.

05:10

Every conversation I've had over the years that I've been talking with professionals that has always been it's like, hey, that's great. That's fantastic. Deploy that system. What do you do with the data? What do you do with the legacy system? How far or legacy data? How far do you go back? How do you scrub that data? Yeah, so that you're not just just using dirty stuff, yeah, and coming up with some bad decisions, yeah? So you've come up

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06:28

out of. How far do you go back? How have you had that conversation saying, hey, what's about the historical data? How far do you go back? Yeah. So what sort of rule of thumb have here?

06:40

So it depends on the organization, yeah. Some of them are saying, at some point we got to draw a line in the sand and say, going forward we want clean data, yeah. And then we run the AI on the clean data we have, because right now we have none, yeah. And some are saying, well, now that you've got us really interested in how this clean data is, can you use AI to look at the data we've got, yeah, and give us suggestions on how to clean up our old stuff. So that's the other AI application. Fantastic. As they start bringing up, we're like, based on your own data, based on what we see, here's what you should be putting in. And so we're forcing them, instead of manually entering in all of it, forcing them with all these suggestions that they go, Oh my God, we can just update our data with this clean information. So brilliant. These are, like, stepping stones.

07:25

Brilliant because it's, it is because having the conversation around historical data, how far you go back? How do you clean the data? How do you scrub the data? You know, as well as I do, you've been in conference rooms, yeah, where somebody's like, okay, let's, uh, let's start scrubbing that data, everybody starts to flat line. Nobody wants to do it, or they proceed. And a week into the process, like, wow, this is overwhelming.

07:52

You said it exactly right. The overwhelming quantity and asset makes people go, we don't want to touch that. No, it's the third rail of asset management. Yeah. So rather than do that, if we can just incrementalize it and say, yeah, we've got this point solutions. It's cleaning your data along the way, and then in a year, they've got clean data. Yeah, they didn't have to do much about that's the way we feel that will get them over the hump, and, and,

08:16

and I would imagine you get to a point where you have this clean data, you have this history of clean data that you've that you've achieved, then all of a sudden there's that incremental benefit. Do I really need to go historical? Or do I have enough data right there to give me great insights into whatever the health of that asset, or what I need to do from a from a implementation perspective,

08:38

exactly? Yeah, it's so good. What is the data you need where your extrapolation error is as low as possible. There you go. And if you don't need to go back all the way, and you can build it out, that's our point, we may be able to do that without you having to go back too far. Yeah, that's right. And I'll tell you what, our customers are loving it. They're like, You're the first company that's really listened to our major pain point and are solving that with AI rather than giving us the moonshot over here. You know, we're not ready for that, so that's a change that. And

09:06

you're dealing, if I remember correctly, you're dealing with a lot of the sort of the transportation world. Yeah, they're not known for being nimble, and, you know, they're, they're, they're pretty set in their ways, Yeah, but you're dealing with that. You're dealing with that culture, and you're being able to use AI, yeah, in a way that makes sense to them, that that is truly value add.

09:31

The transportation world said a big no to AI before, because they're like our IT. Departments won't allow it. It's so complicated. Our data is too dirty. This is too big. Our union won't allow it all of a sudden with our incremental AI pieces, they're like, you're helping me train my technicians, and know which technicians are qualified for which job, because you brought all that manual stuff up here, and I can just see that that's huge for my union. That's huge for us productivity wise. So it's these helping, really, really helping them in the trenches, yeah, with AI that they're like, oh yes to AI, you know, because it's not some big, complicated, abstract idea. It's something very

10:12

but what I find is that in the marketplace today, because AI is such a buzz word, yeah, everybody saying, I can do AI. I'm laying I'm hanging out my shingles. I'm an AI expert. I'm looking for somebody that I can trust, yeah, and to be able to do it, I see the benefits and values of AI, but how do I deploy it that truly is meaningful and beneficial to my organization? And finding that trusted individual, because there's a lot of people

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out there saying that's selling it, yeah, that's the gold

10:44

rush. It is. It really

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is. Yeah, you're right. And I think for us, what we are doing is focusing on the industries that we know a lot about, yeah. So for us, it's transit, it's utilities and it's public works. So we're saying we're not a mile wide and an inch deep. We know this in public sector, and we're going to build your AI solutions for this and bringing in all their pain points that we've implemented so many agencies, right? So we know exactly what they're hurting on and why they're hurting so they they feel that we have credibility around that. Oh no doubt, we're getting a lot of traction. Oh, no doubt, no doubt.

