#82 Successful Digital Transformation Puts People First

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Hello everyone, this is Adele, Data Science educator and Evangelist at datacamp. A few episodes back we had Mayolo Awais, Chief Data Officer at Gulf bank and we discussed the intersection of data and digital transformation. During that chat it was very evident that to succeed in any form of digital or data transformation, you need to put people first. I wanted to learn more about the intersection of people, digital transformation and data and this is why I'm super excited to be speaking today with Bhavan Patel. Bhavan is the Director of Analytics and Innovation at Johnson Johnson where he manages an organization driving digital transformation and supply chain. His main focus is to unlock the value of data science, intelligent automation and process and task mining to advance the way Johnson and Johnson works. Throughout our conversation we touched upon his experience, the link between digital transformation and data science and culture, what it means to be a digital first organization, the tools and skills any organization needs to have today, common misconceptions organizations have when engaging in digital transformation projects, data science projects he's excited about at Johnson Johnson and much, much more. Now let's dive right in. Bhavan, it's great to have you on the show.

You as well. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here on datacamp's podcast.

I'm really excited to be chatting with you today. You know, without giving too much away, you're someone who sits at the intersection of analytics, strategy and innovation and you're a key player in driving the digital transformation of Johnson Johnson. Do you mind briefly walking us through your background and how you would describe.

Your current role At J and J. Yeah, absolutely. So I've been with JJ for about 10 years across our three industries, MedTech, Pharmaceuticals and our consumer products. And, and through that journey I've been involved with a number of different functions. Starting in supply chain as one of my core competencies, working and building and scaling and analytics. And today a much more focused digital team. And along that journey we had worked through a number of different capabilities and as it is today, my role we focus on how do we implement digital logistics for our supply chain business and deliver. So a lot of that focus on our distribution, our transportation and our in our customer service organizations.

That's awesome. And there's definitely a lot of data at the heart of that. So I'd love to first kick off our conversation by understanding what makes a digital first organization. I think there's oftentimes a lot of misleading messaging within our space around digital transformation, becoming data driven, building data cultures and all these kind of end states organizations need to arrive at. Can you describe how interlinked data science, data culture, becoming data driven and digital transformation are?

Yeah, you know I really think it's, it's about making sure that data is the core foundation. And I think what we, a lot of people may misinterpret or confuse that when they think about digital not having the data foundation first. And even in organizations, even like my example, it's supply chain, it's about making sure all of the data behind your systems, all of the data that you may need for your end customers or consumers or products are all captured, harmonized and accessible and a common platform. And I think beyond that, what makes it truly digital is the capabilities you have on top of that that allow you to improve your decision making ability. I think it can be confusing or complicated at times of you know, what, what is digital? But in its simplest form it's, you know, are we improving the decisions we need to make for our business? And you think about that intersection or connectivity is if data's on the foundation, where are the capability stem from? And data science just being an element of the analytics continuum, right. Of the capabilities driving everything from the descriptive of what happened to my business, the diagnostic, why is it happening to the predictive and prescriptive of what will happen or in light of what will happen, how can I respond to that? And so when I think about that integration in my mind it's so clear of data as a foundation, capabilities on top, that scale, that analytics continuum of questions that allow us to optimize our business and move faster so to Some.

Extent, data is kind of like the fuel that powers effective processes in a digital environment and that makes or breaks digital transformation efforts. Is that correct?

Absolutely. And I think that data literacy I'm sure we'll talk about later and that acumen of what is data today you can have a lot of structured, unstructured data and that paradigm, that mindset shift of thinking about data in a new way and recognizing all the untapped and unleveraged amount that might already be accessible to optimize our businesses or better serve our customers.

That's great. So there's a lot to unpack when we talk about digital transformation or becoming a digital first company. I want to set the stage for today's conversation and get from you what it means to become a digital first. Organizations and what are the main levers to get there?

You know, when you think about organizations and you think about some of the history of of the industrial revolution to now, Industry 4.0 organizations have evolved based off the the ability of the technology to allow them to run their business. So an example I give right think about the 1960s plus to the 80s and even early 2000s ERP implementations were a big focus of organizations. Do I have the right technology that allow us to have product visibility? They also know our customer demand order fulfillment to the order delivery that became core as an identity and a foundation businesses ran. And what's happening now is you're seeing technology that allows us to do things that we one, are we able to keep at the pace and speed of. But two, can we even think about all the applications of technologies now like natural language processing or things that we're talking about with data science as an application or that ability. So when I think about digital first, I think about redesigning the way that we think we can run our businesses. And that means from all of our internal operations of how we make decisions and redesigning those processes that involves a huge focus people element and the technology element that's needed to run our business. But I also think about the products and services and so, you know, a few examples I can give you that I think work really well. If you think about Domino's, you know, they don't just sell pizza, they're also selling you that service of information of knowing hey, here's a real time tracking of your pizza. Because they know the end customer consumer wants the visibility that information of when is it being made, when is it being delivered, when will I have it? And an empowered end consumer that grew up in the age of social media that grew up in the age of that ability to have an device like a smartphone that allows them get access to information. We need to engage them differently. Especially as you think about majority of the workforce and emerging population being millennials and Gen Z that are digitally native. So when I think about digital, I think about how are we addressing the needs of our end consumers and what their expectations are, but also the way that we need to reinvent our businesses and our business models that meet that demand, whether it's product and service, whether it's the infrastructure and ways of working in organizations. But I think that's really what it means, digital first. It's rethinking all of those paradigms and thinking about how we can show up in the marketplace to lead in that space. And the reality is smaller organizations will take your market share if they don't. Right. Those that are smaller, nimbler, agile, that have that ability to not to really challenge and move at a different pace than large or enterprise organizations, they're really able to take that market share and move much faster. Right. So it's vital for organization success.

That's wonderful. So I want to break down some of these levers you mentioned, like people process technology and how you're able to scale your impact and digital transformation with them and provide personalized experience, you know, as you mentioned, with domino speeds, for example. Do you mind expanding on these levers and how they accelerate digital transformation and how you've used them at Johnson and Johnson?

Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with people first. I think that is the foundation and you have to realize the people is everything from the existing tenure employees you have that are SMEs of systems or processes that really know all the pain points and challenges. It can be a huge enabler and really find the application of these emerging digital technologies to redesign their business all the way to the technical SMBs that know the technology, that understand data science or data engineering or thinking about process and task mine, these technologies that are emerging of and the marriage of the two. Right. So how do you sort of blend the legacy that that historical business value knowledge with the emerging technical talent that you're seeing that's more digitally native and combine them together. And a lot of that requires some reskilling because you're challenging the way that we're going to be working with tools and technologies if they were used to a manual report that was generated from a system that no longer is required to make decisions to more of a digital capability, now you need some reskilling in that Space so that that ability to think about enablement and reskilling your workforce and thinking about people as paramount for that will unlock all the value. So I think there's a huge shift on the reskilling effort of those technical skills. You know, as I think about process next I think about the org redesign and ways you want to think about product based teams and the way you think about building applications and not having these matrix organization. I think about matrix organizations of what really is a team now around a capability that can make everything from the build that capability to the decision making that can improve a process or output of an organization like supply chain. And then lastly the technology. Right, the technology. There are so many. There are process and task mining technologies that will look into your legacy systems and figure out the inefficient processes and show you how to what the untapped value potential of changing those processes could be what all the way to data visualization which I think tends to be the gateway drug for a lot of people that get excited by analytics. Whoa. Like I have this really cool dashboard. Well it's not just a dashboard. It's your decision making system and it's what frequency are using this capability to run your decision at a daily, weekly, monthly level or the data science applications which I think is extremely hot topic in the industry. But one that can be easily misunderstood. When you think about data science. I think it's the experimentation of those problem statements you're looking for. And thinking about how I redesigned this application, not necessarily over engineer it, but what are those meaningful questions and problem statements that I yet haven't put the power of data science to go solve. And lastly intelligent automation because that's absolutely happened. Well of how can I automate my repetitive tasks which honestly is absolutely needed to free up the time required to go work on the technologies we just talked about before is you can automate some of that manual redundant work your labor force can be freed up to then put to power against these other areas as well. So it's absolutely exciting to think about that that convergence. I think about it as like this interven diagram. But I will say people are the other fundamental shift of that of that change.