11:17

Where do you see it going? I mean, this is this is all exciting. What do you see? Let's say octave. Now it's octave. Yeah, it's not a Li, it's octave. How does that impact your business? How do you take the and recognize the fact that there's going to be changes? I don't know what it looks like. I have no clue. Hopefully, it's better. Hopefully, you know, whatever. How do you take the realities of the marketplace and begin to help your customer not get concerned?

11:49

I'll tell you what Scott Octave has been the best thing that's happened to us, and it's because this is now a software company that is thinking like a software company. That's all they're focused on. They're not dealing with hardware, they're not dealing with some other services that they were doing. They're dealing with the software that they've purchased, and they want to make it better. And so they're dealing with partners like us to help them generate that. I'll give you an example. Octave has come to us on their own and said, You guys are the leaders in public sector. By the way, I hate to toot our horn, but because of my leaders, we have won public sector partner of the year three years in a row since hexagon started it, and Octave has now built it up. And we are known, and they trust us as you are our public sector partner. So they came to us and said, We want to open new markets. We're great. We're doing so well over here. How do we open new markets? So we have strategized with them to say, in utilities, in public works and in transit, let's build out a pre solution of pre built all of this, transit in a box, utilities in a box, and go mid market and down market places where they couldn't afford to buy your solution because the services are so complicated around it. Let's pre build them, give them the best of what the larger agencies have done, and then say you get all of this. And then if you want to change it, you're welcome to change it, but you don't have to. You've got most of it already pre built, and that reduces our cost on the system integration side dramatically, so we can afford to do it, and it becomes a numbers game. Octave loves this and is working with us because they want to expand all the way down market, you know. So this is the nimbleness of a software company, that a larger company that's not really focused on software is not that focused on that. So we're breaking new ground with a better partner.

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See, there you have it. We love it. I like that. Let me. Let me venture into the the conversation around utilities. Yeah, there's a lot of challenges that exist today in the in the utility market, because you've got greater demand for power, you've got an aging infrastructure. Yeah, you've got to create, you know, you've got to have smart grids to be able to deal with distributive energy. You've got a lot going on in that, that service territory, how does, how do you play in that? What? How do you because it's going to be across all utilities, everybody's going to be dealing with those.

14:29

It's huge, and it's a big problem. But utilities are in public sector. Of course, there's commercial utilities too. They are the most efficient organizations because they're based on charging citizens a tax on the utility, and raising that is a big deal for a mayor or a governor, and so they are very efficient about trying not to raise it or doing it wrong.

14:55

Mess with my rate case, yes, don't come after me and say, Hey, we're gonna be mom. Find the rate case what everybody knows, aka, you're gonna charge me more, you, son, yes.

15:05

And and with climate change and global warming and all, there are some real concerns over there. So they are hyper vigilant about efficiency, operational efficiency, and how we can do it. So AI and other ways around making them more operation efficient is what they're focused on. Now you've got power generation utility, oh, yeah, water utilities, and they're very, very different, yeah. But the bottom line is, they're looking for, they are looking for low risk, because they cannot have something go down that's critical for them, yep. So the critical infrastructure, they're looking for operational efficiencies, but they also have some very, very specific problems that no one else has. They have underground storage tanks. They can't I was talking to Tucson today. They said we can't even put a barcode on our tanks because we have no Wi Fi, we have no services. We have to use microwave and then outside in the desert heat. Every barcode melts and strips off our metal ones fade off. So we have problems because we're utilities, and we have these huge things that are in the elements or that don't have connection that you need to help us solve and figure out mobile applications to help us solve. So they are coming to us in ways that nobody else is because they have that operational efficiency need, and I love that.