Kind of harping on that last point. Do you think then technology is a bridge between people and processes that kind of allows you to operationalize these processes that empower people. Is this how you visualize the relationship between all three of these le I absolutely do.

And I think the process part is one that that also can get underestimated because you, you have to invent new processes some way. And in some way, what I'm seeing in industry and even in our organization is everyone is trying to figure out the right process to implement. And so you come up with a lot of different formulas for solving the same problem. But standardizing on a methodology, whether you have things like Agile, you have product management approaches, whatever that approach may be of process, of how you work, but recognizing how you work has to shift the way you think about that. And having a new design for that and implementing that, and that is the bridge and that glue and scaling the things that work well. Especially in organizations, you're always going to have these pockets where things are working extremely well, where somebody has innovated an idea or technology. That ability to have visibility to what is happening and how to scale the things that are most meaningful is how you can really drive leverage and value. And I think that's one thing that I'm excited to unlock more as I continue on my journey this year is how can I better enable my organization with that.

So following up here, what do you think is a common misconception organizations have when they launch these massive digital transformation initiatives?

I continue to find the underinvestment in the people. And I don't think it's a lack of awareness. I think it's from a lack of acknowledgment of how difficult that journey is. And it is arduous. You're talking about change and I'm talking about change management at a later point. But you're asking for a big shift in the way that you think and the way that you do your job and the way that you behave. It's not. It's an arduous journey and it requires not just building technical skills and reskilling, but you're asking even levels of leadership to work very differently. So it's not just change in one small area of hey, I've launched one new platform, I'm launching a new product. It's like, no, we need to change all of those areas and at scale to do that, to make sure you have the right data literacy and acumen where you need the expertise of those that have been in organizations for 20, 30 years that didn't grow up in a digital technology environment or maybe looking to embrace that in the way that they work. So you're sort of dual pathing of how do I deliver the business of today while I'm reinventing myself for the business of tomorrow? And I think that that is underestimated of trying to run in Two modes. And I'm sure organizations are sort of through that. I think part of that is the value of organizations like Data Camp, like you can, you can really help enable individuals to learn the skill sets they need, but also think about the way they can focus on that as well. So I think the, the over reliance on technology and about the, the people first and what do I need to change and the partnership with organizations like HR where digital talent strategy and workforce planning are going to be critical. All that require redesign of jobs and functions. An example back to the ERP is when you had large scale system technology transformation. Just like the invention of an erp, you created the roles that were needed to support that function, that level of investment.

Exactly.

And now you're having to do that at a much faster cycle and rapid level. If you look the amount of jobs I see that have the word digital in it is kind of mind numbing right now. But the thing you realize is everyone's trying to figure out what role, what is that role, how do I define it and what do I need for my business and how do I do that at scale and then how do I keep up with the skillset, training, performance, management of those roles to know if it's, if it's delivering the ROI that I intended to. So I think we're, you know, as much as people talk about a digital transformation, you're, you're in a people transformation business right now. Five generation workforce of a lot of pressure on businesses to reinvent themselves and understand the changes at once. And it could be, it could be very daunting, quite honestly. Right. So I think we have to show some, some leadership and resilience of, you know, where do we think about the optimism and double down in areas that work well and how do we have some grace and some patience in areas that we want to focus on to get better for tomorrow and recognize we need to be honest with where we have those pain points as well.

You know, I couldn't agree more on the culture and people component. And part of what you're hinting at here is that a lot of this hesitance in engaging in these people transformation projects comes from the recognition that it's a long, arduous, iterative process. Whereas technology driven digital transformation projects tend to have like an end state where a project is delivered. What are your thoughts on this?