16:25

It's like, where do you start? Yeah, like, you know, where's point zero? And then go to, you know, step number one? Because that would be just the challenge that I see. Yeah, because, because in let's use that utility mindset, you have this this service territory, and you have these assets that are not bound by four walls. They are all over the pool, right? And you need to track it. You need to be able to do it in a way that makes sense, right? But you're right. I I just think it's a really interesting time in the world of utilities, power generation too, where you have the demand for power growing so dramatically because of the data centers, data centers, and then I'm a utility. I'm going out. This is my here. There's my my structure. Here it is. Here's my service story.

17:18

It's not just that. It's the demand for power, and it's a diversity of sources now, yeah, to get the power, yeah. So each diverse source becomes critical assets, yeah. And how do you manage that and maintain Yeah? So that problem is, is multi fold? Oh, what other ones are doing? But, but transit agencies? Um, yeah, trains, yes. Way, the old way, we would go down tracks and send lasers down the tracks and measure the shear on the track. Nowadays, they're putting an iPhone on the bottom of the rail carriage and sending that down and taking automatic videos of the rails and sending that back to an AI generate computational generation thing that sends it to hexagon, and we calculate all that and say, here's the shares you're having. So it's become so much easier to do something that costs them millions of dollars because of the AI engine that is using all this data as a large language model. How

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do you deal with the gap? The gap that I see is here's technology. Technology is just going at a blistering pace, whatever that is, and it just keeps on going up, user adoption. I'm telling you, I'm a human being. I can't do this. I it. I can see it, and I agree with it, I guess. But my I'm here, so there's this gap, yeah,

18:38

there's that gap. And everyone is selling over there, yes. And what we are doing is saying, you can't get there yet. Let us build you these little steps that allow you to go there. I like it. That's our concept.

18:50

Yeah, see that? That makes sense. I didn't like it. I like it a lot because I know that I me a confused mind. Doesn't make a decision that, to me, is a confusion gap, and I'm not going to make a decision. So if you help me with that journey, that little stack, little, yeah, consumable, manageable, bite size, bite size strategy, I love that. Yeah, you were wonderful. I'm sorry we didn't

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get let's get Eric on something, yeah, go ahead. Put him on. Put him on. Yeah. This guy is amazing. He's amazing

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dudes, but that amazing is over there. So talk to us. Give us a little background on who you are.

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Yeah, Eric, you felt spent last 25 years working with the EM solution, dating back to the data stream days.

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I was just getting ready. I was going to drop the data stream name.

19:43

Yes, I was part of the data stream crew. Obviously went to

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info. I know people that you know too.

19:49

Sure. I'm sure it's yeah, we're all aging. I grew my beard. It would be white as can be, yeah. And then was part of the Hexagon acquisition. From the business Singapore, yep, yep. And then, you know, my daughter, yes, yes, I do. Met her couple times, yeah. And and then a year ago, joined 21 tech. Had a great opportunity to join a wonderful team that I had been familiar with over the years. Yeah. And so now I lead the professional services group at 21 tech. That's pretty exciting. What do you mean by professional services? Professional Services? What does that mean? Yeah, so we have a team of implementers. But more than that, it's around business process, understanding true consultation process. Yeah, I love process. Too many people. You know, you either have someone that just knows the process right to have industry experience, yeah, they've been around the block of time, and then you have the others that just know the product right. We've been very fortunate to have a large collection of of resources that know both and really how to correlate process back to the solution and take that design and move forward.

20:56

Foundational Absolutely, you will have a problem implementing a system if you don't nail down, nail down the process to have that, you know, here's my as is view of the world, here's my to be and then be able to bridge those gaps. And everybody's in a room say, No, I get a report this way, right? Yeah, I don't know where it comes from, but I get it

21:20

exactly well and understanding what's the output, what's the objective of that? Yeah, yes. Because if you're not, yeah, what my target is through that process, design, yeah, um, you're never going to be able to come back and say, Well, are we successful in what we're doing? Yeah. And so you really need to know those metrics. I like

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that. Bill Roger, I like that.

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He's, he's, he's a key part, yeah.

21:40

See, I like that. It's always been a big thorn in my side, because I've been down that road and realize that that's important. So where do you see it going? You've got all this stuff that's happening and and you've got these existing clients.