It's not an end state. Right. I think people think digital transformation is, hey, once I get here, I have achieved the state. Like no, it's, it's the work the way you think. And we're going that industry 4.0, that revolution. Just like I'm sure when the car was invented for the horse. Like I think one of the famous example, the Mercedes, like when they came out, it wasn't so good for the horse. That was displaced from a mechanism jobs and working right. So I think there was a lot of anxiety and fear in the marketplace today of hey, we're going through digital transformation. What does it mean for me? And I would say look at the organizations that are really. I mean, I'm inspired by peers and customers in the industry like Walmart, Walmart Academy, and the way they're thinking about reskilling in the retail industry. When you have a robot that's scanning shelves to figure out inventory, it's not like they're not leveraging as an opportunity think about their workforce differently. And how do I want about the retail workforce? And I remember if you think about COVID there was a lot of fear of like is. Is. Is it the death of the. The mall experience? Gone are those no longer common grounds. And I would argue no. Even Starbucks, I'm sure, right. The third place environment. It's that there needs to be a shift to how you think about that and seize the opportunity of redesign. You focus on customer value and experience, you will absolutely win. And that's what you're seeing a lot of those areas is that shift of work that you do and that transformation to free up that time that then gets focused on value services like a customer experience that then drives the right level of engagement. And I think that's the big piece of technology is we should embrace that ability to automate things. Quite honestly, jobs that can be repetitive tasks that may not have that critical thinking component now you can replace that towards hey, how can I improve this problem? Or to solve this problem that I wasn't thinking about. And I think organizations need to think about that human capital strategy, that shift, because that will be that net business value for organizations and for consumers. I mean, I'm very inspired by that because I really do see a brighter future for. For tomorrow based off all of that as well.

I definitely agree with that sentiment. If you look at the organizations that are winning and reskilling and upskilling today, what they really nail is ingraining a culture of learning. And they're able to double down on learning in a way to not only like improve equity and diversity, but to also create opportunities for people to fulfill their potential. So definitely a culture of learning provides a high ROI for organizations. Over the long run.

And that accountability of saying on, on demand, on job learning is a requirement, which is also a shift. Right. We're no longer in this piece of hey, you've achieved a certification to do this job and that's all you're going to do from now on. It's no, you're going to have to have that ability to learn on new skills and new ways of working. And that's going to. Your role will not be the same every single year. The role will keep shifting. But that's the world we live in now. And that's what corporations are looking for. Those creative strategic thinkers with strong learning agility that are able to solve problems and keep inventing that future. Right. That innovation piece.

So let's focus on this even more. You know, when focusing and improving the people component, I imagine there are populations within Johnson and Johnson that need to be enabled more than others. As such, how do you kind of prioritize your audience and determine which skills they need to acquire?

You know, I think you have to break it down by levels in the organization. There are different decisions that have to be made at different work activities that happen at an analyst level, management level, senior leadership level. And you're trying to understand what are their decision making responsibilities and what are their biggest pain points and burning platform priorities here.

Right.

So I think there's, there's an element of recognizing how you have to target that user Persona and think about their need and what they may need to do. I think part of that is a skill set assessment what skills are recognizable. And I'm sure many organizations you have this top down approach of a leader may want to report this way. They want it on this day, they want this. So recognizing it's not just upskilling the individuals at the level generating those reports or those capabilities, but also the leaders that are having to rethink the way they want to make decisions for their business and have to say, I don't have to ask this person for this report anymore because I have a capability on my phone that allows me to answer this question. So that's that back that learning agility and that reskilling piece is at all levels in the organization thinking about the decisions are responsible for thinking about their pain points and that continue to redesign.

Right.

And I think what you'll hear is you capture that pain points in an organization or industry you're trying to cultivate. What does my roadmap look like?

Right.

What is a set of capabilities I need to keep inventing and implementing for My business will be a huge part of that. I think getting a baseline of skill set is important. So that's possible of what is your human capital? What's that aspirational skill set? How do you want to target population and are using multiple formats, right? That whole concept of read, watch, listen, you know, trying to implement one way of learning may not work for your large population. You need to try different formats and provide different avenues that create that pull effect versus the push and that engage in that curiosity. And I'm sure there are things you think about, things like office hours or different ways that people can feel supported, can feel engaged to ask your questions or concerns so you understand what the demand of that, that population is and what they're looking for and really prioritizing that, that backlog of opportunities. And that could even be collaborative brainstorming sessions with your different audiences to say what is it that you need? What are you struggling with? And then help. Let me help you paint a picture of how you might be able to unlock this with a solution or capability. So I think that those are the exciting ways you think about engaging with the people part in organizations.