21:56

What do you see on the horizon? Yeah, outside of the fact that you got AI and you're dealing with data, yeah, that's just fantastic growth. I mean, you know, I think what was really critical for us is to meet our clients where they're at right. Too often I've seen, you know, situations where an organization so far behind, where a product is right, or where the vision and what happens, you know, you're urging, you're urging the customer. No, no. You need to implement reliability now. You need to implement, yes, advanced features. The reality is, they're not even collecting failure goods today. So let's meet them where they're at, and then let's, you know, bring up a good take that journey together. Yeah, to increase, you know, the overall maintenance maturity.

22:37

How in the world can we have a world today where the conversation has been around asset management reliability and all of the stuff that's associated with it, we have systems, and there are still companies that are that don't know their failure codes that are just still in the the dark ages of asset man, you can't even say asset management, right? They're still, you know, reactive riding in on that white horse. I'm going to fix that pump. Yeah, no.

23:05

Well, I talked to a user yesterday here at the conference that indicated that they have a list of assets in their em system, but they're not managing their assets, you know. And so how do you take them, you know, along that journey, because it is change, right? And that's important, and there has to be a level of process definition that says this is how we're going to do it, yeah, almost a mandate, right? Yeah. And when you look especially in what we're doing, and, you know, public works, transit, there's safety, you know, repercussions, potentially, if you're not following process. And I think it's creating that level of visibility accountability to really drive it right and to bring

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them forward. And then you got to deal with the fact that that system didn't deliver on the promise that was originally sold and at it, it's got some mud on it, yeah? And you've got to take the individuals and say, No, that's okay. We can, we can take what you have and make it better.

24:02

Yeah. I mean the key, and then that falls right into my business, right? Yeah. I think it's really key. Again, at the beginning of any implementation, understand what the Objectives Understand from an organizational perspective, what are your key value drives, and then we can align how we're going to implement, how we're gonna design process to those key drivers, and then from there it is, managing it. And I can tell you so often, when we have organizations that are moving from one solution to hexagon EAM, you know, there's this fear, right? Anxiety starts to boil up when it's coming time for go live, because they want everything right? I need every step. And I think what's really important is to understand EAM is an evolution, right? Just because you go live doesn't mean we're not going to continue exactly. You're going to continue to configure, enhance the solution, meet the changes in your business processes and of. All. And I've always said, you know, you should treat the hexagon implementation or solution as one of your assets. It needs, you know, your maintenance pattern, go through it as well. It's really critical for people to start thinking about that and making sure they are continuing to maintain and operate the solution.

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How do people get a hold of you. What's the best way they're saying? Wow, I like what

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he's saying. Hey, you know, we just kicked off a new website, tournamenttech.com have a lot of contact information out there to reach us, obviously. You know, we have a lot of great partnership with Exxon EAM, and they pull us into a lot of conversations as well. What if I want to talk to you? Hey, I can give you my phone number and an email on LinkedIn, absolutely. What's it under? Eric, doubt, street belt. Doc, okay, yep, that's good, fantastic. Yeah, yeah, you were one. Hey, it's pleasure. I'm a big fan of 21 time. Thanks so much

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they're doing. They're doing it right? They're making it easy steps to be able to have success right there. 21 tech, we're gonna have all the contact information for these two gents out on industrial talk. Reach out, bring them into your decision tree process, and make them a partner, because they know what they're doing. All right, we're gonna have more conversations coming from hexagon live. Stay tuned. We will be right now.

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You're listening to the industrial talk podcast network

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that's a wrap. Dilraj Eric, delivering the goods insights. 21 tech is the organization broadcasting from hexagon live for right out the zone. Right there, as you wandered around, you're looking at all this great technology and these individuals that are just absolutely passionate about you and your success. That's it. Okay your to do deal. Raj, Eric, connect 21 Jack, follow them. That's what you need to do, because you get all the great information. It's happening. All right. Industrial talk is here for you. I say it all the time. You want to be on the show. You want to be you want to amplify your voice. This is the place for you. We love industry. We love the people of industry. We love what's happening out there. That's industrial talk. We're pretty passionate about that, so just go out to industrial talk.com. Click Connect. You'll connect with me. Let's have a chat. All right. Be bold, be brave. Derek, greatly. Hang out with those two gents from 21 tech, and you will be changing the word. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. You.