And what's really exciting about this is that not only are you empowering people to work with data in their day to day, but you're also increasing the organization's overall data iq. And that kind of supplements the data team's work by providing the automation opportunities, direction on where data science can be applied and it can guide in large scale strategic projects.

You can't improve what you can't measure. And whenever you think about being able to look at a baseline number and whether you call it a digital quotient, a data literacy, give it a score however you want to measure it. But find ways to measure progress and show results will inspire leaders, will inspire organizations, highlight, endorse and champion those that are learning, that are making our business and improving it using these technologies. Those become those evangelist, right? Like the ones that can really show the art of the possible in this space. And highlighting those as, as a standard is sort of what's driving cultural shift of how do you start modeling what Personas should be and recognize those individuals.

So given these Personas, what are the primary competencies you're looking to foster most within your team?

There's, there's so many ways to think about it, right? I think, you know, when you think about a product management team, you have this product manager or product owner, right? Maybe they're accountable for function in their business, maybe they're accountable for a roadmap that work one in business, one in technology. And they're looking at the skill sets they may need from a data engineering, from a data visualization developer, a data scientist, a change management, a user experience, Persona. So you have these skill sets or Personas that you know that will help bring a digital capability life. But I'm really realizing though the skill set behind that that I'm finding and you already touched upon it, the learning, agility. You know, when I think about who can help bring that vision to life, I think it's individuals that have a strong ability for strategic thinking, that problem solving and that ability to connect the dots of digital solutions. Those that can execute in that, that arduous journey of you want to retire or invent a new capability and you want to implement it in the business, who has that ability to actually drive that execution from idea to implementation, working with your stakeholders, customer, getting the adoption, the capability you need there. So you can have these Persona profiles and I can tell you this is what this role and Persona looks like. But if you think about the skills that are most successful in this space, it goes back to that strategic thinking, that learning agility and that execution management. If you find individuals, a lot of organizations will call them people like unicorns, right? How do you find somebody that knows the business, knows the technology, can bring it to life, that just gets it? That's what I found is if you find people like that, they will be very successful and they'll be very sought after talent, especially in this marketplace.

And what's so nice is that people within your organization already have subject matter expertise. They already know the business and their function inside out. And if you augment their skills with data skills and tools, then you're able to mass produce these unicorns that combine business skills and digital skills.

Right. And I think back to that matrix team examples. You want to bring people that have a bit of that, who've been embedded in the business, that know it, bring that with those that connect dots to implement and technology. Those are those matrix product teams that are extremely effective and can work really well to bring meaningful solutions to life.

Of course, skills is only one part of scaling the people component. We talked about this slightly around culture and generating a mindset shift. But this requires a lot of buy in and excitement and assuaging cultural resistance. Do you mind walking us through kind of your experience dealing with that and what you think works the most in these types of situations?

Change management, Right. I think a lot of this is thinking about how you garner the sponsorship, how you can garner the resources or funding that's required to bring these programs to life. How you then get organizations excited. So you know one famous methodology pro size is Adkar right. You have the awareness, the desire, the knowledge, the ability and the resistance plan. But thinking about your communication plan with your stakeholders sponsors, having that ironed out on a frequency and cadence to move the ball forward is so important. So I think change management cannot be underestimated. I think it is a vital investment for digital programs to be very successful. And I think investing in resources and practitioners of change management will allow you to get from journey A to point A to point B. And I think making sure that as a part of that change management journey you recognize and you're very realistic on where people are at. I think if you're speaking at a, at a level or an aspiration that they don't fully understand, you will never really bring the organization with you. I think communicating to with people with where they're at in a method and format that we talked about that they can understand and and being repetition, repetition is king be repeating. Yeah, I laugh with my team like it. Sometimes it feels like I'm hitting banging my head against a wall repeating the same thing but recognizing that, you know, without that consistent messaging it may not land because you're doing your day to day job. You'll think about who can I work with in the organization, who can I address this point or challenge to? And that persistence is very important. Right to your point. It is is. It is multi year journey. I think making sure that you have some fundamentals of the sponsorship from the top that effective and robust change management program and being able to generate the enthusiasm and optimism by showing the progress on that journey will really allow organizations to move on their digital journey there. So I can't underestimate that enough of try different things. Right. Definition of insanity as Einstein have tried the same thing expecting different results. Definitely try different I don't be afraid to to empower others. Right. I think this concept of a change agent of who are you enlisting from these organizations will help bring you on the journey. So it's not an us versus that mentality. It's a journey of we and do you have that collective one team mentality of you're enabling them to succeed and you are a valued partner, stakeholder customer on that journey as you're trying to get to that next level there.

So you mentioned here enlisting other evangelists on the team. One inspiring example from another guest on the podcast is the chief data Officer of Gulf Bank Mail Aish where they have an organization wide program called the Data Ambassador program where anyone working with data goes through an upscaling program and they do a lot of community events, webinars, hackathons. What do you find has worked with you and enlisting evangelists and creating a community practice.

Right. I love that concept. I think it is about that community of practice or that center of excellence type of mentality and two different things they are. But all those programs are very, very effective. Right. I think from an awareness perspective that ability to highlight where it's happening. Well, so whether it's a showcase or a hackathon of inspiring others of the art possible saying here's a problem statement and having that I think allows people to think really really differently about their problem statements and it gets 100% ability in the organization. I think from that from the skill set perspective, these boot camp type of programs or this skilling initiative with a certification or accreditation process, whether it's through industry, whether it's in house work really well to show I have this competency or this in demand skill set that's needed to succeed in the world digital. So I think organizations that are able to launch those and whether they have dedicated learning or training days or whether they're partnering with organizations like Data Camp or whoever may be an industry to bring the solutions to life, I think is very important. So I think there's. There are ways to approach the hackathon piece or ways to approach that Data boot camp or that dedicated learning time piece is very important. Yeah. I think other solutions that work really well is is making sure that that communication mechanism at whether it's town halls, whether it's team meeting, but closing that feedback loop and making sure the promotion of those capabilities will be very important. Right. What are the success stories of how things are solved and what visibility is getting the organization? Because that will help drive more change and it will start integrating the necessity of those programs into the strategic roadmaps and priorities for organizations as well. Right. I think that is absolutely needed and I think that that ability to even benchmark. Quite honestly what I love doing my team is especially with each of the industries I help them find a benchmark peer of saying hey, here's how we're approaching our roadmap. Where is this versus the benchmark? What could we be doing differently in this space or what should we be trying or implementing. But you know, when you think about trying and experimenting new ideas, innovation doesn't have to be in a silo. It's usually, you know, when it's. There's a, there's a mantra like steal like an artist where you're trying to connect different train of thoughts together something net new. That's what innovation really is, is collaboration. Exactly. Scaling that together. So I think that's very important as well of knowing how you're understanding what is working well and then asking, honestly asking your own employees. We did an innovation program last year and one of the things I really loved is when you give the problem statement and the creative freedom of your team to come up with ideas you might be seeing surprised to see what you can go sponsor. You don't have to create it net new on yourself, but making the space in time of asking your team of what's working well and having that type of innovation campaign of digital of you know, here are the problem statements, here are the things that give a criteria and solicit that and then promote that internally and scale that with sponsorship and bring it to life. Because that's how you the not just the learning agility, but you get the creative problem solving type of mentality as well. So I would say beyond a hackathon is have an innovation campaign, have those in your organization really solicit, bolster and scale ideas that may not be getting a voice because of a level in an organization.

And once you champion these voices, you create a virtual cycle that generates more excitement, more champions and so on and so forth.

Exactly. And the platform for those individuals, it was amazing to see the voices that can present in front of senior leaders to say here's my idea, here's what I want to go solve, here's what's needed and, and having, whether it's Shark Tank or things that allow you to really think about a platform for those voices to get the traction it drives a lot of inspiration there too. So we definitely encourage that.

So to be able to enable that, you definitely need to adjust the process and make it much more agile. I think an especially challenging aspect of leading change and innovation is designing processes around legacy systems skills and organizational workflows and structures. In light of that, do you mind kind of sharing your thinking around redefining processes to optimize for digital innovation?

I think a lot about the Matrix team piece and you mentioned earlier on community of practice and centers of excellence. We talked about it briefly is, you know, and I think a company does this really well Spotify with guilds, chapters and tribes. Do you create a community around the technology or capability? Right. Is a technology even like a data science? Right. Whether you centralize or decentralize it, what is a form and mechanism for those practitioners to collaborate? Right. So whether it's a technology, whether it's a function, I think that's a really effective mechanism for that. Or when I think about data visualization and a CoE around that of effective ways of building capabilities, bringing them to life and ways that they've learned around that solution or capability there too. So I think in order to remove some of the bureaucracy is implementing matrix organization, is building a community practice and empowering individuals regardless of a level or function. I think that that allows that ability to democratize ideas and allows individuals to learn. So I think that is absolutely needed as, as a mechanism and whether you through even a capability that you may be trying to solve or build, may be a way to do that as well. But I really like that concept of is it around a technology, is around a capabilities, it around a function even. But those practitioners coming together and thinking they scale innovation and avoid some of the siloed working processes, right? That's how you avoid that as well and you redesign what it sort of means to be a team. So it's not just this solid line relationship. There's a lot of these dotted line ways of who do you inspire as a team and what are they? How are they held for some accountability or some outcome? There's that's definitely absolute of thinking about that to work very differently and bring matrix teams together and drive innovation at scale there. I think it's going to be around as long as the sponsorship from senior leadership is there and the outcome is clear. What's the goalpost or what are we marching towards? I think you'll find we're very inspired to work across boundaries to solve a problem there 100%.

And I love the idea of a center of excellence, especially early in the data journey. Do you think there is a risk for data science being flexible, siloed as a support function if it's too centralized though?

You know, it's funny, in large organizations I hear a lot of like we're going to centralize this, we're going to pull it under one roof. And the reality is you're better off doing like a COE approach of you have the right level of competency or expertise within a centralized function, but you have this hub and spoke model and this can be within functions, you name it, finance, supply chain, whatever it may be that allow the proliferation of bringing that to life. And at that level you may not need a very, you know, technically skilled individual or organization there but you probably need one that is very embedded to the business that defines its roadmap and is very committed to the implementation of those solutions. So when I think about COEs, I definitely think a hybrid approach of what is centralized versus what is regionalized or distributed is absolutely important. And the way they work together in some consortium to drive change is extremely important there. And I think recognizing what you want out of your coe and a lot of growing challenges for scaling organization is governance, right? Governance support infrastructure. Absolutely. It's like where's my data? How do I access it? Is it accurate and the thing that no one wants to work on, like that's the stuff that holds you back when you start scaling. So I think governance can't be underestimated even when you have a COE model. And if I think about ways that different teams, that is absolutely an approach to think about in ways of what that distribution can look like.

So I can definitely talk about data transformation for hours. But I'd like us to close with some use cases that you've already seen in operationalized and data science. So your work has been primarily focused on leading digital innovation, enabling analytics within the supply chain function at Johnson Johnson. Do you mind walking us through some of the successes and use cases you've worked on so far?

Yeah, I think a lot of it is optimization focused. Right. I can give you three examples. One is the way organizations, any business thinks about their cost to serve model. Right. So cost to serve aspirationally, you want it to be activity based model, you want to have the data to know what it costs to serve from a product level, at a customer level, to use it as a way to identify opportunities in your business where you're sub optimizing ways that your prosecutor are implementing, having a negative P and L impact of saying, do you recognize the levers that are associated to this? And in many organizations that are not data literate, you have more of an assumption based model because the data was not available before. You took a lot of what we call swags to say, I assume the cost of this, this, but as you get to your real time availability of data, your, your ability to harness that to redesign the way you can optimize your costs is amazing. And I think if cost is so is not on supply chain organizations roadmap, it's a missed opportunity because they will allow you to transform the way you approach your business and allow you to partner cross functionally in your organizations across commercial, finance and supply chains. That's absolutely a vital capability. Another one we talked about the optimization space. Right. So you think about, especially in the world of data science, there are a lot of ways you can optimize supply chain processes. Right now in today's environment of a constrained transportation or freight environment, that's an area that I absolutely would say data science can solve a lot of that. To say you'd look at things like vessels or trucks and how do you optimize the cubic footage of an, of a, of a vehicle to fit as much product as you can on that truck. And so if you used to excel spreadsheets to build your truck out, or you may not have that optimization piece built into your tms, your transportation management system, there are ways to think about those solutions and adding them as add ons to legacy systems to really make sure you're getting the most utilization. And out of, out of that capability a third one's around inventory. Right. Every organization supply chain 101 is do I have the right product, right inventory at the right time, in the right place. And if you think about optimizing the flow of product through your life cycle to your end customer and getting the data, whether it's at a retailer level, all the way back to an organization to say do I have the right inventory that I'm shipping to my customer that allows the demand of that inventory to be captured by so I can reduce my inventory on hand carrying costs as well as my customers. And we both have a win win trade off because by the right product being at the right time, we avoided any lost sales and we met the end consumer that wanted the product where it needed that. Right. That's sort of euphoria of that capability inventory optimization. But I would say it's extremely powerful and I think that's what all supply chain organizations on digital journeys are marching towards is how do I lean out my organization, my supply chain efficiencies throughout as well.

That's awesome. And what's mind boggling about supply chain and data science is that even a 0.1% improvement in efficiency can generate massive impacts on costs, which is why it's so exciting.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think with digital transformation that function is going to go through massive overhaul which is going to be exciting to be part of.

I'm sure as well being at J and J, you're also exposed to lots of innovation in data science analytics, other teams are producing. I'd be remiss to not mention this given that J and J delivered one of the vaccines to Covid. What are some of the use cases you've Been excited about the other data teams that Johnson Johnson has been working on.

Gosh, there are so many, you know, but from a data science perspective, you know, there are so many ways you can think about natural language processing or the way you think about how do you look at customer service organizations with chatbots, right? So I think there are a number of, you name a function and there are applications of solutions that are being built. Even something that I, you know, I wouldn't have traditionally thought about. But it is so imperative and I appreciate so much, but even your IT help desk, right, Think about how many tickets your organization gets and the implementation of a chatbot that allows you to get near real time versus waiting on hold the same way you might, you know, when you have a complaint. I think Verizon's also done its phenomenal job with this, is you don't want to wait to speak to a live person. You want that ability to answer the data, what's going on, help you solve the issue and that, that ability. So I'm super excited about virtual chat agents. That's one that I thought about for my team, like, how do I reduce number one, those basic 101 questions? It'd be great if I just had a chat that I can send to some meetings and, you know, type away and, and you collect that demand too. But I think those are some really exciting applications. And again, inspiration inspires my, my sort of passion in this space. And what could you do with digital products and services? But those are ways that you can redesign that. And I think that's around and customers and consumers, you're. You're sort of marrying that. Back to Adama's example is, I think even within our products, if you look at our consumer health portfolio, we're launching a lot of digital services, long case products as well, right? So is it an application? Is it ways that you're engaging on new mediums like TikTok, but how are you engaging on. On the platforms that are needed for your end consumers? And the data science piece of it is, is, is it the right solution? Is it penetrating the right end customer and consumer you're looking for? Are you getting the outcome that you need from that service? That I'm not just selling a product, but allowing it's improving the end consumer, inpatient and patient's life in some way? I think that's, that's really exciting to redesign that. I would say it's a broad range and it's exciting to see all of that happen. And every week I'm seeing something new. And I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool. And piece we said learning is not just for the organization. It's for roles like mine that are constantly seeking out what's happening with the latest trends, partners and organizations, and externally too, to think about how we can continue to keep inventing our future there.

That's really great, Bhavan. Finally, before we wrap up, Bhavan, any final words before we end today's episode?

You know what I would say stay focused on that ability of the skill set you may want to develop, right? Whether it's leveraging resources like Data Camp or it's partnering in your organization or your customers, but the skill set of digital in that space. Are you a data engineering practitioner? Are you a data scientist? What is it that you want to learn in this technical domain and go after it? Because the opportunities are endless. You're, you know, people like myself there, there are a lot large scale transformations to happen and so I encourage everyone to continue to focus on building those skill sets and continue to find the application of what problem can you solve with the skill set you're developing? Because that will be this, that will allow us to all build our industry 4.0 and this, this digital transformation or people revolution we've talked about. So it's exciting to think about that and I encourage everyone to do that.

Thanks Tom Bhavan for coming on Data Framed.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

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